Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is responsible for over 18.5 million deaths each year and costs the global economy over €500 billion. One of most common manifestations of CVD is chest pain and this leads to an estimated 5% of all visits to the Emergency Department (ED) and around 25% of all ED admissions4.

Recent research, however, has estimated that at least 70% of all patients attending hospital with chest pain do not actually have a cardiac related condition and many of these are admitted to a high level of care (e.g. Coronary Care Unit)1. Frequently, such patients are unnecessarily admitted because Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) could not be reliably ruled out in the ED.

Current methods used to assess AMI can be unreliable.  Although the ECG is specific, it is not sufficient on its own to rule out AMI. Furthermore, traditional cardiac biomarkers used are reliant upon allowing a delay between the time of pain onset and the time of the blood sampling. Recent recommendations stipulate that a delay of 10-12 hours is required, yet patients typically present much earlier, usually within 2-3 hours of their symptom onset8. This results in a significant proportion of patients being unnecessarily admitted, in order to wait for the later blood sampling.  In many cases, these patients stay for longer than the initial 10-12 hours, frequently resulting in lengths of stay greater than 24 hours11.

A rapid diagnostic test that could be effectively and reliably used during the early time points following chest pain onset, has the potential to drastically reduce the number of precautionary admissions from the ED. This would result in huge cost savings for healthcare providers, as well as reducing unnecessary stress on patients, caused by the stay in hospital.