The AALQTEC project started in 2003 on my 7th semester.
I chose a project proposal in the cardiological field, together with two fellow student (Claus Graff, Mads P Andersen). After a while we discovered that the proposal was not as exciting as it was at the first glance. So we started to look around for interesting problems in the cardiological field and started to look at a heart disease called Long QT Syndrome (LQTS).
Through our counsellors (Egon Toft, Johannes Struijk) we got in touch with a danish expert in the Long QT field, called Jørgen Kanters. He told us about the clinical problems with LQTS and about his research in the field. After this meeting we where assured that we had to work with LQTS in our project.
Just to give a brief describtion of what the clinical problems with LQTS is:
Long QT Syndrome is a congenital heart disease affecting the repolarization of the heart. This mean in practice that the heart could start flickering and the symptoms you will discover is syncope or sudden cardiac death. But you can also go around your whole life with out feeling any symptoms.
The desease can be treated, but the problem is to discover it !!! There is today only one poor objectiv ECG parameter, to diagnose the desease. The only safe way to get the diagnose is to take a genetic test, but these are expensiv. It would be preferable to have a system to diagnose LQTS from the ECG, then you only have to use the genetic test to be 100 % sure.
Well back to the project:
Our goal with the project was to make a system to discriminate between patients with LQTS and normals, by analysis of the electric signal from the heart, called the ECG. By the end of December where we had to turn in our paper, we had a system capable of discriminating between normals and LQTS patients. Offcourse this was very encouraging both for us, our counsellors and Jørgen Kanters. So we rushed over to the patent office at Aalborg University, and convinced them to patent the invention.
Aalborg University started to commercialize the invention in the begining of 2004. I may 2004 we had a meeting with GE Healtcare, and after this meeting we started working together with them on the AALQTEC project. In October 2005 Aalborg University and GE Healtcare made a license agreement on the AALQTEC project.
We are still working with the development of the AAQTEC project together with GE Heatcare.