Vital Beats and the EIC Accelerator: Pacemaker AI Yet to Scale

Pacemakers and implanted defibrillators send their data to hospitals for remote follow-up, and someone has to read it. Vital Beats, a Copenhagen company built on PhD research at the University of Copenhagen, sells software that collects those transmissions from every device maker in one dashboard and sorts the routine from the urgent. In March 2020 the European Innovation Council selected it for a grant to go further: to predict life-threatening arrhythmias "up to 30 days in advance" and cut such events, and the deaths that follow, by 20%, according to the project summary on CORDIS.

The platform exists, carries a CE mark under the old Medical Device Directive and is used by Danish cardiology clinics. The prediction claim has not been shown in any published outcome data, the planned launch into Europe and the US has not been announced, and the company's own accounts show a business that has been shrinking since the grant ended. Its 2025 annual report, filed in July 2026, records two full-time employees and a net loss of DKK 2.58 million, according to filings with the Danish Business Authority.

What Vital Beats Does Today

Vital Beats is still trading. It filed its 2025 accounts on 8 July 2026 and registered a capital increase to DKK 3,107,903 on 2 July 2026, according to North Data, which reproduces the Danish company register. The 2025 report says shareholders converted DKK 3,525,889 of convertible loans into shares on 30 June 2026, that an external lender extended its loans, and that more convertible loans are committed for 2026. Management calls operational breakeven during 2026 "realistic". It made the same forecast a year earlier, and in its 2022 accounts it aimed to be cash-flow positive "senest i 2025", by 2025 at the latest.

The company website still sells the cardiac device platform: one overview of all device patients without logging into each manufacturer's system, automatic triage of every incoming transmission and a "patent-pending" technique that handles routine cases so clinicians can focus on the critical ones. The pages reviewed for this article do not repeat the 30-day prediction claim of the EIC proposal. Its careers page says "Danish hospitals use our platform daily", without naming them. The Danish Patient Safety Authority, in an inspection report from July 2024, describes Vital Beats as monitoring device patients "i samarbejde med en række kardiologiske klinikker", in cooperation with a number of cardiology clinics. No hospital customer is named in any public source found for this article.

The newer business is a screening service. Vital Beats Clinic was set up on 1 February 2024 as a digital treatment site for early detection of heart disease, especially atrial fibrillation, according to the same inspection report. Employers buy a 14-day programme for their staff; employees record ECGs on an Apple Watch or a similar wearable through a Vital Beats app, and a doctor reviews the recordings. At the time of the inspection on 2 July 2024 the concept was being tested on 30 people before launch, and three people worked for the clinic: Jonas Moll, Jens Jacob Aaes and the cardiologist Søren Zöga Diederichsen. The inspectors found "ingen problemer af betydning for patientsikkerheden", no problems of significance for patient safety. The 2025 accounts list two subsidiaries founded in early 2025, Vital Beats Clinic ApS and Vital Beats Solutions ApS, which together lost DKK 113,342 that year.

The Technology: One Dashboard for Every Implant

Clinicians who follow patients with pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) from several manufacturers are "forced to look in several CIED systems" to see all of a patient's data, Vital Beats wrote in its CORDIS report, and its website promises to filter out the routine cases among incoming transmissions. Its answer, as its final CORDIS report describes it, is a vendor-neutral platform that reads transmissions from "all cardiac device types and manufacturers", automates ECG assessment, suggests diagnoses from the shape of heart rhythms, adds symptoms reported by patients through an app and pushes reports into hospital records using the SMART on FHIR standard.

The EIC proposal went a step further than triage. It described "predictive AI algorithms" that could forecast dangerous arrhythmias up to 30 days ahead and claimed that SCAUT DECISIO "minimizes the number of CIED patients experiencing life-threatening arrhythmia, and eventual death, by 20%". That figure is the company's own projection; no trial measuring it has been published.

The one peer-reviewed test of the prediction idea that names Vital Beats is a small qualitative study published in JMIR Human Factors in November 2021. Seven electrophysiologists at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen worked through five blinded patient cases with a machine-learning tool that predicted ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation in ICD patients. They said it could reassure them and save search time, "however, the prediction tool did not lead to changes in clinical action", according to the paper. Its disclosures state that co-author Tariq Osman Andersen is a co-founder of Vital Beats, that two co-authors were full-time Vital Beats employees and that the technology, working title SafeHeart, was supported by the Horizon 2020 European Data Pitch programme. A larger multicentre study of arrhythmia prediction, also called SafeHeart, began enrolling ICD patients in 2021 with 400 participants planned; its design paper does not mention Vital Beats, and no link between that study and the company's product could be verified.

What SCAUT DECISIO Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of selected companies names Vital Beats, Copenhagen, under the 20 March 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, in the section of COVID-19-related projects, with grant-only funding. It is the only company listed for SCAUT DECISIO. The grant agreement was signed on 3 August 2020 for a project from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2022, with an EU contribution of €1,919,750 towards a total cost of €2,742,500, according to CORDIS. The proposal had asked for €2.38 million.

