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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare
Cardiology
podcast. My name is Jacob Emerson.
Really appreciate you taking the time to join
us on the podcast today where we're joined
by a special guest. Doctor. Jeff Wessler is
a cardiologist
at Northwell Health in New York, and the
founder and CEO of Heartbeat Health. Doctor. Wessler,
thanks so much for taking the time to
sit down with us on the podcast today.
Thank you, Jacob. Nice to be here.
So, Jeff, before we dive into everything we
wanna talk with you about, can you tell
us a little bit more about yourself? What
your background in health care is and what
it is that you're doing today at Northwell?
Yeah. Sounds good. So,
really great to be here. So I I'm
a general cardiologist,
based out of New York. I practice at
Northwell Health out in Long Island,
and about 8 years ago, started a company
called Heartbeat Health, which is a decentralized,
virtual cardiology group.
Things have
taken off and, grown quite a bit since
then, and,
excited to talk a little bit more about
what we're doing in the space and the
virtual care space.
Yeah. Absolutely. And we're excited to hear a
little bit more about heartbeat health. But before
we do that, can we zoom out more
broadly and talk a little bit about the
top trends that you, as a cardiologist,
are are currently watching within the cardiovascular
care space?
Yeah. So, you know, I I think there
are there's quite a lot going on in
cardiology today,
and I'll focus on a few different areas
that I think are
particularly
timely and,
taking off in ways that I certainly have
not seen over the last decade.
The first is in the device and diagnostic
space.
This if you had,
if we'd had this conversation a decade ago
or 15 years ago,
most cardiac
diagnostics
were effectively locked behind a cardiologist door. You
had to go to a brick and mortar
cardiology office,
get see an have an appointment, get an
order, likely go back to that same office
to get
almost any sort of a cardiac test.
Fast forward to now, and the
diagnostic space for cardiology is completely different. You
can get almost any test without going into
a cardiologist's
office,
and many of those tests can now be
brought directly to your home, and some of
them are even worn on your wrist every
day. So it's a it's a
rapidly changing and vastly different
landscape for how you get the diagnostic test
done for cardiology.
The second space that I'd I'd note,
is the cardiometabolic
space. So if you think about the landscape
of cardiology diseases,
is also quite broad, and we're taking care
of
everything from prevention
to advanced care and advanced illness across multiples
many spectrum of disease.
Within that, this cardiometabolic
space,
has grown faster than any other. And a
large part of that is due to the
therapeutics that are available, and I'll call out
GLP ones as a prime example of this,
which are really changing the way we're thinking
about managing
early risk and
ideally taking care of patients to get in
front of their disease process before it progresses.
I'll probably say more on this in in
the
some upcoming,
in a few minutes when we get into
other topics. But if you had to pick
one area that is distinctly changing
in the disease category space, cardiometabolic
is on a path like, like none other.
And then the the last thing is I'll
call out that I'm not saying is value
based care.
So, you know, there's so so much talk
about value based care and cardiovascular disease right
now, and I'll I'll make the point and
make the,
specific note that I think there there is
still time to go before we're really ready
to be talking about true value based care
in cardiology.
There is there is definitely work that's being
done on how we improve outcomes at lower
costs while keeping quality
up and improving quality.
But the idea of a full value based
care model in cardiovascular disease, I think we're
several years away from that. And I think
understanding
that timeline and that we have to take
baby steps to get there is probably gonna
be key to any
strong intervention or any strong program in the
cardiology landscape today.
Sure. Absolutely. So just to recap for for
our listeners of those top three trends, Jeff,
that you mentioned, cardio devices and diagnostics are
becoming more mobile or have become more mobile.
The cardiometabolic
space is changing fast, especially with the rise
of GLP-1s
and care models are evolving, albeit slowly, to
become more values based.
You mentioned you had a lot more to
say about the GLP ones and the effect
that they're having
on cardiovascular
care. Can you expand on that a little
bit? Obviously that's a big topic of conversation
across a lot of,
pieces of the healthcare industry right now.
So so how is this impacting your patients
and the kind of care that that you
provide?
Yeah. So it is it is almost impossible
now to
have a cohort of patients or be managing
patients and not have GLP ones be part
of that conversation.
And in my view, and I think where
the evidence is bringing us and bringing me
to this view, what started as a medication
for
diabetics and weight loss, is quickly becoming,
probably one of the best cardiac medications that
exists.
And that's for a fairly simple reason, which
is that it may be the first medication
that patients and people who who need it,
actually want to take because it has this
amazing side effect of losing weight. There are
certainly some downstream issues with it, but adherence,
which is a prime issue for many cardiac
meds that work really well in a clinical
trial setting,
adherence is not really the issue for this
drug. People wanna take it. They like the
effects of weight loss. It's it's,
it it is really transforming,
how I think about managing a a an
early stage cardiometabolic
patient.
And I think as we
continue to face supply issues with these medications
and who should be getting them, the cardiac
patients in whom the outcomes are just tremendous
with these, we're gonna be seeing more and
more uptake, more and more studies coming out
just showing what benefit they show for clinical
outcomes compared to other therapies available.
Absolutely. And what you're saying really does match
alongside what we're hearing from from other,
clinicians in in different specialties. But it's fascinating
to hear you talk about the the impact
of these of these drugs, Jeff.
So if we were gonna talk about you
more more personally, what would you say you're
most proud of over the last 12 months
of your career in terms of achievements
or or new initiatives?
