CureCurve's digital assistant for a healthier heart

Cardiovascular diseases have the highest mortality rate worldwide, with coronary heart disease (CHD) being one of the most widespread forms. In Germany alone, about 6 million people suffer from CHD, according to the German Heart Foundation. With this in mind, the startup CureCurve Medical AI has developed a digital therapy app that helps patients better manage their daily lives with the disease and reduce the risk of acute situations. CEO Tiziano Bruno explains in this interview how the app was developed and what advantages it brings.

How would you explain your solution in three sentences to a professional colleague from the health sector?

eLina is a personalized and digital therapy app for people diagnosed with CHD (coronary artery disease). Its primary purpose is to increase patients' adherence to therapy and prevent acute situations. With the help of AI, users are supported by personalized and expert-validated activity, nutrition, and knowledge modules to adapt their lifestyle and facilitate everyday life with the disease.

What problem motivated you to start the company?

The idea of founding and developing our solution came during a stressful time in our time at the university. In this period, one of our team members was getting sick frequently, so we asked ourselves the question, "How can we detect early that we are getting sick"? We were aware that technology was able to help us find a solution. Personal concerns, such as family members being affected and the fact that cardiovascular diseases have the highest mortality rate in the world, are among the main reasons we chose this patient group.

How do you convince a pharmaceutical company, a health insurance company or another potential client to set up a pilot project with you?

The patient is our top priority. In order to provide the best possible care and treatment for our patients, we are of the opinion that our solution needs to create added value for all parties involved. This includes the health insurers, who incur fewer expenses due to patients requiring inpatient treatment as a result of the positive impact of our therapies. Instead, their insureds are at the very least encouraged to achieve a more stable state of health. The medication and symptom tracking, as well as the diary functions for blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol values, will enable doctors and experts to gain a deeper insight into the course of therapy and the state of health of their patients in the long term. This supports diagnoses and enables a holistic design of the patient record to promote patients in the sovereignty of their medical care.

Who are your current customer (groups) and who do you want your potential customers to be?

We currently offer the digital therapy app for people with cardiovascular disease. Coronary heart disease in particular is our main focus, as it is usually detected too late and can often lead to acute situations if left untreated. However, we also highly recommend our solutions to patients who have a pre-existing condition or are at increased risk of developing cardiovascular diseases due to other factors. In the future, we would like to offer patients in risk groups their own personalized digital therapy in the form of complementary applications. These should help to understand the disease patterns and their causalities even further and enable more successful therapies. 

Where do you see yourself in 3 years and how can 5-HT support you?

In the next three years, we want to make our solutions available to every patient and have developed our AI-based pattern recognition algorithm that detects low-symptom disease patterns at an early stage. Our goal here is to have our solution registered in the DiGa directory so that the costs are covered by health insurance companies.

Thanks to 5-HT, we have already had great opportunities to present our application at major startup and technology events such as 'Slush' in Helsinki and 'Med Tech World' in Malta, and to network with peers and potential partners and investors. Going forward, 5-HT can also support us in connecting with stakeholders in the healthcare sector and forging further collaborations in this field.