Heartbeat Health made the news lately for securing 8.2$M from investors. Its aim – provide high-quality cardiology care via telehealth. With a team mainly consisting of actual cardiologists, this New York-based startup looks like the real deal.
The story behind the company
Jeffrey D. Wesler founded Heartbeat Health in 2017 as a way to help people stay healthy, rather than wait until they’re sick to treat them. Healthy people are also busy people – they aren’t (and shouldn’t) going to go through through the usual hassles of healthcare. This reality guided the Heartbeat Health team in creating a service that promises to keep you healthy via your smartphone.
There’s an app for that ²
When used by individuals (either paying out-of-pocket or as part of their employer’s health benefits), the Heartbeat app provides near-daily health screenings. The app also schedules video-calls with doctors on patient request or as it sees fit. As we said earlier, the focus lies on encouraging changes in lifestyle before health issues actually crop up. Long-term care facilities can also gain from Heartbeat’s on-call cardiologists. Using their judgement, they can prevent needless visits to the ER. This can really be a lifesaver in the era of COVID-19, as infected patients coming back to old people’s homes can wreak havoc on the frail residents.
Heartbeat Health needs to prove itself
Although it looks good on paper, Heartbeat Health have to show that their services work. In medicine, the best way to prove that something is good for the patient is by running a good old-fashioned clinical trial. Like most healthcare start-ups, Heartbeat has so far shown little intention of doing things the old way. Sadly, that means that all we’re left with to judge the app on is hearsay and company material. In the era of evidence-based medicine, that may not suffice.