What You Should Know: 

– Vivalink, a frontrunner in digital healthcare solutions, today announced the launch of a comprehensive technology solution for Mobile Cardiac Telemetry (MCT) and Holter monitoring. 

– The innovative offering addresses the rising demand for efficient ambulatory ECG monitoring, streamlining deployment and enhancing patient care.

Efficiency with a Unified Approach

Vivalink’s solution integrates Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) technologies and advanced arrhythmia detection algorithms. This unification offers significant advantages:

• Simplified Deployment: Partners can leverage a single solution for both MCT and Holter monitoring, reducing complexity and cost.
• Enhanced Patient Care: Streamlined workflows ensure faster diagnosis and treatment for patients with cardiac concerns.

Designed for Enhanced Patient Care

The solution boasts a range of features designed to optimize the ambulatory cardiac monitoring experience:

• Long-lasting Convenience: A reusable ECG patch with a 14-day rechargeable battery and 30-day data storage capacity minimizes patient burden.
• Seamless Data Transmission: A mobile gateway integrated with a patient app facilitates effortless data transmission and keeps patients engaged in their monitoring process.
• Advanced Arrhythmia Detection: The solution can identify over 15 common arrhythmias and ectopic beats, empowering clinicians with crucial insights.
• Clinician-Centric Design: A dedicated clinician portal allows for over-reading, annotation, and generation of customized final ECG reports tailored to specific needs.

“Bringing together cutting-edge technology and medical expertise, Vivalink’s turnkey technology solution is changing the landscape of ambulatory cardiac monitoring,” said Jiang Li, CEO of Vivalink. “Our integrated solution simplifies the deployment of remote cardiac monitoring services, offering a seamless implementation for our partners.”

What You Should Know:

– Ambiq, a leader in low-power semiconductors, and Smartaly, an electronics design firm, have partnered to create an artificial intelligence (AI) powered handheld ECG monitor.

– The AI-powered ECG monitor device boasts not only exceptional battery life but also the power of AI for real-time health insights.

Week-long Monitoring on a Single Charge

Smartaly’s ECG monitor leverages Ambiq’s Apollo3 SoC, a third-generation system on a chip (SoC) specifically designed for low-power operation. This powerhouse chip allows the ECG to continuously track your heart’s electrical activity for a staggering seven days on a single battery charge.

Accuracy You Can Trust: Early Detection of Heart Abnormalities

Early detection is crucial when it comes to heart health. This ECG monitor boasts an impressive over 99% accuracy, making it a reliable tool for identifying potential heart issues. The built-in AI capabilities further enhance its effectiveness. The device can intelligently analyze your heart rhythm and notify you of any abnormalities or disturbances in real time, allowing for faster intervention and improved health outcomes.

Lightweight and Convenient: Designed for Everyday Use

This handheld ECG monitor isn’t just powerful; it’s also practical. The device is designed to be lightweight and portable, making it easy to integrate into your daily routine. Whether you’re at home, at work, or on the go, you can conveniently monitor your heart health with ease. Plus, the extended one-year standby life ensures the device is always ready when you need it.

Seamless Connectivity: Unlock Actionable Insights

The Smartaly ECG monitor seamlessly connects to other smart devices via Bluetooth. This connectivity allows you to transfer your heart health data securely to your smartphone or tablet. With dedicated apps, you can gain valuable insights into your heart health trends and share this data with your doctor for a more comprehensive understanding of your well-being.

The Power Behind the Innovation: Ambiq’s Apollo3 SoC

The heart of this intelligent ECG monitor is the Ambiq Apollo3 SoC. This innovative chip utilizes Ambiq’s proprietary Subthreshold Power Optimization Technology (SPOT) platform. SPOT is what allows the Apollo3 to achieve such incredibly low power consumption – a mere 6µA/MHz in active mode and a miniscule 1 μA in deep sleep mode. This translates to exceptional battery life, making the Smartaly ECG monitor a truly groundbreaking development in heart health monitoring.

