Arrhythmia is common, but diagnosis is difficult. This is because the doctor must catch the symptoms with just a test that lasts about 10 seconds. Consequently, we developed software that predicts the likelihood of arrhythmia with high accuracy.
Shin Tae-young, CEO of Synergy AI, said this. Synergy AI, founded in 2018, is a startup providing arrhythmia prediction solutions.
Recognizing the difficulty of accurate arrhythmia diagnosis in current medical settings, CEO Shin Tae-young developed the AI service "Mac' AI," which predicts the likelihood of arrhythmia occurring within 14 days.
Previously, when patients complained of symptoms suspicious of arrhythmia, such as heart palpitations and chest pain, they were diagnosed through a standard ECG test, a basic electrocardiogram. However, the ECG test, lasting 10 to 15 seconds, frequently missed intermittent arrhythmias, resulting in reduced accuracy, and medical staff faced challenges designing future treatment plans based solely on these results.
CEO Shin noted, "Arrhythmia appears and disappears suddenly, like a mole in a whack-a-mole game, making it difficult to detect with just basic tests," adding, "Patients with unfortunate circumstances might not receive an arrhythmia diagnosis even after visiting the hospital more than 20 times in a short period of time."
Synergy AI addressed these issues through AI. Mac analyzes ECG test results using an AI model that learned from a large amount of normal range electrocardiogram data, predicting the likelihood of arrhythmia occurring within 14 days with 91.7% accuracy.
When a doctor accesses the service and uploads the test result file, Mac categorizes and outputs the risk levels of arrhythmia, such as Low Risk and High Risk, providing a diagnostic report. The doctor can then make diagnoses based on objective data, such as arrhythmia anomaly detection graphs and age-specific risk distribution graphs.
According to CEO Shin, Mac can detect about 27 types of arrhythmias after learning from over 3 million electrocardiogram data entries.
Furthermore, Synergy AI has declared its intention to develop solutions predicting arrhythmias using wearable devices, such as smartwatches with electrocardiogram measurement functions, and has successfully developed linked software through the 8th Seoul Innovation Challenge project.
CEO Shin stated, "We have developed a service that allows the prediction of arrhythmia without specialized devices in daily life," adding, "We are currently working on app and device integration in collaboration with electronics manufacturers."
Mac has already been recognized in domestic and international markets and is on the verge of commercialization. It won an innovation award at the world's largest IT and consumer electronics exhibition, CES 2024, held in Las Vegas in January last year, and in April of the same year, it obtained Class II medical device certification from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.
When the Ministry of Health and Welfare issues a notification in the first half of the year, Mac will be able to be prescribed as an outpatient service at hospitals across the nation for the first time in over four years. By last year, a total of 11 university hospitals had installed Mac. Currently, around 30 hospitals are in the process of conducting preparations for the introduction of Mac.
CEO Shin explained, "Starting in 2025, we will expand our sales to branch hospitals of existing installed hospitals and secondary hospitals."
Synergy AI is also working towards expanding into the U.S. Its goal is to increase its market share by obtaining medical device approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
CEO Shin stated, "I hope to contribute to early diagnosis of arrhythmia and clear treatment strategies through innovative services."