More than 600,000 Americans visit emergency rooms each year because of acute heart failure. Nearly 80 percent of them are admitted. Acute Heart Failure Syndrome, or AHFS, is a growing problem for hospitals. For the patients, it can be a recurring condition. Many patients who are released come back.

The standard treatment for AHFS is drugs. But NeuroTronik believes it get patients back to normal sooner with a medical device. The medical device developer has just closed on $13.1 million in its first round of venture financing as the startup aims to ramp up clinical testing of its technology.

The company, which has dual locations in Dublin, Ireland and Chapel Hill, said that Durham venture capital firm Hatteras Venture Partners led the round. Other investors included Synergy Life Science Partners, Mountain Group Capital and Lord Baltimore Capital.

With the close of this series A round of financing, Douglas Reed of Hatteras Venture Partners and Mudit Jain of Synergy Life Science Partners join NeuroTronik’s board of directors.

NeuroTronik aims to offer a treatment alternative for heart failure patients who come to the hospital because their symptoms have worsened. In AHFS, the heart can’t produce enough blood flow to suit the body’s metabolic needs, CEO Fred McCoy told WRAL TechWire.

AHFS is a leading reason for older-adult hospitalizations throughout the developed world. A 2010 study from the American Heart Association stated that nearly 658,000 annual emergency department encounters in the United States were for acute heart failure. That represents almost 20 percent of the total heart-failure specific ambulatory care delivered each year. Nearly 80 percent of those patients treated for AHFS treated in emergency departments are admitted to the hospital.

McCoy said that NeuroTronik’s device could treat such patients in their initial admission or during a readmission to improve cardiac output – the amount of blood that leaves the heart. NeuroTronik says its device could shorten patient hospital stays and reduce readmission rates. Those characteristics would be welcome by insurance companies, which are looking for ways to improve upon the standard of care while also reducing health care costs.

“The doctors are trying to achieve greater cardiac output and they’re using drugs for that,” McCoy said. “This provides perhaps a better way to do that.”

Without going into great detail, McCoy said the device works by providing stimulation that improves blood flow from the heart. It’s still early stage and so far NeuroTronik has done work in animal trials and limited clinical studies. The series A funding gives NeuroTronik the financial support for more development and clinical testing of the device. 

NeuroTronik’s technology comes from the labs of Synecor, an incubator of medical technologies that has sites in Chapel Hill and Silicon Valley. Synecor works with new technologies to the point of “proof of principle.” If a technology gets that far, it can be spun out into a company. NeuroTronik was founded last summer.

The company’s dual offices in Ireland and North Carolina are a sign that NeuroTronik already has its eye on its commercialization strategy. McCoy said that while the early development work will continue in Chapel Hill, the Dublin office was established because the company wants to secure European regulatory approval first. A number of medical device companies have stated their preference for commercializing devices in Europe first because of a perception that it’s a faster regulatory path and a quicker way to revenue. McCoy said NeuroTronik’s plan is to secure a CE Mark in Europe and bring the device to market there first.

“We need to set ourselves up to be commercially successful outside of the United States while we prepare to enter the U.S. market,” he said.