Apr 16, 2019

(Bardy DIagnostics Photo) Seattle-based medical device company Bardy Diagnostics today announced a $35.5 million funding round led by River Cities Capital Fund. The company makes the Carnation Ambulatory Monitor (CAM), which is a small, lightweight heart monitor that can detect arrhythmia. Bardy said the money would be used to grow its platform by expanding its sales force and monitoring services, as well as to invest in augmented intelligence and visualization technologies. The series B funding round drew new investors HealthQuest Capital, Aperture Venture Partners, Aphelion Capital, Lumira Ventures and Rex Health Ventures. Bardy’s device, which is used to monitor more than 40,000 patients, competes with other non-invasive cardiac monitors such as the iRhythm Zio. The CAM is meant to be worn comfortably for a week, designed to lead to higher rates of patient compliance. Bardy claims that its device captures clearer and more accurate heart rhythms than competing ECG monitors. The Carnation Ambulatory Monitor, or CAM for short, is designed to be worn comfortably for approximately a week, with the goal of improving patient compliance. (Bardy Diagnostics Photo) “For nearly 60 years, standard ECG engineering practices have over-processed the heart’s electrical message to make machines’ ‘lives’ easier at the expense of losing details in the ECG,” CEO Dr. Gust Bardy said in a statement . “In essence, such legacy engineering doesn’t listen to what the heart is trying to tell us but rather tells the heart what we are willing to hear.” Dr. Bardy is a longtime cardiac electrophysiologist who also serves as a clinical professor of medicine, cardiology, at the University of Washington and is the director of the Seattle Institute for Cardiac Research. Dr. Bardy sold his previous company, Cameron Health, to Boston Scientific in 2012. Rik Vandevenne, managing director of River Cities Capital Funds, and Garheng Kong, managing director of HealthQuest Capital, were named to Bardy’s board of directors as a result of the new funding. The company recently expanded its reach to Canada through an alliance with JNC Medical, a medical technologies distributor based in Ottawa, Ontario. Seattle-based journalist James Thorne is an NYU business and economics journalism grad who has written for publications including Reuters, CNBC, and Financial Planning. Follow him on Twitter @jamescthorne .