Last week, Eko Devices announced a new service that matches ECG and heart sound recordings with clinical data to help pinpoint novel drug-data combinations. The Silicon Valley startup is pitching the platform, called Eko Home, as a resource for clinical trials targeting new therapies.

The new platform is already seeing some action. According to the company, an ongoing Mayo Clinic study exploring how carvedilol-based cardiovascular therapies could reduce heart failure or other heart function declines among breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy is using the Eko Home platform to drive insights.

Eko — which is best known for its Eko Duo device, a smart remote monitor that’s part stethoscope, part ECG — also said in its announcement that it “expects to offer the drug-data combinations with other life science partners by the end of the year with additional plans to offer its SDK to hospitals and healthcare providers that wish to build the platform directly into their applications.”

WHAT’S THE IMPACT

Clinical trial support and real-world evidence collection has long been pinned as one of the major benefits digital health technologies could offer drugmakers. Eko’s new service looks to do just that through the collection and analysis of continuous biometric monitoring, both inside and outside of the hospital.

“Eko Home provides a critical monitoring and data collection component for clinical studies leveraging the power of machine learning to improve all types of clinical analysis,” Connor Landgraf, CEO of Eko, said in a statement. “This valuable insight offers researchers and healthcare professionals reliable cardiac data to make better judgements, recommendations or adjustments to their research.” 

THE LARGER TREND

Eko and the Mayo Clinic kicked off their collaborations in October. The partnership was described at the time as centered on the identification of patients’ heart conditions using Eko’s devices and machine learning tech.

Eko’s lead device was cleared by the FDA in 2017, while its original Eko Core passed through the regulator all the way back in 2015. The company has raised about $7.8 million in funding, most recently through a $5 million round closed in early 2018.