“Our partnership with Smartaly is a strategic move to accelerate their development of digital health devices,” says Mike Kenyon, VP of Sales and Business Development at Ambiq, “The medical field is an extremely important industry that requires consistent and data-driven monitoring. Helping medical devices overcome their power constraints to provide insightful health analysis that patients can depend on is exactly what we envision with the Smartaly ECG Monitor.”

What You Should Know:

– Agamon Health, a healthcare technology company, is collaborating with Mayo Clinic to use Generative AI and workflow automation to improve patient adherence to follow-up in cardiology.

– Delayed or insufficient follow-up care for patients with valvular heart disease can have severe consequences, such as increased hospitalization, worsening heart failure, and death. Agamon Coordinate seeks to “close the loop” on follow-up recommendations and improve patient health outcomes.

What You Should Know:

– Viz.ai, an AI-powered disease detection and intelligent care coordination has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to commercialize three AI algorithms for the automated detection of cardiovascular diseases.

– Developed at UCSF by leading researchers, these AI algorithms to detect cardiac amyloidosis, pulmonary hypertension, and supraventricular tachycardia are based on analysis of electrocardiograms (ECGs), the most widely used diagnostic test for characterization of cardiac structure and electrical activity of the heart.

– Following regulatory clearance, these three new algorithms will be a part of Viz.ai’s expanding offering, which includes ECG-based AI algorithms, ECG viewer, AI-interpretation of echos and echo viewer, enabling cardiac care teams to detect disease earlier and coordinate care in real time.

What You Should Know:

– Eko, a digital health company applying artificial intelligence (AI) in the fight against heart and lung disease launches the SENSORA™ Cardiac Disease Detection Platform.

– SENSORA™ currently features AI that objectively identifies structural murmurs, a sign of valvular heart disease, and Care Pathway Analytics software that provides downstream visibility and metrics of the patient journey through the healthcare system.

Eko SENSORA Cardiac Disease Detection Platform

SENSORA™ is a cardiovascular disease detection platform that combines the latest advancements in applied machine learning with one of the most ubiquitous medical devices in the world: the stethoscope. SENSORA™ FDA-cleared structural murmur detection helps health systems more accurately and consistently identify valvular heart disease (VHD) in patients during a routine visit with their primary care physician.

SENSORA™ Care Pathway Analytics follows patients with identified structural murmurs through the care continuum, providing downstream visibility into patient flows, clinical outcomes and patient economics. Care Pathway Analytics is designed to assist with critical decision-making by identifying care gaps that can be transformed into improved operational efficiencies, including reduced delays in delivery of care, length of stay, and readmission rates, all while improving patient and physician satisfaction.

Impact of Valvular Heart Disease

VHD is a life-threatening condition diagnosed in more than 8 million Americans. Left undetected and untreated, it can lead to heart failure, stroke, blood clots, and death. Older adults have a 1 in 10 chance of developing clinically significant VHD. However, more than half (57%) of clinically significant valvular heart disease goes undetected in this population. A primary care physician using SENSORA™ for structural murmur detection more than doubles their likelihood of detecting significant VHD.

What You Should Know:  

– Vivalink is addressing these RPM interoperability challenges by announcing today that leading wearables and medical-grade devices are integrating with the company’s Biometrics Data Platform.

– Now, leading pulse oximeters, blood glucose monitors and sleep monitors by companies like Garmin and Roche are available alongside the Platform to accelerate development and deployment of novel healthcare applications and research.

Why It Matters

Integration and interoperability are two major barriers to RPM implementation across clinical trials and healthcare. To date, RPM solutions require a host of different sensors and devices, manufactured by different companies, with data systems that operate on a whole new set of infrastructure and networks. This lack of interoperability across devices, networks and systems is severely limiting RPM’s impact on clinical trials–and vice versa–and makes it difficult for regulatory bodies to design and implement effective standards for the technology.

