mHeart
The evaluation of Chest Pain Syndrome (CPS) is a costly diagnostic challenge. “Chest Pain Syndrome” is inclusive of cardiac and non-cardiac etiologies with diverse symptoms such as chest pain, chest pressure, neck pain, jaw pain, shoulder pain, epigastric pain, back pain, palpitations, dyspnea, cough, nausea, weakness and malaise, or dizziness. Over 8-10M patients are sent or present to an emergency department (ED) each year in the US for “chest pain”. Nearly 90% or 7.2M visits are determined to be “non-urgent” or non-life threatening. Today’s Standard of Care for Chest Pain evaluation is to have a 12 lead EKG performed and interpreted by medical professionals to first rule out an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) events (i.e. heart attacks). Symptoms alone are insufficient for an adequate evaluation; therefore, patient either head straight to the ED or are instructed by their doctor to head to the ED. Chest pain accounts for nearly 10% of all emergency department visits in the US. The direct annual cost to patients and the US healthcare system for one average visit to the ED is $6,000, resulting in a multi-billion dollar bill. The indirect cost placed on families and society due to lost wages/productivity, and undue stress is also of a similar magnitude. There are 1.1M patients annually who suffer life-threatening acute coronary syndrome (ACS) event (ie heart attack) each year. For these patients reducing pre-hospital delays, (symptom onset time to ED door), from 2 to 4 hours on average to 60 minutes will help reduce mortality rates from ACS events and complications arising from ongoing heart damage.
Two regions in the US which are struggling with a lack of continuity, poor access to care or over utilization of ER resources are in the inner city and rural areas. Individuals in inner city environments have traditionally had poor access to specialized care. The main mode of treatment has typically been the local ER with average wait times often exceeding 4-6 hours, which after the pandemic, has worsened. This group needs a platform which facilitates connectivity with specialty care. This would allow their local ER to decompress and improve the quality of care delivered.
Therefore, while the inner city hospitals may have resources, the system is burdened with high volumes resulting in piecemeal care rendering and poor connectivity with cardiac specialists. In contrast, rural regions of the US often do not have specialty care available for long distances which may result in patients having to drive at least 30 minutes, or helicoptered to the nearest facility, to receive advanced medical care or simply engage with a cardiologist.
Our platform will:
- Facilitate rapid and early chest pain evaluations to reduce evaluation times.
- Reduce time to care for critical chest pain
- Reduce overall healthcare costs for all stakeholders - patients, insurers, and healthcare systems
- Reduce delays in care by removing the clinician as the first point of contact.
- Improve chronic care management and medical adherence through serial self-evaluations
DRS.LINQ’s mobile platform, mHeart, is a 2 care-path system designed for chronic disease management and mobile triage through remote patient monitoring by integrating its wearable, vEKG, the mHeart app, and the mHeart cloud-- bringing the cardiology office to the patient, anytime – anywhere. This is the mHeart Platform.
The mHeart platform achieves the following:
1. Facilitates rapid and early chest pain evaluations to reduce evaluation times.
2. Reduces time to care for critical chest pain.
3. Reduces the overall healthcare costs for all stakeholders, including patients, insurers, and healthcare systems
4. Reduces delays in care by removing the clinician as the first point of contact.
5. Improves chronic care management and medical adherence through serial self-evaluations.
The mHeart vEKG is a 10-12 lead multiparametric EKG system which will assist the mHeart App by providing objective clinical data, from a 10-12 lead EKG, and other important vital sign parameters. The vEKG will provide the medical grade information similar to an EKG performed in a cardiologist’s office or in the ER. By analyzing data from the vEKG alongside with subjective information from the patient regarding their medical history, symptoms, and medication, mHeart will be able to facilitate not only chronic management of the cardiac patient but also facilitate mobile triage when that same patient has chest discomfort. An automated biweekly reconciliation process will help improve patient engagement with the cardiologist’s office, and improve medication adherence. In addition, our process will help reduce medication errors. All combined, patient outcomes will improve.
mHeart addresses the needs of all cardiac patients; however, the most vulnerable will reap the greatest benefit. Per the WHO, heart disease is the leading cause of death globally, claiming 17.9M lives annually.
