




Healthcare Industry News: Cardiac Monitor
News Release - August 1, 2008
Bioheart, Inc., Announces Letter of Intent to Acquire MEDICALGORITHMICS, Ltd.
Deal Includes POCKETECG Wireless Beat-To-Beat Heart Monitoring and Diagnostic SystemSUNRISE, Fla., Aug. 1 (HSMN NewsFeed) -- Bioheart, Inc., (Nasdaq: BHRT ), announced it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent to acquire MEDICALGORITHMICS, Ltd. and the worldwide rights to the POCKETECG, a real-time wireless beat-to-beat, intelligent heart monitor and diagnostic system, designed for long-term, fully-automated electrocardiogram (ECG) arrhythmia analysis. The device, manufactured by MEDICALGORITHMICS, Ltd., Poland, recently received CE mark approval for marketing throughout Europe.
Under the terms of the non-binding 'letter of intent', both companies are expected to conduct their due diligence review within the next 60-90 days. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"Similar in size to an MP3 player, patients find the POCKETECG easy to use 24-hours-per-day in the comfort of their homes and when going about their normal activities," said Dr. Marek Dziubinski, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, MEDICALGORITHMICS.
POCKETECG connects to the patient via two or three electrodes and wirelessly transmits real time data 24-hours-per-day directly to the physician or a monitoring center so that long-term outpatient monitoring can be conducted over days or weeks. This constant monitoring outside of a hospital environment provides peace of mind for both physicians and patients that the patient can be reliably cared for outside of the hospital environment. Additionally, use of this monitoring device for at-home disease management may positively impact health care costs by minimizing emergency hospital stays.
"We expect major growth in the outpatient Cardiac Monitoring market globally," said Dr. Richard Stokvis, Europa Partners, London, who has been advising MEDICALGORITHMICS.
POCKETECG's automated analysis allows physicians to monitor large numbers of patients simultaneously and saves time by eliminating the need to analyze ECG tracings once the device reports that an abnormal event has taken place.
"We believe the merger of these two companies would create important synergies in the diagnosis, monitoring and potential treatment of heart failure patients, specifically in the area of arrhythmias and A-Fib," said Howard J. Leonhardt, Chairman, CEO and Chief Technology Officer, Bioheart. "The monitoring and management of patients experiencing arrhythmias and A-Fib represents one of the fastest-growing segments of the treatment market."
"We believe this acquisition, if completed, will deliver significant value for patients, physicians, and both companies," says Dr. Marcin Szumowski, CEO, MEDICALGORITHMICS.
ABOUT ELECTROCARDIOGRAMS (ECG)
An electrocardiogram (ECG) is a diagnostic test that measures the electrical activity of the heartbeat. Every time the heart beats, an electrical impulse called a wave travels through the heart, causing it to contract and pump blood flow through the heart muscle.
An ECG provides physicians with two critical pieces of information they can use to diagnose heart health. First, by measuring time intervals on the ECG, doctors can determine how long the electrical wave takes to pass through the heart, which indicates whether the electrical activity is normal or slow, fast or irregular. Second, ECGs enable physicians to measure the amount of electrical activity that passes through the heart muscle, which may indicate that parts of the heart muscle are too large or are being overworked.
ABOUT MEDICALGORITHMICS, LTD.
MEDICALGORITHMICS, Ltd. is a privately held high-technology company, established in 2005. The Company is focused on development of innovative solutions and systems for signal and data processing in Cardiac Monitoring, heart sounds and electrophysiology of the heart. POCKETECG is its first product that received CE mark. Other products in the pipeline include HeartSOUNDS(TM) and CoperniQs(TM). The Company has extensive expertise in digital signal processing, software design for clinical applications, electrical engineering, physics and technology transfer. MEDICALGORITHMICS investors include New Europe Ventures and BIB Seed Fund. For information on MEDICALGORITHMICS or POCKETECG, please contact Dr. Richard Stokvis at Europa Partners, Tel: +44 20 74403512 or e-mail: rstokvis@europapartners.com.
ABOUT BIOHEART, INC.
Bioheart, Inc., (Nasdaq: BHRT ) is committed to delivering intelligent devices and biologics that help monitor, diagnose and treat heart failure and cardiovascular diseases. Its goals are to improve a patient's quality of life and reduce health care costs and hospitalizations. Specific to biotechnology, Bioheart is focused on the discovery, development and, subject to regulatory approval, commercialization of autologous cell therapies for the treatment of chronic and acute heart damage. Its lead product candidate, MyoCell®, is an innovative clinical muscle-derived stem cell therapy designed to populate regions of scar tissue within a patient's heart with new living cells for the purpose of improving cardiac function in chronic heart failure patients. The Company's pipeline includes multiple product candidates for the treatment of heart damage, including Bioheart Acute Cell Therapy, an autologous, adipose tissue-derived stem cell treatment for acute heart damage, and MyoCell® SDF-1, a therapy utilizing autologous cells that are genetically modified to express additional potentially therapeutic growth proteins. For more information on Bioheart, visit www.bioheartinc.com.
MyoCell and MyoCell SDF-1 are trademarks of Bioheart, Inc.
Forward Looking Statements:
Except for historical matters contained herein, statements made in this press release are forward-looking and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, words such as "may", "will", "to", "plan", "expect", "believe", "anticipate", "intend", "could", "would", "estimate", or "continue" or the negative other variations thereof or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
Investors and others are cautioned that a variety of factors, including certain risks, may affect our business and cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. These risk factors include, without limitation, (i) our ability to secure additional financing; (ii) the timely success and completion of our clinical trials; (iii) the occurrence of any unacceptable side effects during or after preclinical and clinical testing of our product candidates; (iv) regulatory approval of our product candidates; (v) our dependence on the success of our lead product candidate; (vi) our inability to predict the extent of our future losses or if or when we will become profitable; (vii) our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; (viii) our inability to predict the extent of our future losses or if or when we will become profitable; and (viii) intense competition . The Company is also subject to the risks and uncertainties described in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the section entitled "Risk Factors" in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, as amended by Amendment No. 1 on Form 10-K/A and its quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2008.
Source: Bioheart
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