With the additional remote monitoring sensors and devices, the full range of physiological parameters that can be captured by the Platform, for both continuous and episodic measurements include:

– ECG rhythm

– Heart rate

– Heart rate variability

– Respiratory rate

– Axillary and skin temperature

– Oxygen saturation

– Blood pressure

– Blood glucose

– Actigraphy

– Sleep

– Weight

The biometric data and analytical insights from the Platform are designed to be easily integrated into any virtual healthcare application, including hospital at home, telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and ambulatory cardiac monitoring.

What You Should Know:

– VitalConnect®, Inc., a leader in remote and in-hospital wearable biosensor technology, has just announced the completion of an investment funded by Health Insight Capital, the investment arm of HCA Healthcare Inc., (NYSE: HCA), one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers. 

– The investment will go toward further accelerating VitalConnect’s rapidly growing cardiac monitoring business segment while advancing key Remote Patient Monitoring of individuals who have experienced heart failure (HF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and sepsis, among others. This funding support is expected to help VitalConnect continue bringing the most advanced technology to patients and providers.

Technology-Driven Improvements to Cardiac Medicine

VitalConnect is a leader in wearable biosensor technology for wireless patient monitoring in both hospital and remote patient populations. VitalConnect leverages extensive expertise in biomedical engineering, data analytics, chip design, and mobile and cloud software to create technology that supports decision-making paradigms that achieve better health and economic outcomes. VitalConnect’s products are designed for use in a broad range of inpatient and outpatient settings, such as hospital monitoring, post-discharge care, cardiac monitoring and pharmaceutical solutions. VitalConnect’s advanced yet easy-to-use platform, was designed to deliver better healthcare at lower costs while providing more convenience for the patients and healthcare providers

“This strategic investment from HCA Healthcare will further accelerate VitalConnect’s expansive growth and upward trajectory in the Cardiac Monitoring space,” said Peter Van Haur, CEO, VitalConnect. “We’ve experienced unparalleled physician adoption and growth over the past 18 months since launch, and HCA Healthcare’s investment will enable us to continue bringing customers the most comprehensive remote patient monitoring platform.”

Founded in 2011, VitalConnect has deployed hundreds of thousands of biosensors throughout the world, including care facilities such as Brigham and Women’s, Hackensack Medical Center, Northwell Health, and John Radcliffe Hospital-Oxford University. The VitalPatch allows real-time remote or in-hospital monitoring, allowing physicians to optimize the delivery of care to their patients.

What You Should Know:

– Sibel Health has recently closed a $33M Series B financing round, bringing Sibel’s total funding to date to more than $50M.

– In addition, Sibel has announced two new executive appointments. Jon Otterstatter, the former CEO and co-founder of Preventice (acquired by Boston Scientific in 2021), will join as chairman of the board. Matthew Banet, Ph.D., a world expert in advanced body-worn sensors and previously the CTO and co-founder of toSense and Sotera, joins as president from Baxter International.

Data-Driven Bio-Integrated Sensors to Promote Better Maternal and Child Health

Sibel Health is an award-winning digital health company with a mission to deliver Better Health Data for All®. Based in the greater Chicago area with offices in Seoul (South Korea) and San Diego, the company’s FDA-cleared ANNE® platform includes advanced wearable sensors, AI-enabled data analytics, and integrated mobile software and cloud platform. Sibel’s partnerships include some of the most respected healthcare organizations worldwide.

The funding round was led by the Steele Foundation for Hope—a private foundation seeking to fund solutions for humanity’s hardest challenges with an emphasis on technology and innovation. With the funding, Sibel will scale up its FDA-cleared ANNE® One platform for global deployments across the entire continuum of care from the home to the hospital.

Since 2020, Sibel has seen a significant increase in revenue driven by partnerships with leading Fortune 500 companies and funding support from the U.S. military, the National Institutes of Health, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The appointment of new executives will accelerate Sibel’s transition to scaled commercialization.

