December 2, 2025 – CHELMSFORD, MASS. – ZOLL®, an Asahi Kasei company that manufactures medical devices and related software solutions, announced the complete U.S. rollout of its next generation garment for the LifeVest® wearable cardioverter defibrillator (WCD). With continuous innovation and enhancements for patient comfort, this marks the third advancement of the LifeVest garment over the last five years.

"The next generation LifeVest garment is a significant step forward in patient comfort and usability while maintaining market-leading clinical performance and safety," said Peter A. Brady, MD, Vice President of Clinical Affairs for ZOLL Cardiac Management Solutions. "We are committed to continuous innovation to help patients feel confident while staying protected. Now, we’ve made the LifeVest garment even more comfortable.”

The newest LifeVest garment builds upon progressive advancements over the last five years, with features designed to support patients in their daily lives outside of the hospital. Enhanced features include lightweight, athleisure-inspired performance-wear fabric, soft plush straps, flat-lock stitching, and the largest range of garment sizes, fitting chest measurements of 26”-56”.

Comfort you can measure with compliance

LifeVest continues to set the standard for WCD performance:

• LifeVest ranks #1 in patient compliance at a consistent 23.4+ hours/day (median) based on peer-reviewed publications and real-world data, most recently validated in SCD-PROTECT (2025), a study of nearly 20,000 consecutive real-world patients.^1,2,3
• In SCD-PROTECT, patients also experienced extremely low rates of inappropriate shocks (0.5% of patients) and discontinuation due to skin irritation (0.3% of patients).¹
• The newest LifeVest garment represents a further advancement to this already impressive data. Patients prefer the next generation LifeVest garment as even more comfortable and easier to use.⁴

Leading Innovation in the WCD Market

Continuous LifeVest garment innovation is just one example of how ZOLL continues to lead the WCD category:

• More clinicians and patients are choosing a LifeVest WCD today than ever before, with growing recognition of the need for sudden cardiac death (SCD) protection for newly diagnosed heart failure patients with reduced ejection fraction.⁵
• LifeVest is designed with integrated, easy-to-reach response buttons, allowing conscious patients to delay unnecessary shocks. The recent SCD-PROTECT study demonstrates that LifeVest patients experience a low rate of inappropriate shocks that is unmatched in literature.¹
• ZOLL pioneered AI for WCDs, with an AI-enhanced algorithm introduced in 2018 that reduced false alarms to a median of zero at 90 days.⁶
• >98% of people in the U.S. have in-network commercial access to LifeVest. For more than 20 years, ZOLL has advocated for patients, securing broadest WCD coverage across Medicare, Medicaid, veterans, and commercial payers.⁷

With >140,000 patients in clinical studies and well over one million lives protected, LifeVest is the most used, studied and proven wearable defibrillator. Learn more about the market-leading innovations of LifeVest at LifeVestInnovation.com.

About ZOLL

ZOLL, an Asahi Kasei company, develops and markets medical devices and software solutions that help advance emergency care and save lives, while increasing clinical and operational efficiencies. With products for defibrillation and cardiac monitoring, circulation enhancement and CPR feedback, supersaturated oxygen therapy, data management, ventilation, therapeutic temperature management, and sleep apnea diagnosis and treatment, ZOLL provides a comprehensive set of technologies that help clinicians, EMS and fire professionals, as well as lay rescuers, improve patient outcomes in critical cardiopulmonary conditions. For more information, visit www.zoll.com.

About Asahi Kasei

The Asahi Kasei Group contributes to life and living for people around the world. Since its foundation in 1922 with ammonia and cellulose fiber businesses, Asahi Kasei has consistently grown through the proactive transformation of its business portfolio to meet the evolving needs of every age. With more than 50,000 employees worldwide, the company contributes to a sustainable society by providing solutions to the world's challenges through its three business sectors of Healthcare, Homes, and Material. Its healthcare operations include devices and systems for critical care, products and services for the manufacture of biotherapeutics, and a growing portfolio of specialty pharmaceuticals. For more information, visit www.asahi-kasei.com.

Asahi Kasei is also dedicated to sustainability initiatives and is contributing to reaching a carbon neutral society by 2050. To learn more, visit www.asahi-kasei.com/sustainability/.

¹ David Duncker, Eloi Marijon, Marco Metra, Olivier Piot, Marat Fudim, Uwe Siebert, Norbert Frey, Lars Siegfried Maier, Johann Bauersachs, Sudden cardiac death in newly diagnosed non-ischaemic or ischaemic cardiomyopathy assessed with a wearable cardioverter-defibrillator: the German nationwide SCD-PROTECT study, European Heart Journal, 2025;, ehaf668, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf668
² Garcia R, Combes N, Defaye P, et al. Wearable cardioverter-defibrillator in patients with a transient risk of sudden cardiac death: the WEARIT-France cohort study. EP Europace. 2020;23(1):73-81. doi:10.1093/europace/euaa268.
³ Data on file, 90d0258_a01. 2021 Commercial Compliance Analysis.
⁴ Data on file, 20c1184_a01. Garment Comparative Wear Test.
⁵ Based on commercial data as of November 2025.
⁶ Arkles J, Delaughter C, D’Souza B. A novel artificial intelligence based algorithm to reduce wearable cardioverter-defibrillator alarms. J Interv Cardiac Electrophysiol. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10840-023-01497-w.
⁷ Based on commercial data as of March 2025

Disclaimer: A controlled, head-to-head study evaluating the comparative performance of available WCD devices has not been done.

Copyright © 2025 ZOLL Medical Corporation. All rights reserved. ZOLL and LifeVest are registered trademarks of ZOLL Medical Corporation and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. Asahi Kasei is a registered trademark of Asahi Kasei Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.