Anything that's really, stood out to you over
the last year or so.
Yeah. So as I mentioned about 8 years
ago, I started I founded a company called
Heartbeat Health. This was a pre COVID telehealth
startup, that effectively was
is doing decentralized care, meaning we have a
cardiology practice in the clouds providing
care for risk bearing organizations and provider groups,
primary care across the country in all 50
states now.
The last year, the last 12 months has
been by far the most exciting,
year of our journey, and it's for a
couple reasons. Number 1, patient care. The patient
outcomes are have been tremendous. We're now doing
many, many we're seeing many, many patients,
you know, many tens of thousands of patients
every month,
And having this effect at a national broad
scale,
that's really the reason I
I went into this and what I was
hoping for. And so crossing that chasm to
actually get to scale where you're actually helping
lots of people every day has been immensely
rewarding, not just for the business, but for
me personally.
And then the second thing is, I've I've
always been an academic at heart and, really,
interested, and,
I think it's been critical for my personal
journey to
demonstrate that we can bring new evidence to
the table for how we should be caring
for patients, how we should be delivering cardiovascular
care.
And heartbeat has done something that I am
very proud of. Probably my most, pride comes
from it, which is bring a new evidence
base to the table for,
how to how to do virtual cardiovascular care.
Does it work? Does it not work? Which
populations does it work for,
in which settings, and how to do it
best? So we've been
fairly rigorous about studying what we do with
the main hypothesis that,
you have to actually prove and demonstrate that
your care model works if it's gonna be
able to survive past just the business model
success, but actually create an intervention that can
live on decades decades into the future.
So we've done our first, we've we've done
many studies, but we completed our first randomized
control trial,
and brought the the results forward and and,
presented them at a conference. And this was,
really rewarding to see that we could actually
contribute to the evidence base showing different care
models can work.
Wow. So clearly a lot of major growth
and and results coming out of of Heartbeat
Health. And to personify that, Jeff, you you
recently announced a a series c funding round
into the company.
Can you tell us a little bit more
about that and what that means
for the company's trajectory overall?
Absolutely.
So Heartbeat's been around since 2017,
and
we've, at this point, done a fairly remarkable
thing, which is that we're still here.
Many, many companies, including great companies with great
founders and great teams, have not been able
to stick around, and everyone knows the startup
financing and funding environment has been particularly rough
over the last couple years.
So we have been very, very fortunate at
Heartbeat. Number 1, our economic
hygiene and our financial hygiene has been really,
important to the company, meaning we we have
tried to stay,
careful about how we spend resources, what what
our care model looks like, making sure that
we have good economic growth. And and then
most importantly,
have done a good job of being able
to still be at the table
when the market was really ready for our
solution.
And this past year, things finally did take
off. Our growth has been the strongest that
we've seen over the last,
8 months, frankly, that we've we've ever seen.
And this was quite fortunate because when we
went out
to the market for a financing, we were
in a very favorable position,
especially compared to what we're seeing out there.
And, so we had a we'd had a
competitive round and a lot of interest in,
invest for investors joining our team.
Ultimately,
we chose to move forward with a series
c that was led by an investor called
Cressey and Co, which has been a tremendous
partner for us. And then,
our our existing board and investors,
I wanna note or particularly call out 406
Ventures, Echo Health Ventures, Optum Ventures, and Kindred
Ventures.
These groups have been they've been with us
for the long term. They they get and
believe in the mission. They've been, you know,
really strong supporters, helped us figure out how
to approach this market, how to make this
virtual,
specialty care model work.
And
what we feel now is that we needed
this capital, and we wanna use this capital
to focus on growth. So we think we
believe
we're the really the you know, one of
the best virtual care cardiology groups out there
right now. And in cardiology,
our goal now is to grow, grow, grow,
push to become to hit scale, get to
as many primary care providers as we can,
as many health plans,
as we can to offer this model, which
ultimately will be beneficial for patients across the
US.
Amazing. Well, clearly, a lot of exciting things
to come on the horizon with heartbeat health.
So I appreciate you sharing a little bit
more details about that, Jeff. Before we go,
any any final thoughts or pieces of advice
you would wanna offer,
all of our listeners right now while you
have the ear of a lot of cardio
leaders from all over the country?
Yeah. I think what I'd say is,
maybe 2 things. Number 1, now's the time
to innovate. There there is so much opportunity
in the cardiovascular
space, everything from
prevention to advanced disease, many specific disease classes
that are underserved,
so many new diagnostic tests, so many new
therapeutics coming out that there really is an
opportunity
to bring a model to market, try it
from a new way of getting that care
to patients. And if you keep patient care
as the prime focus and patient outcomes as
your prime focus, then
you're more likely to either be successful or
learn something that's gonna inform the next model,
that you try.
The second thing I'd say is that given
how vast this space is, you've gotta find
a niche to focus in.
So so figuring out whether that's the way
you deliver care, the specific disease you're focused
on, the specific diagnostic or therapeutic or population,
those niches really drive the early
traction, the early adoption, the early findings that
are gonna let you know if there's a
model there.
And it's very, very easy to get distracted,
so staying focused to a core goal tends
to yield the best success in the long
run.
Fantastic. Well, doctor Wessler, thank you so much
for taking the time to sit down with
us and for sharing your insights with our
listeners. We truly appreciate it. Thank you, Jacob.
Appreciate it. If you'd like to listen to
more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare, you can visit
beckershospitalreview.com.