“I look forward to joining Sibel as chairman of the board in this time of rapid acceleration and growth,” Otterstatter said. “The company’s advanced wearable monitoring platform is industry-changing—the comprehensive suite of on-body sensors, best-in-class analytics, robust machine-learning algorithms and extensible software capabilities make the ANNE® One platform a very unique offering. I look forward to supporting Sibel’s transition towards commercial scale.” He continued, “Having led a team and a company that successfully developed and achieved commercial success with a breakthrough remote cardiac monitoring solutions, I am convinced that the ANNE® sensors are raising the bar for the market.” John Rogers, PhD, the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University and Sibel co-founder, said, “It is exciting to see the research from my research group translate into a successful product with the potential to impact millions of lives worldwide, particularly in the area of neonatal and women’s health.”

What You Should Know:

– Biotricity, Inc. (NASDAQ:BTCY), a medical diagnostic and consumer healthcare technology company, today announced it has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its Biotres Cardiac Monitoring Device, a three-lead device for ECG and arrhythmia monitoring that is intended for lower-risk patients.

– Most remote cardiac monitors are passive — they don’t record ECG and other cardiac data in real-time — and lack cross-compatibility with other platforms/devices. Conversely, Biotricity’s expanding suite of cardiac monitoring technologies is a turn-key solution offering the kind of advanced, continuous monitoring that allows cardiologists to see warning signs earlier and act proactively, and integrates seamlessly into existing systems. The Biotres not only expands our product portfolio, it opens up a new market and increases Biotricity’s Total Addressable Market from $1B to $5.7 Billion and will be widely available for sale starting April 1, 2022

– The Biotres not only expands our product portfolio, it opens up a new market and increases Biotricity’s Total Addressable Market from $1B to $5.7 Billion and will be widely available for sale starting April 1, 2022.

What You Should Know:

– Philips today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Paris-based Cardiologs, a France-based medical technology company focused on transforming cardiac diagnostics using artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud technology.

– Cardiologs will further strengthen Philips’ cardiac monitoring and diagnostics offering with innovative software technology, electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis and reporting services. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

– The acquisition of Cardiologs is a strong fit with Philips’ existing portfolio of cardiac care solutions. This includes real-time patient monitoring, therapeutic devices, telehealth and informatics for the hospital, as well as ambulatory cardiac diagnostics and monitoring solutions, that were added through the recent acquisition of BioTelemetry, Inc.

Cardiologs Background

Cardiologs was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Paris, France. Its approximately 70 employees, largely comprising software engineers and data scientists with expertise in AI and deep learning algorithms, will join Philips and will expand the company’s continued AI-focused innovation activities together with the company’s R&D lab in Paris. Philips has a strong presence in France, consisting of research and development activities, as well as sales, marketing and distribution at multiple sites.

“We are delighted to become part of Philips and continue innovating together to provide solutions that empower clinicians all around the world,” said Yann Fleureau, Co-Founder and CEO of Cardiologs. “We look forward to the opportunity to expand the business as part of Philips, maintaining vendor neutrality and continuing to work with third party vendors to drive further adoption of digital health solutions globally.”

What You Should Know:

– Eko, a cardiopulmonary digital health company launches its next-generation Eko DUO, an FDA-cleared cardiac assessment tool that functions as an electrocardiogram (ECG) and digital stethoscope to detect early signs of heart disease and facilitate timely care and personalized disease management.

– DUO is a pocket-sized cardiac examination system for clinicians used to detect early signs of heart disease and facilitate timely care for patients in and out of the clinic. Frontline clinicians can now view or live stream ECG tracings and sound waveforms directly from their mobile devices with just a few taps. 

All-in-one Cardiac Exam System

By combining ECG and auscultation, clinicians get more information at a glance without disrupting workflow or running costly tests. FDA-cleared software enables clinicians to capture, transmit, and analyze electromechanical cardiac data in as little as 15 seconds — from the clinic or the comfort of patients’ homes.

Purpose-built for wireless listening and recording — both in-person and via telehealth — DUO is ideal for clinicians who need to be mobile or work outside of normal clinical environments. Its unobtrusive form factor makes it easy for clinicians to deliver care in both clinical and non-clinical environments like residential care facilities or a patient’s own home.  

