The North Carolina State Health Plan is partnering with Hello Heart, a company focused on cardiac health management, to provide eligible plan members in rural areas with increased awareness and enable them to improve their heart health.
The program will be accessible, at no cost, to up to 55,000 state health plan members who work for select organizations and have been diagnosed with hypertension, high cholesterol, menopause or other heart disease risk factors.
Additionally, members will be given a monitor and app to track key metrics like blood pressure, cholesterol, weight and activity levels remotely.
They will also receive tools to help them comply with medication routines, act on personalized health insights and share reports with their provider.
Hello Heart also announced it will soon introduce a pill box with built-in light indicators that illuminate when it’s time to take a dose. The pill box will sync directly with the Hello Heart app.
"By partnering with the North Carolina State Health Plan, we are putting preventive tools directly into members' hands, helping them take steps to avoid heart attacks and strokes before they happen," Maayan Cohen, CEO and cofounder of Hello Heart, told MobiHealthNews.
"And we are showing that with the right digital health program, you can scale preventive efforts to every member's home, no matter where they are."
THE LARGER TREND
According to the CDC, self-measured blood pressure monitoring is among the strategies that help people control blood pressure.
Adopting self-measured blood pressure monitoring programs could reduce heart attacks by 4.9% and strokes by 3.8% as well as generate an average of $7,794 in savings in healthcare costs per person over 20 years.
Compared to standard treatment, self-measured blood pressure monitoring would yield a return on investment of $7.50 to $19.34 per $1 spent over 10 years, according to the CDC.
Last year, Amwell, a digital care company that connects providers, payers and patients, announced that Hello Heart became a partner in its clinical programs portfolio accessible on the Amwell Converge platform.
The alliance enables Amwell health plan clients to grant their employer accounts access to Hello Healthcardiovascular's platform.
In 2022, Hello Heart secured $70 million in a Series D funding round led by growth equity firm Stripes.
Other participants include IVP, Resolute and BlueRun Ventures.
The round came nearly a year after the startup announced a $45 million Series C raise.
Another company in this space is One Drop, which in 2021 partnered with pharma giant Bayer, allowing users to track blood pressure and weight in an app using connected devices, log meals, receive coaching from registered nurses, learn AI-enabled predictions on their glucose and blood pressure, and access educational content.
