Blood Pressure Technology Firm Donates Equipment, Software to Wake Forest Researcher

Editor’s note: This article is part of WRAL Local Tech Wire’s highlighting of research at universities across the Carolinas and Georgia.

WINSTON-SALEM — For the person with high blood pressure, there is nothing so imperative as a diagnosis followed immediately by a treatment regimen that works. A partnership between Carlos M. Ferrario, M.D., director of the Hypertension and Vascular Research Center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and CardioDynamics (NASDAQ: CDIC), a leader in noninvasive measurement of heart blood flow and vascular tension, offers just that.

CardioDynamics’ gift to Ferrario’s center of its newest noninvasive Impedance Cardiography (ICG) Test machine and BioZ software for managing clinical and research data benefits patients with high blood pressure, heart failure, or shortness of breath due to cardiovascular disease.

“CardioDynamics is honored to know and to partner with Dr. Ferrario, a leading expert who has published more than 485 scientific papers, on his life-long quest to find better solutions for treating and preventing hypertension and cardiovascular disease,” said Rhonda Rhyne, company president. “Our ICG Test and BioZ diagnostic technology have revolutionized outcomes in the treatment of hypertension. This gift is to aid Dr. Ferrario’s ongoing research on this major public health problem.”

The new ICG Test technology, according to Ferrario, is another step toward the goal of personalized treatment for each patient. “The accuracy of this technology in monitoring specific factors in high blood pressure and cardiac function eliminates a lot of lost treatment time as a physician searches for the right medications for an individual patient. We are now able to target specific medications to a patient’s specific disease and get optimal results sooner. Quicker results mean higher patient confidence in the diagnosis and better compliance with the prescribed treatment.”

The ICG Test apparatus can be combined with the BioZ data management software to offer large-scale computation capability for use in clinical trials, when hundreds or even thousands of patients are being studied for the newest and most effective treatments. The combination of basic science research on the physiology of hypertension and clinical research of new treatments at centers such as the Hypertension and Vascular Research Center at Wake Forest Baptist drives the evolution of new technology toward best-practice standards that can then be applied in private physician offices and clinics on a cost-efficient basis by companies such as CardioDynamics.

The ICG Test is Medicare approved and covered by many private insurance carriers