Other features include:

– See and hear heart, lung, and bowel sounds and ECG in real-time for more timely, informed decision-making. Initiate remote auscultation for telemedicine exams over a dedicated

– HIPAA-compliant and encrypted live stream with just a few clicks.

– Save unlimited recordings to chronicle a patient’s history or monitor disease progression on a unified cloud dashboard.

– Securely share recordings for a second opinion or referral in just a few seconds.

– Access advanced audio controls to fine-tune your listening experience.

Eko’s automated disease detection software, powered by FDA-cleared, clinically proven artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, helps clinicians detect heart murmurs and atrial fibrillation with comparable accuracy to human experts. Most recently, real-world validation for Eko’s heart murmur detection algorithm came from a peer-reviewed publication in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

“The next generation DUO is an important component of the comprehensive platform for digital cardiopulmonary care that we are building,” said Connor Landgraf, CEO and co-founder of Eko. “The most important weapon we have against heart disease is data and knowledge. When we have information about how our heart is functioning, that’s the weapon that helps us fight this disease more effectively.”

What You Should Know:

– Today, Ultromics, an Oxford, England-based health-tech startup announced it has raised $33M in Series B funding led by Blue Ventures, the investing arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield, and also includes investment from Optum Ventures, GV, and Oxford Sciences.

–  Born at the University of Oxford and built-in partnership with the U.K.’s NHS, Ultromics has developed the first fully automated solution for echocardiography and analysis of global longitudinal strain (GLS). Ultromics delivers analysis to any vendor within minutes, with zero variability, without any disruption to workflow, and can even predict a patient’s risk of developing coronary artery disease (CAD). Ultromics has collaborated with leading research institutions, including the American Society of Echocardiography and Mayo Clinic. 

–  Ultromics will use the new funding to help accelerate the use of AI-enabled echocardiograms to help improve patient care and bring improved diagnostic quality and resource savings to hospitals.

What You Should Know:

– Medtronic announced U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for two AccuRhythm™ AI algorithms for use with the LINQ II™ insertable cardiac monitor (ICM) – and the presentation of AccuRhythm AI validation data this week at Heart Rhythm 2021.

– AccuRhythm AI applies artificial intelligence (AI) to heart rhythm event data collected by LINQ II, improving the accuracy of information physicians receive so they can better diagnose and treat abnormal heart rhythms.

AccuRhythm AI Benefits

The small, wireless LINQ II ICM is the world’s most accurate ICM,1-4 and the new cloud-based AccuRhythm AI algorithms further enhance LINQ II ICM’s delivery of accurate heart rhythm alerts. The algorithms address the two most common ICM false alerts – atrial fibrillation (AF), an irregular or rapid rhythm in the upper chambers of the heart; and asystole, a long pause between heartbeats. 5-6 Medtronic developed the AccuRhythm AI platform and initial algorithms using its proprietary, diverse and debiased database of more than 1 million electrocardiogram heart rhythm episodes.

AccuRhythm AI Validation Results 

AccuRhythm AI validation results to be presented at Heart Rhythm 2021 include:

– The AF algorithm reduced LINQ II ICM false AF alerts by 74.1% and preserved 99.3% of true AF alerts.
– The Pause algorithm reduced LINQ II false pause alerts by 97.4% and preserved 100% of true pause alerts.

Availability

The AccuRhythm AI algorithms will be released on the CareLink™ Network later this year for use by all implanted LINQ II devices in the United States.

“Applying AccuRhythm AI to LINQ II data is a significant ICM innovation, enabling us to reduce clinical inefficiencies resulting from false alerts, and help physicians better identify and focus on the actionable data they need to treat their patients,” said Rob Kowal, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer of the Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Services business, which is part of the Cardiovascular Portfolio at Medtronic.