For those without resources, access to cardiac care is a major inequity. In the inner city, patients utilize their local emergency room for episodic care. Unfortunately, this results in a lack of care continuity resulting in a lack of education, support, meaningful engagement with a cardiologist culminating in poor medical/medication adherence. Altogether this results in poor outcomes for those in the inner city.
In contrast, those who are in rural America have poor access due to a dearth of cardiologist in their community or hospitals capable of providing advanced lifesaving care. Those in rural communities typically live more than 30 minutes from access to advanced cardiac care. Rural communities have worse cardiac outcomes than urban/suburban communities.
Similar issues exist around the world with a lack of access to specialty medicine.
mHeart as a solutions aims to democratize access to care. The mHeart platform is designed to engage patients on regular intervals to review their medications, medical problems and remind the patient to perform their own EKG. These updates would be sent to the patient's care provider [physician, cardiologist, prescriber, telehealth] for review. Highlighted deviations from the prior check would allow offices to engage with patients to ensure adherence to medications, address problem issues before they arise and the EKG database will create an early warning system for patients and cardiologists.
mHeart will facilitate longterm management of the cardiac patient; however, the major benefit of having mHeart implemented in all communities resides in its ability to reduce the time to evaluation and engagement with a cardiologist during an episode of chest pain.
When patients are enrolled on the mHeart platform, the biweekly checkin and EKGs are designed to maintain engagement and create muscle memory for EKG patch application. Creating familiarity and a level of comfort, results in the mHeart becoming the low cost default evaluation tool for chest pain.
Today, 65% of our chest pain patients wait 4-6 hours or longer before seeking a medical evaluation. Unfortunately, if the symptoms are due to a heart attack, then 80% of the damage, occurs within the first 60 minutes of onset.
With mHeart mobile triage can occur in under 7 minutes. The mHeart app will ask patients a series of question designed to ascertain the nature their symptoms rapidly and reliably. This process takes approximately 5 minutes. This is then followed by the mHeart App guiding a patient through the performance of their on EKG and other vital sign measurements. Over the next 2 minutes, clinical data is gathered in the form of an EKG, respiratory rate, temperature, and oxygen levels. The narrative and clinical data are immediately sent to the patient's cardiologist for review and further guidance, reducing the time to engagement from 4-6 hours to minutes.
Eventually, our algorithms will automate responses to critical findings by activating EMS.
Rakesh Shah, MD, MBA, FACC, Founder/CEO
- University of Oxford, UK, Exec. MBA completed June 1, 2018, focus on Finance
- Biomedical Electrical Engineering background
- Interventional Cardiologist & General Cardiologist – practicing since 2001
- Board of Directors of Quality Health Alliance, local Accountable Care Organization
- Board of Directors of the Heart Institute, St. Mary Medical Center
- Ex-Chairman of Internal Medicine, St. Mary Medical Center
- Past-President and VP of Medical staff (750+ physicians), St. Mary Medical Center
- Interim Chief Medical Officer, St. Mary Medical Center
- Extensive clinical research experience:
- Principal or Sub-investigator on 50+ clinical trial
- Ex-chairman of the Research Advisory Committee and Ex-IRB member
Allen Shain, CTO
- University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. (1985-89; 2016-2018), BA in Computer Applications & Applied Mathematics; continued Doctorate studies in Computer Vision.
- Johns Hopkins, Coursera Online, (2015 – 2016) Master Certificate in Data Science.
