The day after Thanksgiving, Olivia Voznenko (@TheVoz4Real) was stunned to get a phone call that her uncle had gone into sudden cardiac arrest and had been rushed to the hospital. A previous heart attack had left his ventricle scarred, which now was causing arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat, and ultimately instigated another attack.
Her uncle was lucky and pulled through, but if the scar tissue wasn’t properly treated it could easily happen again. That process is called ablation, which involves lasering scar tissue that’s letting incorrect electrical signals pass through. That tissue can be incredibly difficult to detect.
Well, Voznenko is an on-air personality for Modern Wall Street, and it turns out a company she owns stock in was key to saving her uncle's life: BioSig Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:BSGM).
READ: BioSig Technologies collaborates with Mayo Clinic on artificial intelligence R&D program for its PURE EP system
BioSig has developed the PURE EP system, which measures electrocardiographic signals.The EP system highlights the spots that are causing arrhythmia, making it easier and faster for EP doctors to ablate them in people like her uncle, himself a BioSig employee.
His first heart attack had left scar tissue that went undetected, but this time, using the PURE EP system, doctors could eliminate the guesswork and be more confident another heart attack wouldn’t occur. In fact, her uncle said the lead electrophysiologist at the Jacksonville Mayo Clinic told him that without the PURE EP system, the chance of success would have only been 60-70%.
“I said to him, ‘That’s my life. 60-70% success rate isn’t going to cut it.’” Voznenko’s uncle told Proactive. “I was a complicated case, but this technology needs to be in every EP lab around the world.”
Now that he’s out of the woods, Voznenko and her uncle have a sense of humor about his own company’s technology helping to save his life.
“I couldn’t help it, when my husband and I heard he was going to use the BioSig technology to go through this process, it was almost like we were laughing,” Voznenko told Proactive. “It was just so heartwarming and so coincidental. Leave it to my uncle to love his company so much to do his own R&D for it.”
BioSig, based in Westport, Connecticut, has a market cap of about $140 million and closed at $4.58 per share on Tuesday. The stock also has an 11% short interest, but her uncle isn’t worried.
“The Top 20 shareholders own 50% of the company, and I think I’ve done my due diligence,” he told Voznenko.
Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow him on Twitter @andrew_kessel