The statistics surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be startling, despite the ever-growing mental and physical fatigue that we’ve all experienced living through this frightening, intimidating and unprecedented era. More than 125 million cases worldwide have resulted in a death toll closing in on three million, while in the United States alone, 30 million reported infections have resulted in a death toll that reached 550,000. ⁽¹⁾ One thing that can be said for certain about COVID is that it has changed the medical field drastically.

“One of the most important lessons we learned is that telehealth and virtual care are really important augmentations to our healthcare matrix and they’re here to stay,” says Stuart Long, CEO of Infobionic, which has been adapting and improving its own cardiac monitoring technology to meet these new needs.

The umbrella term for the advances that Long is describing is “telemetry,” which refers to the automatic measurement and transmission of data at a distance, generally via wireless technology these days, yet typically seen only inside the hospital. While Infobionic focuses on remote cardiac monitoring technology and rising importance around ‘always on’ remote health are drivers to extending telemetry beyond the hospital walls are indicative of its future importance.

He firmly believes that the future of healthcare will be a hybrid model, one that combines virtual, noninvasive monitoring with consultations with physicians as well as traditional physical exams. He explains that brick-and-mortar facilities may not be the best places for patients right now, while the hybrid model that’s emerging gives patients more choice and autonomy over their health care decisions.
 

In the wake of the worldwide COVID-19 health crisis, even traditional healthcare systems are adapting. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued a sweeping array of new rules and waivers being promoted as “Hospitals Without Walls.” The initiative is designed to empower hospitals and health care facilities to provide services beyond their existing facilities, not only to enable COVID-19 treatment but also to support healthcare needs that were traditionally delivered within physical locations. Patients could use something like InfoBionic’s evolving MoMe^® Kardia cardiac monitoring platform, where an individual wears a small monitor that streams their cardiac data in near real-time to the cloud. The information and a complete record are then proactively delivered to the cardiologist, who can access the information anytime, anywhere.
 

The medical evidence that has emerged from COVID studies has also lent itself to the rise of remote monitoring technologies. The Coronavirus is a terribly tricky disease for the major reason that it affects each patient differently. Some people have symptoms that are no worse than a mild cold, while a thus-far misunderstood inflammatory syndrome attacks a variety of vital organs, among them the liver, lungs ⁽⁵⁾ and heart. ⁽⁶⁾
 

Long affirms that remote patient monitoring is here to stay, not just because of urgent medical needs that have emerged this year, but also because of patient demand. According to a study by McKinzie, consumer use of telehealth services has risen from 11 percent in 2019 to 46 percent now using telehealth to replace traditional healthcare visits, while providers are now seeing between 50 and 175 times the number of patients via telehealth. ⁽⁷⁾ Monitoring services for conditions beyond cardiac care may include obesity, diabetes and arrythmias and atrial fibrillation (AFIB), which could potentially create a market for telehealth that could total over $250 billion in healthcare spending within the next few years. ⁽⁸⁾
 

“The landscape has wholly shifted in the realm of telemedicine due to the pandemic,” says Long. “Hybrid models are patient centric, easily portable to the virtual world, and they’re much safer for patients whether they’re at risk for COVID-19 or not. The biometric solutions that InfoBionic and other partners are creating aren’t just fueling the meteoric rise of telehealth. We’re changing how our patients access healthcare, improving timely and accurate data analysis, and improving patient outcomes. This is a rare win-win scenario for everyone.”

2020 was undeniably the year that saw telehealth and remote care services come to the forefront of medical care. Many have hypothesized that, in the post-COVID world, remote care programs will be ubiquitous throughout hospitals and health systems. However, such a future is far from certain, as too many organizations currently lack the budget, IT infrastructure, and time necessary to implement new innovative remote care programs. There is a considerable disparity between the hype surrounding telehealth and the reality taking place within hospitals and healthcare systems.

The apparent surge in telehealth during the pandemic primarily involved traditional in-person hospital appointments being converted to virtual video visits. While certainly beneficial, this falls far short of the true potential for scale and sophistication possible from ubiquitous remote care programs. 

