Heart disease is the nation's No. 1 killer, reaching into all communities across income, race, gender and geography. It takes a disproportionate toll on minority populations and women, but one challenge that many patients at risk of a heart attack share: inability to identify the risk before it is too late. More than half of individuals experiencing acute myocardial infarction have no symptoms that might serve as early warning signs.
Cardiologist James Min, former professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at New York-Presbyterian, founded Cleerly to find a better way to assess heart health, by applying AI to the problem, cutting down on the time it takes to flag issues and ultimately reach his goal of a "heart-attack free" world.
His startup's quantitative comparison tool tracks patient disease by the amount and type of atherosclerosis (plaque) rather than indirect surrogates, including risk factors, symptoms, stenosis (narrowing of the aortic valve), and ischemia (blood flow restriction).
Dr. Min recently spoke with CNBC ahead of the upcoming CNBC Healthy Returns summit on March 29. Check out the full interview here.