- MIT, Professional Certificates for Tackling the Challenges of Big Data and The Analytics Edges
- Harvard, Professional Certificate for Innovations in Healthcare
- MapR, Big Data and Hadoop Administration Certificate
- IBM, Certification for Information Server
- Amazon Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
- Talend: DI Basics/Adv, Big Data, Talend Cloud, Talend DQ
Michael Minakowski, Business Development Officer
- 25+ years career in healthcare. Most recently engineered a turnaround for a struggling medical device company and drove them to profitability with a 28-30% annual EBIDTA growth over 3 years
- BS in Biology with Masters level coursework – University of Maryland – College Park
- Scherago International: 22 years progressed from regional sales to National Sales Manager, VP of Sales, Marketing and Business Development to Board of Directors
- Medical Indicators: 4 years, VP Sales and Marketing. Led sale to Progress Equity Partners Diagnostic Marketing Association – Board of Directors
Peter Dolch, Advisor, Tech Entrepreneur
- MIT: MIS- BA 1989
- Biospectal, founder, democratizing blood pressure monitoring globally
- Negotiated, first-of-its-kind, contract with The World Health Organization to address morbidity/mortality in ante-natal women in low to middle income countries
- Executive Board Member MIT Sloan Club of NY
With each member of the team with over 20 years of experience in their respective fields, mHeart team is poised to lead with collaboration, respect and extensive experience.
Our medical advisory board is comprised of respected cardiologists across the US. Finally, the independently appointed member on our board is Dr. Deepak Bhatt. Formerly, he was an interventional cardiologist at Harvard, Brigham Women's in Boston. He is now the Chairman of Cardiology at Mt. Sinai in NYC. He is one of the most influential and respected cardiologist in the US. His vision of how mHeart can positively change access to care, reduce overall cost and improve quality, are identical to those of Dr. Shah's. As a combined and actively growing force, mHeart will penetrate communities across the US and then communities around the world.
- Enable continuity of care, particularly around primary health, complex or chronic diseases, and mental health and well-being.
- United States
- Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model, but which is not yet serving anyone
We have made a proof of concept device and tested the questionnaire portion of our software. We are now raising funds to complete Generation 1 mHeart which will be fully operational. We have received positive guidance through our FDA presubmission meeting for the 510k pathway and design submission. We are going to be completing a human factor study for the final Gen 1 design by the end of April 2023. Once completed, we will be developing Gen 1 mHeart which can be placed in front of the FDA within 12 months for a 510k approval.
We not currently in market with a production product.
However, our US market size is 50 million patients with heart disease, diabetes or multiple (3 or more) cardiac risk factors. This is targeted to grow by 20-25 million patients in the next 20-25 years.
There are a number of challenges which come in attempting to bring a medical product to market, couple that with a product which has the ability to make a sizable impact on the global healthcare scene, the challenges increase exponentially. MIT solve, with like minded groups and individuals driven to leave our world better than where they first found it, meets the core beliefs of the team bringing mHeart to the market.
Heart disease has been the leading cause of death since 1950 in the US and 1980, worldwide. This problem will continue to grow as our populations age and human resources and access to specialty medicine decline. As our population ages, we are facing a shortage of physicians and nurses, not in the US alone, but worldwide. By 2030, low and middle income countries will face the greatest shortage in healthcare workforce. Add on the fact that heart disease is a problem of the aging population, our healthcare infrastructure will face challenges unlike before to evaluate chest pain patients.
As an example, of the nearly 10M ER visits for chest pain, only 6% truly need an ER level evaluation; however, if a chest pain patient who is having a heart attack does not get to the ER within the first 60 minutes of symptom onset, then irreparable damage will have occurred leading to poor long term outcomes and an increase in mortality. Additionally, each visit to the ER for chest pain costs on average $6000, costing the healthcare system $60B annually.
mHeart is a simple yet much needed solution to connect patients and physicians with critical information designed to facilitate medical decision making remotely. As the mHeart platform matures, machine learning algorithms will facilitate risk stratification and automate responses to critical findings. As an example, if a patient's chest discomfort is due to a heart attack then mHeart will direct patients to call emergency services and seek immediate medical assistance while the medical narrative is sent ahead to the local emergency room to facilitate mobilization of services.
In poor countries, mHeart will connect villages with the nearest medical facility so that those patients too will have access rather than having to travel hours to days for care.
MIT Solve, as a team with global leaders, can help provide access to global organizations and governments with aligned goals and ideologies, namely, improve healthcare outcomes through connectivity while reducing workloads on already overworked medical professionals and reducing overall healthcare costs.
The pandemic highlighted the need for platforms designed to improve cardiac care by providing healthcare professionals with high quality data through connectivity. The data provided by mHeart, especially the electrocardiogram, is equivalent to that of an electrocardiogram performed by EMS, ERs, or physician offices.
