Page 81 - Forbes - Asia (September 2018)

HEALTHTECH
“I don’t wake up in the middle of the night thinking can we
do an FFR in more people,” says Ethan J. Weiss, a cardiologist
at University of California, San Francisco.
hen there are technical doubts. HeartFlow calculates ow
by looking at the shape of a blood vessel, as one might guess
the speed of a stream from the shape of its banks. “Trying to
measure FFR from a CT scan is like trying to run a marathon
on one leg,” says Darrel Francis, a professor of cardiology at
the National Heart & Lung Institute in the U.K. According to
a report in JAMA Cardiology, analyses that used CT scans to
measure ow, including but not limited to HeartFlow, were
much less accurate in sicker patients. HeartFlow says the re-
TIM PANNELL FOR FORBES
HeartFlow CEO John Stevens at the Grand
American Hotel in Salt Lake City. He says he quit
being a heart surgeon because he could help
more people as an entrepreneur.
port is “fundamentally awed.”
here are also many believers, like Robert D. Saian, a cardi-
ologist at Beaumont Health in Royal Oak, Michigan, who has
received $3,000 from HeartFlow for travel. “Initially, I was one
of the worst skeptics, but now I’m completely converted and I
think it’s amazing technology,” he says. He’s used HeartFlow for
the past three years on 2,000 patients.
Most large U.S. insurers pay for HeartFlow’s test, as does the
ever-skeptical U.K. National Health Service. Medicare is paying
for it except in the western U.S. Says Stevens, the chief execu-
tive, “At the end of the day, the data will win.” F
Matthew Herper contributed to this story.
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