AI-powered cardiac imaging company Cardiac flow continued his competitor Clearly this week, claiming the company had infringed on its patents and misused proprietary technology to create a competing platform.
The trialfiled Monday in a Texas federal court, called the alleged breach “one of the most egregious examples of hacking in the medical technology industry.” Cleerly pushes back.
Heartflow was founded in 2010 by a duo of bioengineers and vascular surgeons from Stanford University. The Silicon Valley-based company makes AI tools that analyze heart CT scans and assess the impact of coronary blockages on blood flow without invasive procedures.
Cardiologist James Min created Cleerly in 2017. The startup also applies AI to cardiac CT images, focusing on quantifying plaque and assessing a patient’s long-term risk of heart disease.
Before founding Cleerly, Min worked as a consultant at Heartflow from 2012 to 2017 — the company’s “most formative years,” according to the complaint.
“Having gained privileged access to Heartflow’s revolutionary cardiovascular diagnostic technology, trade secrets, and confidential business information – and while remaining bound by his contractual obligations to Heartflow – Dr. Min, without informing his Heartflow colleagues, incorporated Cleerly and launched a competing company built on Heartflow’s pioneering innovations,” the lawsuit states.
Heartflow alleges that Cleerly’s products infringe six of its patents, all of which cover methods for analyzing heart scans, including segmenting coronary arteries, modeling plaque and vessel structure, and estimating blood flow characteristics.
In a statement sent to MedCité NewsMin said he was confident in the originality of Cleerly’s technology.
“Cleerly published landmark clinical science that redefined how cardiovascular disease is understood and treated, which formed the basis of our new technologies that provide physicians with actionable insights into the heart health of their patients,” Min’s statement read.
Heartflow is seeking damages and an injunction — which could mean financial penalties for past use of the technology and potentially a court order blocking Cleerly from using or selling certain tools.
The lawsuit could mark an early but potentially defining legal fight in the field of cardiac AI.
The combination of AI and cardiac imaging is at the center of high-volume, high-reimbursement workflows: coronary angiography alone is performed in millions of patients each year across the country and is rapidly expanding as a first-line test in cases of suspected coronary heart disease.
At the same time, cardiac imaging and associated diagnostic procedures represent a multi-billion dollar market. Diagnostic imaging is one of the nation’s largest healthcare spending categories, with imaging constantly ranking among the largest and most expensive medical services.
This makes any AI tool that influences cardiac diagnosis or downstream procedures very valuable – and highly contested.
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