Partnering with MIT Solve will accelerate our journey so that the world will be ready for the healthcare challenges yet to come, be they another pandemic, or decreasing human capital, or a need curb costs without denying care. mHeart is step one.
- Human Capital (e.g. sourcing talent, board development)
- Monitoring & Evaluation (e.g. collecting/using data, measuring impact)
- Product / Service Distribution (e.g. delivery, logistics, expanding client base)
mHeart’s innovation lies in the idea of removing the physician as the first point of contact for patients who are at risk of cardiac events and who are experiencing chest pain at home. This is accomplished by designing a medical grade mobile electrocardiogram(EKG) platform along with an app which utilizes an algorithmic process similar to that of a physician to risk stratify patients and immediately connect patients with their prescribing physician, primary care or cardiologist.
mHeart's innovation lies at the forefront of what has recently been proposed in a review article from June 2022 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology(ACC). The reviewer recommended that out of hospital EKGs should be performed before first medical contact. mHeart will not only meet this recommendation, but will fulfill additional needs in the new proposed care paradigm. mHeart, once fully operational, will utilize analytics to active Emergency medical services. The existing risk stratification algorithms will be included in its analytics along with EKG interpretative algorithms to help expedite criticals and predict which patients may be at risk for future cardiac events through the bi-weekly checking process.
Importantly, the mHeart journey starts well before patients develop chest pain/discomfort. The mHeart journey for patients starts in the physician's office where mHeart will be prescribed for chronic disease management. By having patients review their medications, problems lists, and performing their own EKG, we will create an individualized database which will contribute to the analytics for predicting future cardiac events. The value of an EKG lies in being able to track serial changes which occur over time. Although these changes are subtle machine learning algorithms have made strides in predicting which patients may be at risk for a heart attack or other cardiac issues.
When patients have chest discomfort, their EKG should be performed within 15 minutes of symptom onset followed by serial EKGs. We are unable to follow this recommendation from the ACC because technology to facilitate EKGs in the field are not readily available. mHeart will be a low cost solution for a high cost, economically and biologically, problem.
mHeart's chronic management solution is designed to help improve patient engagement, education and adherence to prescribed therapies while the mobile triage solution, in the same package, is designed to rapidly assess, engage and transmit data for further guidance. This closed loop system, which ultimately will have automated components, will not only help reduce overall healthcare costs, but improve patient outcomes.
Our goals:
1. Improve patient adherence:
Studies have demonstrated that repetitive proactive engagement with a patient results in improved medication adherence which then translate to improved outcomes.
mHeart's biweekly checkin will review medications. Any deviations will be highlighted as the information is transmitted to the prescribing physician's office. By highlighting the deviation, the doctor or his/her nurse will proactively call the patient to inquire as to the cause of non-adherence. This will allow physicians to have a better quality follow up visit since medications will be up to date and patients will be adherent to the regimen, or a work up will have been initiated in the event a patient has been having side-effects. This will improve patient satisfaction, earlier detection, reduce physician frustration from having to deal with non-adherence during valuable office time, and improve patient outcomes.
2. Improved patient outcomes:
mHeart's pre-clinical EKG will allow patients to perform their own EKG anytime, anywhere and be directed within 10 minutes by their physician with next steps. mHeart will start by asking a 4 minute symptom questionnaire , followed by another minute for the EKG acquisition. This information will then be relay to their physician for review and guidance towards next steps. As a cardiologist, Dr. Shah, already receives calls from ER physicians to help guide next steps. Now, mHeart will be the first point of contact followed by the patient's physician or cardiologist who knows them the best. The symptom history, coupled with the EKG data is will provide 95% of the information necessary to guide next steps. Importantly, critical abnormalities will be able to get to the ER faster with services activated from the field.
3. Cost reduction:
Earlier detection and improved engagement will lead to a reduction in overall healthcare costs by streamlining evaluations. Additionally, patients who have undergone cardiac procedures, enrolled on the mHeart platform, will have lower readmission rates. Approximately 10-12% of the patients who undergo bypass surgery or are discharged after a heart attack will present within 30 days with complaints of chest discomfort. Most of these complaints are due to anxiety associated with a traumatic cardiac event such as bypass surgery or a heart attack. mHeart will provide confidence to the patient through early evaluation, detection and engagement with their cardiologist.
