Presenting Health Incubator Helsinki batch 4 companies:

Understanding electrocardiograms (ECG) can be difficult for healthcare professionals without help from extensively trained cardiologists. Denmark-based startup HATO medical technologies aims to make everyone a cardiologist. The startup is one of the companies chosen for the Health Incubator Helsinki 2023 programme.

Smart watches and other health monitoring devices are often equipped with sensors to understand fitness levels, sleep patterns, and other aspects of health. A much more powerful, diagnostic version of these electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors is used to detect heart problems. However, the information generated by these advanced sensors is highly complex, requiring interpretation of 12 layers of information from a single series of lines going up and down. As a result, up to 68.5% of heart failure patients can be misdiagnosed by their general practitioner, according to a study published in Journal of Cardiac Failure.

Functional AI overcoming error-prone automatic diagnostic suggestions

HATO CEO, Steffen Yndal, further highlights the extent of the ECG-interpretation landscape:“Our data show that only 2% of users trust the automated suggestions and only ⅓ trust their own interpretations. The remaining ⅔ usually try to get a second opinion from a cardiologist. Then, you can imagine how busy cardiologists can be.”HATO’s solution is to collect data directly from existing hospital hardware and analyse it within seconds with advanced AI, utilising pre-existing capabilities of many modern software programs to retrieve information from servers. Then, results are displayed within the company’s user-friendly software, displaying a 3D image of where a potential heart problem may be.HATO team from left: Jia Wei Koh, Mostafa Mansour, Malthe Reipurth, Steffen Yndal, Sara Hansen, Louise Huynh and Daniel Hviid

Interdisciplinary expertise

Equipped with many years of experience in the field as a paramedic, Yndal co-founded HATO along with management consultant and IT strategist Stefan Johansen (COO), and the highly skilled stack developer Malthe Reiputh (CTO). To complete the concept of a mixed commercial and research-based startup, the trio also invited along a postdoctoral researcher in human physiology, Anne Sofie Malling. These days the team also includes people working with regulatory affairs, researchers, and cardiologists, as well as more tech people.“This means that we have many perspectives on our case and is actually the most important part of our team,” Yndel says.

Our mission is to increase the understanding of ECG by making anyone a specialist.

Startup Fast Facts

Name: HATO medical technologiesTech in one sentence: Empowering cardiology with advanced AI and an intuitive software for early detection and precise diagnosticsProduct: Intuitive software utilising advanced AI for early detection and precise diagnosis of heart problemsTarget market launch: End of 2024Founded: 2021Team size: 8Funding raised (by 09/2023): No external funding. 160,000€ in soft funds.

Investors and collaborators, get on board!

Finland has an increasing focus on health tech, along with accessible health data and know-how to test the validity of HATO’s innovations. By utilising the vast networks and expertise of the advisors within the Health Incubator Helsinki program, the company hopes to attract investors for an initial pre-seed fund of 400.000€.Moreover, as AI in healthcare is still developing,  the company is looking to collect more evidence in collaboration with ambulance services, key opinion leaders, and hospitals to assist in clinical validation. Importantly, there will also be a need for strategic cooperation with ECG providers – hardware providers who could implement the HATO software.If you’re interested in being part of the future of cardiology, get in contact!Contact HATO: sy@hatomedicaltechnologies.comRead more:Here is the Health Incubator Helsinki batch of 2023
Check out all the companies in the Health Incubator Helsinki programmeText: Rita Turpin, Giuliano Didio
Health Capital Helsinki