Mr. Andre Larente reports

DIAGNOS PROVIDES TIMELINES ON CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE (CVD) PREVENTION TEST DEVELOPMENT AND COMMERCIALIZATION PLANS

Diagnos Inc. has developed a new cardiovascular risk score that will enable the early detection of this critical disease by its CARA platform.

The calibration of the company's application will be done simultaneously in four countries with a minimum of 1,000 in each country with the support of 22 cardiologists. This will enable the company to ensure the sustainability of its solution worldwide. The partners that will be collaborating with Diagnos are in Algeria, Canada, Mexico and United States.

"We're at the final development stage and ready to evaluate the effectiveness of our automatic grading for the new risk score test CARA Cardio. Continually, we hear from physicians and health insurers that our screening tests are very much needed to detect at early stage the cardiovascular anomalies. Our preventive cardiovascular risk score test will be used to prospectively predict and monitor the cardiovascular artery diseases. Diagnos's AI will automatically grade the retinal microcirculation state to generate this score. At regular interval, we will monitor the patients using the same test," said Dr. Hadi Chakor, Diagnos chief medical officer. "Our test will precede painful and stressing invasive procedure that may cause costly late complication."

While coronary angiography remains the gold standard to confirm the presence and severity of coronary atherosclerosis, issues of accessibility and cost-effectiveness of the procedure have spurred the need to investigate novel imaging modalities. Diagnos's Cardio prevention test is based on existing studies (atherosclerosis risk in communities study ARIC (Circulation 2016), the Rotterdam study (Neurology, 2006), the Beaver Dam eye study (Ophthalmology, 2012), multiethnic study of atherosclerosis (Hypertension, 2008)) that have demonstrated an anatomical correlation between the coronary macrovascular supply and the microvascular blood supply to the retina. Theses anomalies are strongly associated with cardiovascular risk factors such as dyslipidemia, diabetes, smoking hypertension and a positive family history of premature CAD.

The company is expecting to complete this final step of test development process during the next six months. In using its CARA telemedicine platform, it has shortened its go-to-market timeline by 12 months.

"Our test will address one of the more pressing needs in cardiology and preventive medicine field to decrease the socio-economic burden and complication cost of this pathology. This approach should complement public actions to reduce community risk factor levels and promote a healthy lifestyle. The simplicity and costly effectiveness makes this score test with very promising future to predict cardiovascular disease. The market size and cost associated with CVD and stroke yearly is $386-billion per year (Heidenreich, et al., 2012)," said Andre Larente, chief executive officer, Diagnos.

About CARA

CARA is a teleophthalmology platform that integrates with existing equipment (hardware and software) and processes at the point of care (POC) and comprises: image upload, image enhancement automated prescreening, grading by a specialist and referral to a specialist. CARA's artificial intelligence, based on FL AI RE technology, image enhancement algorithms make standard retinal images sharper, clearer and easier to read. CARA is accessible securely over the Internet and is compatible with all recognized image formats and brands of fundus cameras, and is EMR compatible. CARA is a cost-effective tool for screening large numbers of patients, in real time and has been approved by regulatory authorities including Health Canada, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Union, and others.

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