Hello Heart, a digital therapeutics company that focuses on heart health, has raised $70 million in a Series D funding round.
The investment was led by Stripes, a growth equity firm based in New York. The funding comes as digital therapeutic demands have risen. According to Hello Heart, the company is seeing big demand for heart health solutions and doubled the number of its employer clients in the past few months. Hello Heart is a clinically-based smartphone app that helps users monitor their blood pressure with an FDA-approved blood pressure monitor. The app provides real-time alerts to extremely high readings and can help prevent worsening health outcomes by encouraging interventions with physicians.
There is renewed focus on heart health after the U.S. Surgeon General recently issued a call to action to improve hypertension control in the U.S., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that employers cover automated home blood pressure monitors.
Hello Heart boasts high engagement with its app. In a study published in JAMA Network Open analyzing data of more than 28,000 Hello Heart users, reduced median systolic blood pressure was observed in over 85% of users who had Stage 2 hypertension at baseline one-year post enrollment in the study. Additionally, higher engagement with the app was associated with lower systolic blood pressure over time. The company stated the ROI and cost savings of using Hello Heart is a reduction of total employer medical spend by an average of $1,865 per participant per year, according to The Validation Institute.
“Hypertension affects 47% of Americans, and heart health in some way touches all of us. Everyone has a family member or colleague that is affected by heart disease. We empower people to understand, manage, and self-improve their heart health using the app technology and behavioral science,” Maayan Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Hello Heart, said in a statement. “We make it easy for employers to work with Hello Heart, and it just works. We are thrilled to be working with so many of the nation’s leading employers as they empower their employees to make smart and healthy choices."
Hello Heart intends to “deepen the use cases” of its AI to include enhancing lifestyle digital coaching modules and adding whole heart health functionality, such as deeper medication tracking capabilities, cholesterol tracking and hyperlipidemia digital coaching.