4. Physician Satisfaction:
Physician satisfaction is a part of the quintuple aim. Burnout in the medical community is at an all time high. By reducing unnecessary chest pain observations in the hospital, a cardiologist will find greater job satisfaction by being able to care for the sick inpatients who need their attention, instead of have a significant amount of their time being taken in performing consultations for non-cardiac chest pain. Additionally, the early and rapid presentation of heart attacks will provide cardiologists greater satisfaction by saving more heart muscle, therefore, reducing mortality. As the machine learning component becomes more robust, mHeart will reduce the number of calls a physician will have to tend to, thereby providing them with needed downtime.
- 3. Good Health and Well-being
- 5. Gender Equality
- 10. Reduced Inequalities
- 17. Partnerships for the Goals
There are two impact opportunities with mHeart which must be clearly defined. The first is in the US and other first world countries. The second is in low to middle income countries.
In the US and other first world countries, the population is aging which will result in an increase in heart disease. Tracking back to 1970, healthcare expenditure as a percentage of GDP has been on the rise in these countries and as the population ages, healthcare expenditure will continue to increase. mHeart will help reduce the cost of care as a direct measure.
mHeart will reduce mortality rates due to heart attacks. The long term benefit will be a reduction in systolic heart failure rates as well. Another metric which could be followed directly is a reduction in symptom onset to ER presentation time due to a heart attack. Due to the multiparametric nature of the mHeart hardware, mHeart is expected to reduce hospital length of stay for diseases such as pneumonia and heart failure exacerbations.
In rural communities, mHeart will reduce the time to care and mortality by allowing EMS to be activated much soon. Most rural communities are at least 30 minutes from the nearest medical center.
Inner city communities will be able to shift care for low income patients to cardiology and internal medicine clinics from the ER, thus, reducing ER overcrowding and delays.
In second and third world countries, mHeart kits can be provided to villages and towns without any immediate access to care through NGOs. Residents in those communities could then be enrolled onto the mHeart platform. Rather than providing each resident with their own product, multiple locations with individuals who typically provide medical care to the townspeople would trained on the usage of the mHeart platform. Those individuals would then be able to guide residents through the questionnaire, followed by the vEKG being performed. This information could then be uploaded to a central hub where cardiologists/internists could provide pro-bono guidance to patients having chest discomfort. Without mHeart, it becomes a guessing game for a diagnosis.
In these countries, rather than immediately impacting mortality rates, mHeart would facilitate diagnosis so that agencies could get a handle on actual rates of heart disease/attacks and then focus on eduction and implementation of advanced resources through strategic implementation. For those communities, once data is captured, especially their medication list, mHeart could help reduce medication error rates through cross checking for drug-drug interactions, and facilitate ongoing check ups. By developing a longitudinal database, the analytics, through machine learning will act as an early warning system and in the process predict which patients may be at risk for heart attack.
Due to the wide applications and impactful nature of mHeart, the impact metrics are quite different based on the geopolitical and socioeconomic demographics of the countries in which it is rolled out. Regardless of the country, mHeart will have the ability to positively impact the lives it touches.
In general change is hard for people to accept. Providing people with a value proposition facilitates change. In the case of mHeart, it would bring virtual medicine to the forefront and will have come full circle. Originally, medicine was practiced in a virtual fashion through prayer and mysticism. Through a gradual change in belief and an acceptance of the scientific process, mankind started to developed modern medicine. We are at a precipice in medicine. With ongoing shortages in healthcare labor and the cracks in the healthcare systems which have been extensively exposed by the pandemic, patients have started to realize that virtual medicine, but this time powered by science and technology, is necessary their needs.
A value proposition for each stake is present in the mHeart model.
1. Hospital systems lose money on most chest pain observations performed in the hospital. Ballad Health, in the Appalachia, demonstrated a $5400 saving for every chest pain observation visit avoided by implementing an aggressive chest pain observation reduction program. In this manner ERs can be decluttered and inpatient beds optimized for better utilization.
