Caption Health announced today that it partnered with Heartbeat Health to provide earlier access to cardiovascular care.
Brisbane, California–based Caption Health will provide its Caption Care for clinicians to perform heart ultrasounds in convenient locations — including a patient’s home — using the Caption AI platform. Heartbeat Health virtual cardiologists will receive, read and interpret the ultrasounds remotely through their telemedicine partnership.
Heartbeat will then provide televisits and discuss findings with primary care teams for patients with abnormal cardiac findings via the virtual programs offered in the partnership, according to a news release.
Caption Health designed its Caption AI platform to provide a convenient, cost-effective solution for cardiac ultrasound in assessing heart failure. It received FDA 510(k) clearance in 2020 and picked up CE mark approval earlier this month.
“This is an ideal coupling of patient-centric services, which will open up access to life-saving early heart disease detection and Heartbeat Health’s top-tier cardiologist network and virtual care,” Caption Health CEO Steve Cashman said in the release. “Whether it’s heart wellness for patients with risk factors, ambulatory care for patients with non-urgent symptoms or convenient follow-up echos to help patients avoid costly and complex readmissions, we believe our joint offering will have a profound impact on the quality and cost of cardiac care for millions of patients.”
The partnership follows an early-stage collaboration between the two companies to find heart failure among patients in at-risk populations where access to echocardiograms is limited. In studies across Heartbeat and Caption, the partners performed nearly 1,000 echocardiograms among a Medicare Advantage population at high risk for cardiovascular disease, revealing over 60% had clinically actionable findings.
Caption Health and Heartbeat said that their program will be sold to health providers, payers, and organizations focused on value-based care.
“This partnership addresses a significant gap in today’s management and care of structural heart disease – particularly in the early identification and management of heart failure,” Heartbeat Health co-founder and CEO Dr. Jeff Wessler said. “There are high rates of undiagnosed heart failure, and too often these patients stay under the radar until showing up to the emergency room already quite sick. But finding and managing these patients early in their course can make a world of difference in terms of outcomes.
“The combination of Caption Health’s AI-guided ultrasound and services with our connected virtual-first cardiology capabilities can unlock huge clinical and cost-saving benefits. It is value-based cardiology fundamentally reimagined.”