The small, handheld components of the InvisionHeard ECG system enable physicians to perform, save and access electrocardiograms almost anywhere using a cloud-based iPad app.

-- Michelle Morrow | The Ledger

Susan Eagle, M.D., didn’t necessarily see herself as an inventor, but she recognized a problem in her field and she just couldn’t live with it.

“I am a cardiovascular anesthesiologist and I saw the need for rapid transmission of cardiac data, not only within the hospital, but between hospitals and outside of major medical centers,” says Eagle, associate professor of clinical anesthesiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

“Right now this really doesn’t exist, unfortunately, and ECGs [electrocardiography] are really the mainstay of diagnosing acute cardiac disorders such as a heart attack.”

Eagle made contact with Franz Baudenbacher, Vanderbilt associate professor of biomedical engineering, in 2012.

He was developing applicable technology for wireless electrocardiograms in the laboratory.

When Eagle saw what he was doing she realized how beneficial it would be to the medical community and their patients.

“Basically, the medical field is 10-12 years behind the rest of world in terms of data transfer and communication,” Eagle explains.

“We are still using pagers, so we are trying to catch up in the medical field. This ECG technology has been around for 100 years – bringing it into the 21st Century is what is needed.”

Today, they have a viable smart health care platform and digital ECG that allows health care providers, first responders and patients to record and send current tracings of the heart’s electrical activity via a smartphone or tablet directly to physicians for interpretation.

What might have taken hours before now takes minutes.

“The whole system is about the size of a deck of cards and can essentially fit in your jacket pocket,” Eagle says.

“Current ECG systems are on large rolling carts,’’ she adds. “If someone is having a heart attack and they are at a facility that does not have the ability to perform an intervention, you need to first transmit the data to a physician at a cardiac center who will then accept the patient and try to open the vessel before the heart muscle is lost or before the patient dies.

“It is a life-threatening situation.”

In 2013, Eagle and Baudenbacher formed a business, InvisionHeart, with CEO Josh Nichols, and the technology was licensed to them from Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt is part owner of the intellectual property, along with Eagle, Baudenbacher and the other Vanderbilt-based inventors, Dr. André Diedrich, research professor of medicine and biomedical engineering; electrical engineer Dr. Rene Harder and biomedical engineer Jonathan Whitfield.

Their strategy for commercializing the technology won top honors at the school’s annual TechVenture Challenge, which teaches students how to turn patented ideas developed by Vanderbilt faculty members into marketable products.

“We are targeting not just the typical audiences, but areas that were not previously able to take ECGs practically, [such as] quick clinics, satellite clinics, home health, long-term care facilities, they are very interested in this technology because they do not have technicians in house to read the ECGs.”

InvisionHeart earned FDA clearance this year and is now on the market.

The Center for Technology Transfer and Commercialization named the portable ECG technology one of the Top 10 Vanderbilt inventions of 2014, and it even caught the attention of Google where they were invited to their headquarters in Mountain View, California, to pitch to their venture capitalist group.

“Google essentially hand-selected 10 startup companies nationally they thought were game changers in the marketplace,” Eagle says. “InvisionHeart was one of the 10.”

InvisionHeart also has won the Southeastern Medical Device Association award for best startup company, and the Next award for Best Startup Company in Nashville.

Next on the schedule is a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society webinar.

“I think the community at large identifies with the product, and certainly physicians and nurses and caregivers in the field appreciate the ability to transfer this valuable data in a rapid manner,” she says.

Eagle is far from the only female making a name for herself in research at Vanderbilt.

Just last month, eight Vanderbilt professors received INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine’s 100 Inspiring Women in STEM Award, which honors women working in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, in categories such as astrophysics, Earth sciences, engineering, engineering education and neuroscience.

And Eagle isn’t done yet. Next up for her, Baudenbacher and their team is a new technology separate from InvisionHeart they hope will be another game changer, this time for athletes.

“We have developed non-invasive wearable technology that measures your hydration status,” Eagle explains.

“Nothing exists right now to do that, at least not in a wristband format. A previous Olympic boxer thinks this would be very valuable not only for the Olympic trials, but also the Olympics.

“So we are headed that way and hope it will be a non-FDA device for athletes at the moment.’’

And that’s all it can be for now. To get to the community at large will require FDA approval.

But she can always find support at Vanderbilt, where the tennis team began using the tech a few weeks ago.

“Vanderbilt has been very supportive of my entrepreneurial activities,” she says.