2. Insurers have an opportunity to save ER related expenditures. Based on the latest estimates, the average chest pain visit to the ER costs $6300. This cost is unsustainable. The implementation of mHeart could drive down the cost of care dramatically and allow insurers to start implementing value based initiatives which hold every one accountable.
3. Physicians have an opportunity to earn up to $1700 annually per patient enrolled through chronic disease management and remote monitoring codes. Additionally, mHeart will allow detailed telehealth visits to occur by providing accurate actionable data to the patient's physician.
4. Patients will be provided mHeart by healthcare systems or private physicians. The ability to connect with their physician and improve engagement is a strong driver to encourage and improve patient behavior. mHeart will be a low cost system which will then encourage patients to utilize it early during an episode of chest pain/discomfort rather than waiting 4-6 hours before seeking medical attention. The longitudinal EKG database will provide patients and their physician with early warning on which patients may be at risk for an upcoming cardiac event. This is especially important when it comes to women's health.
While gender equality measure have been applied to reproductive health and employment opportunities, one must realize that women have worse outcomes during heart attacks due an implicit bias in the medical community that women are less likely to have a heart attack than men. This leads to under- and delayed- cardiac testing for women. mHeart will level that playing field by placing the power of initiating a cardiac evaluation in their hands before first medical contact.
It will be the clear communication of these value propositions which will facilitate change and allow mHeart to penetrate the market with little resistance.
mHeart is multifactorial. It bridges fundamental technology used in cardiac diagnostics for over 100 years while incorporating modern day technology with an App all of which will be powered on the cloud and AI/ML algorithms.
The three components of mHeart are 1) the hardware call the vEKG, 2) the mHeart App, 3) mHeart cloud/analytics
Hardware:
The vEKG is a multiparametric objective medical data acquisition device. The vEKG has disposable leads in the form of a chest patch,limb leads and a data acquisition box. The chest leads are the most difficult to apply. The mHeart innovation will allow patients to place leads V2-V5 on their chest reliably and consistently. Three electrodes extending from the chest patch can be reliably placed in the following positions, Left lateral waist; right lateral waist and the third on the Left shoulder. A fourth lead will be incorporated into the data acquisition box. The leads placed on the torso will be disposable and used for point of care testing. These leads will have a single wire which will connect with the data acquisition box.
The data acquisition box will be reusable. The single wire from the patch will connect into the box which will bluetooth connect with the patient's mobile device and the mHeart app. Other feature in the box will be a pulse oximeter, temperature sensor and a respiratory rate sensor. All together the data acquired will provide enough information to a clinician to guide next steps.
As an example, if a patient is having chest discomfort, but the EKG is normal and does not have symptoms suggestive of a heart attack, but has an elevated temperature and respiratory rate and a dropping pulse oximeter reading, then this patient likely has a pneumonia and should be evaluated sooner rather than later or may be even sent for an urgent chest xray followed by the initiation of antibiotics.
Another example is the patient who has risk factors, concerning symptoms for a heart attack and an abnormal EKG would be directed immediately to the ER.
mHeart App:
The mHeart App will collect demographic information, medications, and data transmitted by the data acquisition box. The App will act as a virtual medical assistant to facilitate bi-weekly check-ins to reconcile problem lists and medications for chronic disease management. It will also ask for patient to perform their EKG twice a month to help build the personalized database.
When patients have chest discomfort, mHeart will turn into mobile triage tool. It will ask a series of questions which will take approximately 4 minutes to answer, followed by guiding the patient to perform their own EKG. The narrative will then be reviewed by the patient. The narrative, in simple paragraph form, and the EKG will be sent to the patient's physician for review and guidance through next steps.
mHeart Cloud/Analytics:
The mHeart cloud and analytics will utilize risk stratification algorithms to help determine which patient are high risk patients when having chest pain/discomfort and signal to them the need to go urgently to the ER. It will provide a Red-Alert to patients and send the same information to the patient's cardiologist while activating EMS for transport to the ER.
