Portfolio Spotlight: Cardio Bionic
Every year, 26 million people are diagnosed with heart failure around the world. Take a moment to think about that – that is the population of Australia.
For 9 million of those people, it reaches end-stage heart failure, with transplants or heart assist devices the only options.
Out of these 9 million, 1 million people die every year.
The numbers only get more stark from here – 10,000 heart assist devices are implanted every year. And heart transplants? Around 5,000.
Dr Peter Ayre decided to change the game – if the numbers were this grand, then it needed a grand solution. Dr. Peter Ayre is the co-founder and CEO of CardioBionic, a med tech startup developing affordable, heart assistance solutions for people living with end stage heart failure. But this hasn’t been an overnight success story, if anything it’s been a long journey of trying to save the world one heart at a time - prior to launching CardioBionic, Dr Ayre was the co-founder of VentraCor working with research and development teams to bring their heart assist devices to patients all over the world.
Over the past 28 years, he’s co-authored multiple patents and publications in science and engineering and consulted to other leading med tech companies in Australia and abroad. In 2003, he completed his PhD at the School of Biomedical Engineering and is a proud alumnus of UNSW – and in 2019, Dr Ayre completed our Health 10x Accelerator Program, launching CardioBionic into the world, and into our hearts.
And when we spoke with Dr Ayre, at our First Thursday’s event in June, he explained why he was inspired to create CardioBionic. The most shocking number in the mix here? The price tag.
“The cost of a VAT is $100,000 US dollars, plus all the on costs.”
“I met a cardiac surgeon in Chennai, back in 2014 [co-founder Dr. KR Balakrishnan] - and his vision was, what the heck is going on with this technology? Why don't we have cheaper technology to treat [this problem]?”
“We started this dream of building this project, bringing the cost down, and as it built and built, we raised money.”
From here, Dr Ayre and Dr Balakrishnan developed affordable, portable, and wearable left heart and right heart assist devices, and with their combined knowledge and expertise in the technology that already exists, they’ve set out to simplify it and make it more accessible via platforms that are already recognised by hospitals.
“The real driving thing is to drive the costs down, so it's more accessible.”
Now, CardioBionic is moving into the next phases of testing alongside the Victor Chang Institute and St Vincent’s Hospital, and in the words of Dr Ayre, it’s going “amazingly well.”
For now, the next phases of testing are being completed. But, one day, these devices will be in people – and the numbers will start to change, thanks to the hard (and heart) work of CardioBionic.
Image Source: