We are revolutionising the health industry / In the early 2000s, a small team came together in Pirmasens. Right from the start, our goal has been to develop indication-based products and services that lead to an improvement in patient health. Always with a view to the issue of stroke – one of the most threatening cardiovascular diseases, affecting up to 270,000 people in Germany every year.
After much research, the time had finally come for us to proudly found apoplex medical technologies GmbH. The topic of stroke continues to be the focus of our company – but with reference to one of the most important risk factors: Atrial fibrillation. We intensively studied the clinical picture of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in order to recognise and clarify it at an early stage. The special feature of this type of atrial fibrillation is that it only occurs episodically and then disappears again. This factor makes it more difficult to detect. We wanted to change that!
Having developed an application that is offered as a service to doctors in private practice and to clinics, the result is the patented SRA® (Stroke Risk Analysis) service.
Using data from university hospitals, we started to develop robust algorithms to further optimise our stroke “early warning system”.
In 2007, we won the Innovation Award of the KKH – which then decided to cooperate with us as the first nationwide health insurance company. The integrated health care (IHC) based on SRA® was to become the longest running IHC contract ever.
Our long research and development phase finally paid off. Many renowned professional publications reported on the excellent results from studies with SRA® conducted at national and international institutions. In 2012, a study was published in the renowned Stroke Journal in cooperation with the University of Heidelberg. The result: SRA® is significantly superior to standard examinations.
This year we entered into a co-promotion partnership with the global biopharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb. Our aim was to further embed the SRA® technology into routine care.
After successfully establishing ourselves on the German market, expansion into other European countries commenced in 2018. What started with the German-speaking region soon extended to Spain and England in the same year. In Spain, a successful multicentre study in Catalonia led to our service qualifying for reimbursement by health insurance and further satisfied customers. Expansion of our sphere of activity to Italy followed just one year later.
In future, we will continue to do everything we can to improve stroke prevention with further innovations – while avoiding the drastic consequences of incidents for those affected. Artificial intelligence (AI) opens up completely new possibilities for us to achieve what we set out to do and to plan it even better and faster.
We want to continue to grow and expand our leadership role as a powerful, forward-looking and reliable partner for stroke-related diagnostic support applications.
Albert Hirtz
“As founder of the company, my goal is to establish new innovative solutions for stroke prevention in the healthcare industry together with our highly motivated employees.”
Albert Hirtz · General Director