As the database builds for each patients, the EKG data collected will act as a predictor for which patients may be at risk for an upcoming cardiac event. This would allow mHeart to alert the patient's physician of an upcoming event, giving physicians ample time to initiate a work-up before a heart attack occurs. This is because with time, minute changes occur in the EKG pattern which AI/ML algorithms have started to put together and predict, currently with a one year forward-looking window, which patients may be at risk for a heart attack. Our database will be more robust than what is in existence for any patient and promote greater predictive accuracy.
There is emerging data in the US that a large enough database of EKGs is predictive of valvular heart disease. This would allow mHeart to help reduce cost burdens by avoiding unnecessary echocardiograms, an ultrasound of the heart.
Therefore, all together, our innovation will allow greater accuracy, cost reduction, and connectivity between patients and their physicians.
- A new application of an existing technology
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Imaging and Sensor Technology
- Software and Mobile Applications
- United States
- United States
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Having grown up in the US 1976 and onwards, Dr. Shah is all too familiar with the concept of exclusion; thereby, making DEI efforts of great import. Having proper representation from diverse ethnicities will allow mHeart to also be incorporated through trust and respect into those very communities which are represented.
In medicine, historically, clinical trials have predominantly been focused around caucasian males. Unfortunately, this approach from western pharma managed to provide minimal data on women and other ethnic groups on how they would respond to medications. Only recently have medication trials started enrolling more patients with varied demographics.
Although by DNA we are 99.9% alike, however, the 0.1% difference has managed to create tremendous diversity in the human race which has unfortunately led to numerous tensions and difference around the world as we know. Therefore, as our company grows, we will be looking to ensure that we are non-discriminatory from racial to gender orientation to sexual preference. Most importantly, everyone must feel valued in the organization so that they may contribute in a positive manner to the core mission for mHeart - provide democratized access to medical care for all communities. Our mission for mHeart embodies the DEI mission as a whole.
DRS.LINQ is positioning mHeart in a B2B2C model.
mHeart will be sold to healthcare systems or private cardiologist at a minimum cost.
Upfront Enrollment cost: $500 per patient
Annual subscription cost: $200 per patient enrolled
Expected duration of enrollment: 10 years
We do not want to be in the business of hiring cardiologist or nurses to provide patient monitoring services. This would undermine the doctor patient relationship and be detrimental to our business. If we provided monitoring services, our costs would increase exponentially which would result in a substantial cost increase in overall healthcare expenditures, therefore, undermining our core mission.
Our financial model takes into consideration a 20% attrition rate as a worst case scenario. The table below will guide you through the financial structure. Our revenue model is designed to fly under the radar of capital budget financing for healthcare systems. Patient activity on mHeart 4 months or less will offset the cost of mHeart.
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- Organizations (B2B)
We will need three rounds of funding to become fully sustainable. We anticipate needing $3.1 M in the current round followed by two more rounds of $4M each.
This amount of funding is needed to accelerate the development of our AI/ML algorithms and expansion of our sales team. Based on our current predictions, we will be EBITDA positive in 2026. Further expansion can then take place into countries such as Canada, UK, France, Spain, and Italy. In order to achieve this, we will need partnerships with the government healthcare agencies in those respective countries. This partnership should facilitate implementation and fund the ongoing expansion.
The last phase will then focus on underserved nations. This penetration will take longer but could start by having mHeart embedded with NGOs such as Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, Partners in Health, and World Health Organization.
Dr. Shah has personally invested $214k to this venture. There have been a number of industry insiders who have invested.
Our first investor is a cardiac surgeon. Our business development officer was investor number 2. This was followed by a series of investors: a pacemaker representative for a major medical device maker, a concierge physician, two cardiologists, an impact investor, a cardiac psychologist, a financial planner, and a radiation oncologist. All totaled, these individuals have invested $425k. We are awaiting commitments from a cardiologist, a nurse staffing agency, and an ex-cardiac nurse.
We have received a commitment to invest from the Ben Franklin Technology Partners, provided we find a lead investor.
Most recently, we received a commitment from the Oxford Angel Fund to invest in the current round and a follow-on round.
We are seeing an uptick interest and investment traction.
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Founder/CEO
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Founder, Managing Partner, Co-founder, Advisor