Relief Cardiovascular—developer of a smart implant designed to haemodynamically monitor and treat congestion in heart failure—has been named as the recipient of the Shark Tank innovation prize at the 2025 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference (25–28 October, San Francisco, USA).
The Relief system was one of six technologies competing for the prize, which included a next-generation transcatheter Endo-Bentall system (P&F Products), a leaflet resection and extraction system from Tresquare, circulatory decongestion support (Pulnovo Medical), and artificial intelligence (AI)-guided robotic imaging navigation platform (Laza Medical). Pathwai, a next-generation cardiac screening technology, was the runner up in the competition.
The Relief system features a pressure-guided active valve implanted in the vena cava which is designed to dynamically reduce cardiac preload and enhance renal vein flow. The technology integrates haemodynamic monitoring with an adaptive haemodynamic therapy into a single transcatheter implant system.
Relief Cardiovascular recently announced the successful first-in-human use of the system, performed in the Republic of Georgia as part of a feasibility study evaluating the device’s safety.
Implantations were carried out by Tamaz Shaburishvili, Levan Sulakvelidze, and Gigi Shaburishvili at Tbilisi Heart and Vascular Center (Tblisi, Georgia), with support from Alex Rothman University of Sheffield (Sheffield, UK).
“Managing heart failure often feels like aiming at a moving target,” said Rothman. “In small cohorts of patients, clinical teams track remotely measured pressures and continuously adjust medications to optimise therapy, which has been proven to improve outcomes. However, scaling this manual approach to the millions of heart failure patients in need is a challenge. In these first-in-human procedures, we demonstrated the Relief System’s ability to remotely measure cardiac preload and produce a meaningful reduction in cardiac preload and renal afterload when desired. These procedures represent a major step forward in managing congestion at scale with an intelligent implantable therapeutic system.”
The TCT Shark Tank Innovation Competition is delivered through a partnership with the Jon DeHaan Foundation, with the winning entry receiving a US$200,000 award. The competition aims to identify and showcase groundbreaking concepts in modern cardiovascular medicine.
