"This partnership with Extra Horizon marks a significant milestone in our journey towards transforming stroke diagnostics. LVOCheck represents not just an innovation in technology, but a step forward in making advanced healthcare accessible and efficient."
ABCDx (Advanced Brain Companion Diagnostics) is a Swiss–Spanish medtech company developing point-of-care diagnostics for brain injuries. Using proprietary blood-based biomarker technology, ABCDx is working to transform how stroke is detected and triaged — bringing diagnostic capability directly into emergency settings before patients ever reach a hospital.
Their flagship product in development is LVOCheck — a portable biochemical diagnostic device that identifies patients suffering from a Large Vessel Occlusion (LVO) stroke, directly in the ambulance, within 10 minutes.
The challenge
Large vessel occlusion strokes are responsible for 95% of all stroke-related disabilities. When a clot blocks a major brain artery, every minute without treatment causes irreversible neurological damage — and the only effective treatment, mechanical thrombectomy, is only available at specialised comprehensive stroke centres.
Today’s triage process wastes critical time: patients are transported to the nearest hospital first, where specialist expertise and infrastructure are needed to determine whether an LVO is present. If confirmed, the patient must then be redirected to a stroke centre — a process that costs over two hours in lost treatment time.
What emergency services need is a way to make that triage decision in the ambulance, before the patient arrives anywhere.
What LVOCheck does
LVOCheck is designed for use by paramedics and emergency responders — no specialist expertise required. A biomarker test is performed in the ambulance and AI-based analysis delivers a result within 10 minutes. If LVO is confirmed, the patient is transported directly to the appropriate stroke centre rather than the nearest general hospital.
The result: faster access to thrombectomy, less time wasted on misrouted transfers, and better outcomes for patients.
To deliver LVOCheck as a regulated medical device, ABCDx needed more than a reliable assay — they needed a compliant, scalable digital platform capable of handling sensitive patient data in real-time emergency environments.
Why Extra Horizon
ABCDx partnered with Extra Horizon to build the LVOCheck Digital Platform — the cloud backend that powers the device’s AI analysis and data management in the field. Extra Horizon’s Medical Backend-as-a-Service provided the regulated foundation needed for a SaMD submission under EU MDR:
- Regulatory-grade infrastructure — compliant with ISO 13485:2016 and IEC 62304:2015, supporting ABCDx’s regulatory pathway
- Real-time data processing — secure handling of biomarker and diagnostic data in pre-hospital emergency conditions
- GDPR-compliant patient data management — sensitive health data processed and stored in line with EU requirements
- Scalable deployment — supporting rollout across emergency medical services and clinical trial sites without bespoke infrastructure per location
Building towards the market
ABCDx is currently advancing LVOCheck through clinical validation and regulatory development, with collaborators including Novarum, PickleTech, and BBI Solutions. Clinical partnerships span academic institutions and hospital networks across Spain and beyond.
Extra Horizon’s platform gives ABCDx the digital infrastructure to scale that work — from clinical trials to commercial deployment — without rebuilding their backend for each new phase.