The objective was to "validate their platform, obtain regulatory approval needed to be ready for global commercialisation", then launch in the Nordic market, then Europe, "and ultimately enter the US". The final report, covering July 2021 to June 2022, says all four work packages and their milestones were completed: the decision-support tool was matured, the platform became device-agnostic with automated patient onboarding and an electronic health record integration, and the company "obtained regulatory approval in accordance with Medical Device Directive 93/42/EEC, Annex VII". The product page dates that declaration of conformity 24 September 2020 and lists ISO 13485 and the software standard EN 62304.

Annex VII is the procedure under which a manufacturer itself draws up the EC declaration of conformity. Under Article 11 of the directive it is the whole procedure for Class I devices, while Class IIa devices must couple it with a check by a notified body. Neither the website nor the CORDIS report names a notified body. The report said documents for compliance with the newer Medical Device Regulation would be ready "during 2023"; no certificate under that regulation has been announced.

1. Mature the AI decision-support toolDeliveredAutomated ECG assessment and diagnosis suggestions, per the CORDIS report and product page.
2. Device-agnostic platform with hospital record integrationDeliveredAll device makers supported and SMART on FHIR integration, per CORDIS; vendor-neutral overview on the website.
3. Regulatory approvalPartlyDeclaration of conformity under the old directive, September 2020; no certificate under the Medical Device Regulation announced.
4. Predict arrhythmias 30 days aheadNot achievedNo validation published; the 2021 clinician study found no change in clinical action.
5. 20% fewer life-threatening arrhythmias and deathsNot achievedNo outcome data published by the company or a third party.
6. Nordic launchPartlyUsed by Danish clinics; no other Nordic customer announced.
7. European and US launchNot achievedUK holding company dormant and struck off in 2026; no US entry announced.

On the engineering, the project did what it said within its two years. On the medical and commercial goals that justified the grant, the public record is thin.

What Has Happened Since the Grant

The company tried to expand abroad. Its 2023 accounts say it "increased its commercial focus by establishing a sales organisation in the UK", and the team page still lists a country manager for the UK and one for Poland. Vital Beats UK Holdings Limited was incorporated on 16 March 2023, wholly owned by Vital Beats ApS with Jonas Moll as sole director, filed dormant accounts for its first year and was dissolved by voluntary strike-off on 21 April 2026, according to Companies House and its filing history. No UK or Polish customer has been announced.

Headcount tells the rest. The annual reports show an average of 7 full-time employees in 2019 and 2020 and 8 in 2021, the first full year of the EIC project. It fell to 6 in 2022, 3 in 2023 and 2024, and 2 in 2025. The register service ownr lists 5 employees, equal to 2 full-time positions, in July 2026. Gross profit, the closest public measure of sales in Danish small-company accounts, was DKK 2.20 million in 2023 and turned into gross losses of DKK 58,613 in 2024 and DKK 171,431 in 2025.

The Money

Vital Beats' balance sheet looks larger than its business. In its 2022 accounts, adopted on 31 May 2023, management declared "væsentlige fejl", material errors, in every annual report from 2014/15 to 2021: development costs had not been capitalised. Correcting them added DKK 29.4 million of development projects to the 2021 balance sheet and turned that year's reported loss of DKK 2.90 million into a profit of DKK 0.46 million. Grants received for the development work were booked as deferred income, to be released as the asset is amortised. The same report records a change of owners and new board members in 2022, and the register shows a new chair, Jens Jacob Aaes, from 20 June 2022.

By the end of 2025 the capitalised development projects stood at DKK 47.55 million, against equity of DKK 13.92 million, deferred grant income of DKK 25.31 million and cash of DKK 284,478. The 2025 report shows no amortisation of the asset, because the projects are still "in progress". The auditor, Inforevision, has drawn attention to "significant uncertainty about the value of the company's development costs" in the 2023, 2024 and 2025 reports, and in 2023 and 2024 also to "a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern". In 2024 a capital increase added DKK 11.5 million to equity. Note 1 of the 2025 report says recognising the asset "depends on anticipated market expansion".

The EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 17 pages, does not include Vital Beats, which is consistent with a grant-only award. The Danish register as shown by North Data does, however, record "change of shareholdings: EIC Fund" on 18 April 2024 and 31 July 2025; the content of those entries is not public, the 2022 accounts say only that selection for the EIC Accelerator gave the company "adgang til risikovillig kapital", access to risk capital, and ownr's current list of owners above 5% does not include the fund. Whether the EIC Fund invested, how much and when could not be verified. Outside funding claims also differ: the proposal said Vital Beats had raised more than €4 million before the grant, and its profile on The Hub gives €7 million, without naming investors.

Why Europe Should Care

Cardiovascular disease kills 1.7 million people in the EU every year, according to the European Commission, which unveiled its first cardiovascular strategy, the Safe Hearts Plan, on 16 December 2025. The plan includes an incubator for AI and digital technologies in cardiovascular care and an EU protocol on health checks for early detection; the World Heart Federation notes its use of AI to support clinical decision-making and long-term patient management. A European, vendor-neutral layer over device data held by the large implant makers fits that agenda, and so does wearable screening for atrial fibrillation. Both depend on clinical evidence and regulatory status that Vital Beats has not made public.

The Verdict

Vital Beats has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.