Automation is Key 

Remote care solution providers must offer considerably more efficient and advanced products while still being able to operate within the financial and workflow constraints that healthcare organizations are facing today. The ideal scenario, which will save time and costs while creating a better experience for the patient, is to automate as many remote care processes as possible. 

There are tremendous rewards to be reaped by converting the telehealth practices of the kind seen during the pandemic into fully automated remote care pathways. Current systems still require care teams to be aware of and responsive to each result – a task that is becoming increasingly unattainable due to time and resource constraints, preventing staff from individually handling the patients’ cumulative medical data and resulting in a lower quality of care. 

The market demands a way to create care plans that can autonomously handle the data, and that have automated intelligence to analyze information and decide on next steps based on specific rules in patient care plans, thus relieving care teams from tedious tasks and allowing them to focus on high-value patient care. Automation is also extremely cost-effective and perfect for scaling quickly. The result being that providers can see a direct impact to their top line in the number of patients they can treat without having to increase resources or compromise on the quality of care. 

Remote Cardiac Rehabilitation – a Perfect Fit 

Cardiac rehabilitation is a natural choice to fully benefit from the transition to automated remote care. It is one of the most effective interventions available to increase the life expectancy of patients following a serious cardiac episode or surgery and prevent hospital readmissions. Cardiac rehab also benefits from its relatively short and definitive timeframe, typically involving twice-weekly visits to the rehabilitation center over the course of three to six months.  

However, the requirement to come in-person to a rehabilitation center 2-3 times a week is burdensome, especially after a serous cardiac event. The interference in daily life, the need to take time off work, together with the need to travel (often many miles) and find parking spaces in overcrowded hospital parking lots, drive very low program participation rates. Pre-COVID studies show that only around 25 percent of those entitled even begin the program, of whom only around 27 percent will see the course through to completion. The pandemic has only exacerbated the problem. 

Converting in-person cardiac rehabilitation treatments to automated remote programs enables patients to carry out their rehabilitation on their own time and from the comfort and safety of their own homes, where recovery is generally quicker and more effective. Studies have shown that participation in and adherence to remote cardiac rehabilitation programs is significantly higher than in center-based programs.  

The ideal remote cardiac rehab program is one that is easy for both providers to implement and patients to utilize; a case of ‘minimum input for maximum output,’ as all that should be required of the patient is access to a  smartwatch and blood-pressure device which collect and analyze their vitals and exercise levels, allowing the system to automatically recommend certain courses of action, update the care team and alert them to any potential concerns, and send updates and reminders to the patient as required. 

Remote care automation can further increase rehabilitation centers’ capacity, enabling them to onboard significantly more patients without putting additional strain on care-team resources. It is by no means an exaggeration to expect that implementing an automated remote care program can increase cardiac rehab attendance by up to five times.   

Expanding the Boundaries of Care  

For too long, the concept of putting the patient at the center of care has been little more than an aspiration, the reality being that patients traditionally had to adapt to the care program rather than having the program tailored to their needs. Automated remote cardiac rehabilitation is not only enabling a change in this culture but also adding an extra layer, expanding the boundaries of care without compromising on quality. By extending and automating treatment to patients regardless of location, hospitals can care for more people at the same time, broadening their reach to patients and the wider community, thereby creating the ‘borderless hospital.’  

The logistical challenges of in-person cardiac rehab lead to the exclusion of many patients who are suffering by missing out on this crucial care.  Automated remote cardiac rehabilitation, through tailor-made and easy to use programs, provides flexibility for patients to participate at times and in locations most convenient for them, expanding the boundaries of care by bringing them back from the sidelines and placing them firmly where they belong, at the center of care. 

About Uri Bettesh

Uri Bettesh is CEO and Founder of Datos Health, a leader in remote care automation. Uri has 18 years of experience as a technology executive and a passionate entrepreneur with a proven track record of success in leading business operations and technology implementations. Prior to Datos, he served in various executive positions, including General Manager of NCR’s Food, Drug and Mass Merchandising division, VP Product for Retalix, and more. Uri holds a BSc in Industrial Engineering from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.