Riverton Inventor Building Device That Can See Your Heart Attack Coming

Despite a market flooded with Oura rings and Fitbits, there has been a lack of wearable health data actually used by medical doctors. That might be about to change, thanks to an Italian innovator in Wyoming who is working behind the scenes on an electronic device that can see a heart attack coming before it happens.

Enrico Negrello, the inventor, said the Bio Chest is a tiny box worn as a patch next to the skin. It records heart rhythms and flags subtle changes that precede a catastrophe, then alerts medical providers. “I’m wearing one now,” Negrello said. “It’s on my chest right here. I don’t even feel it.”

Negrello does not look like a flashy health-tech founder. He is doing his work quietly, hiding behind the facade of a fairly normal printer business in Riverton. Pertech started in the 1970s. After a series of ownership changes, Negrello bought the company and moved to Wyoming. “I came here and it was snowing,” he said. “And I love the snow. And it was Christmas time, too, and I saw nice people. So I said, ‘This is a nice place.’”

But printers and scanners are a declining business. Negrello had already designed a device for the automotive industry that can detect if passengers are nervous about self-driving features by measuring their ECG. “I said, ‘Hmm, I should be doing something medical,’” he recalled. The Bio Chest was born.

The device is still an experimental tool in clinical studies, not yet available by prescription. Negrello already has a deal to roll the product out in India once clinical trials and documentation are complete. The testing stage will involve analysis of at least 350 patients to demonstrate safety and efficacy.

Former Pertech owner Kevin Kershisnik, now a Riverton economic developer, helped facilitate the transformation. “They had the software solution, but didn’t have the electromechanical solution,” he said. “I said, ‘That’s exactly what we do at our company.’” A collaboration was started that has taken the product to a working prototype.

Negrello also helped put on a recent global hackathon challenge with students from Central Wyoming College, India, and Nepal. He posed some of his company’s toughest challenges—already solved problems that made good real-world tests. Even Negrello was surprised by what fresh minds came up with, including treating the ECG as an audio signal and applying AI. “These problems which I gave them would have been impossible to solve in 48 hours just two years ago,” he said. He is now thinking about offering internships to some of the students.

The Bio Chest’s future still rests on data, doctors, and regulators. But in a quiet Riverton office better known for printers than pulse rates, Negrello believes the world’s next big medical breakthrough is not too far off. “If we can give people even a little bit of a warning, we can change everything,” he said.