Many pundits thought that fitness trackers, especially the Apple Watch, were going to be the next big thing. Every wrist in America would sport one, and we’d all be running, swimming, or in the gym measuring our activity with your fitness tracker of choice. While that certainly isn’t proving true as quickly as we thought, a new heart health app could make the Apple Watch and other smartwatches and fitness trackers useful in a brand new way.
Cardiogram is a startup that wants to use the sensor data from your Apple Watch initially (with other devices to come) to detect atrial fibrillation and eventually other heart conditions. Brandon Ballinger, co-founder of Cardiogram believes that the Cardiogram app can be the gap between traditional devices like Holter monitors and patients not knowing they have a heart condition.
Cardiogram has just received $2 million in seed funding from the a16z Bio Fund, led by Vijay Pande and including investors from HomeBrew, RockHealth, Gusto, LinkedIn, and others. This confidence from established players in tech and healthcare promises a lot for this small startup.
What Makes It Different
It’s important to note that Cardiogram isn’t just another heart monitor app for iOS and Apple Watch. The app is using the sensors in the Apple Watch to gather data based on an approach called “semi-supervised deep learning,” and they’re working in conjunction with USCF Cardiology. Ballinger notes, “We think it’s important for even young digital health companies to submit their work to peer review, so you’ll see us submit to both medical journals and artificial intelligence conferences in late 2016 and early 2017.” This both gives this heart health app more credibility and avoids a Theranos-type scandal.
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| The Cardiogram app uses deep learning technology to monitor your heart patterns for potential heart health concerns. |
Cardiogram’s latest strategy along with its seed funding is its “app store” for habits. Ballinger explains, “Each Habit packages up an evidence-based behavior that has been shown to work in the medical literature, and pairs it with an objective biomarker of whether it’s working for you.” The categories of Fitness, Sleep, and Stress each offer up a variety of habits you can try to better your health.
The Future
While it might be hard to see past the Cardiogram app’s flashy surface, its data-driven health-based approach may well be the future to detecting heart disease. With its new funding, a partnership with UCSF, and passionate co-founders, we may see great things from the Cardiogram app. Either way, fitness trackers and smartwatches are poised to become big players in the future of health monitoring.
