NEW YORK, NY — August 17, 2026 — Every 34 seconds, an American dies of cardiovascular disease. Nearly half of U.S. counties don’t have a single practicing cardiologist. Yet almost every clinic in the country already owns the tool that could change those numbers: the electrocardiogram — a test so routine that most patients forget they’ve had one.

Today, HITLAB, the New York-based health innovation and technology lab, announced a partnership with Medical AI Co., Ltd., the South Korean health-tech company teaching that century-old test to see what the human eye cannot. Through an initiative called Project Connect, HITLAB will translate Medical AI’s clinical evidence into the language U.S. health system executives make decisions in — and put the company in the room with the leaders who can bring its technology to patients at scale.

Medical AI’s deep-learning models read the ECG’s electrical signal and surface hidden risks invisible to conventional interpretation — signals the company calls digital biomarkers. The result is advanced cardiac screening that travels anywhere an ECG does: from a rural primary care office to the wearable on a patient’s wrist.

“Cardiac risk doesn’t wait for a specialist referral, and for too many patients, that’s exactly what stands between a warning sign and a diagnosis,” said Dr. Stan Kachnowski, Chair of HITLAB. “Medical AI has taken a signal every health system already knows how to capture and taught it to say more. Our job under Project Connect is to make sure the executives who run U.S. hospitals understand exactly what that means.”

The stakes are difficult to overstate. Cardiovascular disease claimed more than 919,000 American lives in 2023 — more than all cancers and accidental deaths combined, according to the American Heart Association. And a 2024 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that 46% of U.S. counties — home to 22 million people — have no practicing cardiologist, leaving residents facing an average 87-mile round trip to reach one.

Project Connect is built to close that distance. HITLAB will distill Medical AI’s evidence into an executive brief, a business development deck, and buyer-focused talking points — backed by a white paper or peer-reviewed publication where it strengthens commercial credibility. HITLAB will also make direct introductions to CMIOs, cardiology service line leaders, and procurement executives, and give Medical AI the stage at the December 2026 HITLAB Innovators Summit and a 2026 virtual symposium, with additional executive roundtables under consideration.

“Every health system we talk to wants the same thing: a way to catch risk earlier without adding to an already-stretched clinical team,” said Junmyung Kwon, CEO and Founder of Medical AI. “Partnering with HITLAB gives us a direct line to the leaders who can decide that’s worth doing differently.”