CardiacBooster and Nobleo: A partnership driving innovation in cardiac care | Nobleo Explorers
3 min read
3 min read - 4 Dec 2025
When you're a start-up heading toward clinical trials with life-saving medical technology, speed and expertise aren't just advantages—they're essential. For CardiacBooster, the partnership with Nobleo Explorers became exactly that: a collaboration that delivered world-class engineering skills with the urgency and adaptability a fast-moving medical device company demanded. "Within a couple of days of the request, we had a full team from Nobleo on site," recalls Adam Whitford, Technical Programme Manager at CardiacBooster. "They immediately understood what was needed."
The challenge
CardiacBooster, a medical device company with offices in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Galway, Ireland, is developing the next generation of percutaneous ventricular assist devices (pVADs). As a spin-off from the Radboud University Medical Centre, the company’s mission is to help interventional cardiologists provide life-saving cardiac support to patients in acute or chronic heart failure during hemodynamically critical situations.
With ambitious timelines looming, the pressure was on. “We’re a start-up organisation, so we’re heading for our clinical studies,” Adam explains. Initially, CardiacBooster contacted Nobleo for support in developing a graphical user interface for their test machines. However, as the company further developed and decided to support full capital equipment development in-house, they encountered a critical skills gap. “We needed expertise to accelerate the design and development of a custom PCBA design and for software development on that platform. The limited in-house disciplines to accelerate the development, namely software and electronic disciplines, threatened to slow down our ambitious timeline.”
Why Nobleo Explorers?
What set Nobleo apart was their immediate understanding of CardiacBooster’s urgent needs and their ability to mobilise quickly. The team walked through CardiacBooster’s requirements and swiftly identified how to fill the gaps. “From there, we kicked off workstreams, allowing the collaboration to really take off,” Adam recalls. He emphasises the crucial factor that made the partnership work: “One thing that’s kind of hard to convey to external contractors is the sense of urgency, and that’s something Nobleo absolutely took on board.”
The collaboration
Nobleo contributed to CardiacBooster’s device by developing several critical components. At the core of the device is a catheter inserted into the patient’s heart and an external controller. Nobleo helped design the PCB for that external controller and developed the embedded application that controls it. In addition, they are currently building a GUI application to support the monitoring, controlling, and reporting of the device’s operation.
The day-to-day collaboration proved excellent. “The communication lines were very short, and they quickly responded to any issues we had,” Adam notes. “Nobleo’s engineers worked on-site in Nijmegen when needed, particularly for initial test setup and debugging. And as production ramped up, they adapted seamlessly to any new requirements.”
Measurable impact
The results speak for themselves. “Within 2 or 3 weeks we had a PCB ready, which was set out rather complex,” Adam explains. Without Nobleo’s support, he estimates the company would have faced delays in other areas of development.
Coming from an electrical and PCB background himself, Adam was particularly impressed by the technical quality Nobleo’s engineers provided. “The skills I’ve seen at Nobleo are world class. In fact, they provided some of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with,” he states.
Looking forward
The partnership between CardiacBooster and Nobleo Explorers continues to strengthen. “Definitely,” Adam confirms when asked about future collaboration. “At the moment we’re heavily focused on Gen1, but once we get over that milestone, we’re ramping up into Gen 2 with more enhanced features. If we need Nobleo’s expertise there, we will welcome the chance to work with them again.”
For CardiacBooster and Nobleo, this partnership represents more than just a business relationship—it’s a shared vision of helping thousands of people across the world with a product marked by reliability, quality, and effectiveness.
