MiraHeart: Non-invasive at home monitoring for central venous pressure
Team: MiraHeart
- Program: Biomedical Engineering
- Course: CBID Masters Medical Device Innovation
Project Description:
MiraHeart is a company passionate about improving the lives of the vulnerable children with heart defects who are at risk of developing congestive heart failure (CHF). Every year in the United States, 35,000 children are affected by CHF, a disease with a 6.3% mortality rate. The pediatric cardiomyopathy population is particularly prone to developing CHF, as nearly 60% of diagnosed patients receive CHF treatments within their first month. Nearly 50% of those diagnosed with CHF are hospitalized, and for those with cardiomyopathy, an 11% in-hospital mortality rate is present. With hospitalizations costing $70,000 per patient, CHF costs $1B annually in inpatient costs. CHF occurs when the heart fails to meet the circulatory demands of the body, leading to an increase in intravascular fluid pressure, known as central venous pressure (CVP). CVP is critical to adjusting CHF medications; however, it can only be read in hospital settings, leaving no monitoring options at home. Therefore, families are left with no objective way to track their child’s CHF progression. This allows CHF to progress to a stage where hospitalization and more intensive treatments are necessary, resulting in higher treatment costs and more pain for this child.
MiraHeart addresses this gap in care. Our wearable, non-invasive device provides objective metrics of CHF by reading the child’s CVP and transmits this directly to physicians. MiraHeart consists of a small, optical sensor array and software system harbored in a bio adhesive patch worn by a child twice daily, for 5 minutes each. MiraHeart is prescribed by the patient’s cardiologist and utilized by the child’s caretaker. MiraHeart facilitates proper decision-making on CHF medications, transforming care with little shift in the day-to-day workflow of clinicians and families. Our team submitted porcine and pediatric human protocols, hoping to further validate the accuracy of our device in April 2023 upon approval.
Project Photo:
The photo is a 6 month old that is being monitored by a stethoscope.