ARTICLE SUMMARY:
What’s next after pulmonary vein isolation? Next-generation PFA start-ups Argá Medtech and Field Medical are developing the platforms to enable ablation anywhere in the heart.
Argá Medtech: The Power of the Sine Wave
Randy Werneth, co-founder and chief technology officer of pulsed field ablation start-up Argá Medtech, notes that his company’s accented name comes from Greek, reflecting the concept “late to the party” in a field where the first generation began ten years ago, although one could say his new company is actually an early entrant to the second generation. It’s easy for Werneth to be facetious in naming his company thus because in fact, in the field of atrial fibrillation and cardiac ablation, he has always been quite early. In 2004, he co-founded Ablation Frontiers, one of the first companies to develop a circular high-powered phased radiofrequency (RF) system for the treatment of atrial fibrillation. He founded Acutus Medical in 2011, the developer of a novel mapping system able to guide substrate ablation strategies, and in 2019 he created Maxwell Biomedical, to innovate a cardiac rhythm approach to patients with AF. (See “Atrial Fibrillation Symposium 2023: Experts Debate Cosmic Questions,” MedTech Strategist, March 21, 2023.”)
