Smartheart Turns Your Mobile Phone Into A Heart Monitor

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com → Learn More

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. As this is the case, there are many of us in the U.S. — and across the globe — who have had heart disease or cardiac illnesses affect our lives in many unpleasant ways. Today, thanks to advances in modern technology, we are beginning to see services, devices, and applications that may one day prevent heart attacks and heart-related conditions (currently, 1 American has a heart attack every 34 seconds). SHL Telemedicine, which is bringing personalized health care to mobile, announced today at Disrupt NYC a new medical gadget called “smartheart”. Smartheart is a lightweight personal electrocardiogram (or ECG) that allows you to monitor your heart in realtime.

Using smartheart, within 30 seconds, any end user is able to record a hospital-grade ECG and transmit it to their doctor, cardiologist, or hospital to get a diagnosis in realtime. Those who’ve experienced electrocardiograms at a hospital or doctor’s office know that the process typically involves lying down on a bed, while doctors prod you with multiple sticky monitors, attaching them to different places on the chest. Smartheart, on the other hand, is lighter and sleeker than traditional ECGs, only involves one monitor, and can be strapped around the chest. Smartheart ECGs, as I was lucky enough to demonstrate onstage, can be made standing up.

The accompanying free app, which is available on iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, connects to the ECG wirelessly, and displays, through a nifty interface, the level of battery power and connectivity. Once the device has been configured with the app, connection happens within seconds. Then, you’re free to begin taking your pulse, so to speak. In as little as 30 seconds, the app will display your results and give you the opportunity to email them directly to your physician. For those who find themselves in harrowing circumstances, the app will immediately identify an irregular or abnormal heart condition and send an alert to the user in realtime.

And the best thing? The device itself will cost $500. That’s less than the price of an iPhone, and generally speaking, the iPhone (itself) can’t save your life. Yet. Further data analysis, reports, and other medical advice will be made available on a subscription basis for what Smartheart VP Shay Leibovitz said will be a low price, “way under $20 a month”, he says.

Now, as someone who had heart surgery at a young age, I am without a doubt biased towards this kind of technology. But, to me, a free application and a lightweight, hospital-grade, and cheap device that can be used by anyone with a smartphone, from anwhere, is pretty cool. Really cool. Not only that, but the potential positive medical effects a device like this could have is dramatic. Considering that Leibovitz says that 50 percent of heart-related deaths happen before one can get to the hospital, preemptive monitoring and treatment can have some amazing life-saving potential.

so anyone wants to puts up a slide, otherwise I'm just going to announce a random start up. Alright, fuck it who should we announce?

I am going to try SHL Telemedicine every time. Oh look! If it isn't SHL telemedicine, my favorite. So good I announced it twice. Please welcome to the stage this time Shelly Brits and EK El Roy from SHL Telemedicine. Roughly 7 years ago at the age of 52 my dad died from a heart attack. This was not the end of it.

29 days later, 6 O'clock in the morning, at the age of 56, my wife's dad died from a heart attack? Judges? Folks? Anyone here knows someone, family members, coworkers who had a heart attack? Raise your hand please. That's amazing. So i am not alone here today. Imagine what if we could enable any person whether healthy or an old patient with cardiovascular disease significantly increased the chances of surviving a heart attack.

Now stop imagining. What I am going show you today is fit proven reality doing exactly that. With me today on stage is Ed Alloy CEO of SHL My name is Shay Leibovitz, I am Vice President of the SHL. For the purpose of demonstration today, I 'll get some help from Rick Hensen. Rick, please join me on stage for a couple of minutes.

And while Rick is strapping on Smartheart, let me just show you how a hospital ECG looks like.

First, you'll have to be in a hospital or in a clinic for that matter. Then you'll be connected to that big machine that you see over there, that's the ECG machine. You'll be connected with all these cables going out from the machine to specific places over your body, after you've been rubbed with an ECG gel all over your body.

And you'll have to have an ECG technician, or a trained doctor, that can operate the machine.

You should also know that 50% of the people who died from a heart attack, died before arriving to the hospital and getting medical treatment.

Time is the most crucial factor in cardiac events. The sooner you'll be in hospital getting medical treatment, the higher your chances to survive. don't worry Smart Heart will dramatically decreased this number. Are you ready? Ladies and gentlemen what I'm going to show you now is that within 30 seconds I will be able to preform a hospital grade ECG full ECG exam using SHL latest innovation Smart heart and Smart heart iphone appp.

Can we switch to the end now? ok this is going to be quite fast. I will just press record ECG, just press a button ok thank you, in a couple of second the smart heart is communicating with the smart phone or in this case iphone, they are not that close, after the communication has been established you will see the green indicator those on the screen indicating the connectivity between smart heart and your iPhone, battery status and the communication the communication between the smart phone and the data service.

Once connectivity with the data service is established, we will be able to start recording ECG. Remember that 30 seconds. Start your timers. What ou'll be able to see is that it won't take us 30 seconds. Actually, 12 to 16 seconds, and you will preform a full ECG exam. By the end of the recording of the ECG, any user can see the results, after they've been fetched from the data server on the screen.

2 more seconds and we are done. Your heart is pumping really hard.

decided? Oh, it's not about you now, Although you're this way on stage, and we're done. Now we can view the results. The Smart Phone it gives the iPhone, it goes to the data server fetching the ECG result and represent them graphically to the users. You can see that we have 12 leads of the ECG. Each lead representing an angle of your heart.

A hospital grade ECG is 12 different angles, meaning 12 leads. We can tap into one of the leads and just scroll and see the results. And of course you can send the ECG to any 3rd party. It can be your doctor, your cardiologist, your PHR, your hospital via email or fax, and that's it. Hospital grade ECG disrupt.

Can we switch back to the presentation please?

Smart heart will transform your iPhone's, Androids, and Blackberry's into a hospital gradeECG machine. It can be used by anyone, anywhere, anytime, wso easy to use. A single button click and you are thirty seconds away from performing a full ECG. It is the world's smallest hospital grade ECG that can be used by a nonprofessional end user, anywhere, anytime.

Slightly bigger than a knife and fork and weighs slightly less than a knife and fork. Now let me share with you some raw data. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. In fact, it's the leading cause of death worldwide.

In 2010 alone, heart disease costs were estimated at $316.4 billion dollars. That's only in the US. Every 34 seconds, someone in the US has a heart attack. Not months, not weeks, not days. Seconds. By the end ofpresentation, at least 6 people already had a heart attack and every minute someone dies from heart disease.

Seventy nine million Americans has some form of cardiovascular disease.

10 seconds.

S.A. Chan will introduce Smartov to the market during the outcoming fall. We will provide the smart phone application for free. The Smartov price is estimated at $499 and you can use it on monthly service packages, or alternately on a pay-per-use mode. We hope with smart heart your family and your loved one will enjoy it better health care and quality of living.

Thank you very much.

Was Smartovfrom SHL Telemedicine. I A potentially life-saving iPhone app. I mean, I would have like to see a game element or maybe some sort of photo sharing, but Tony, why don't we start with you?

I had a question around ithardware service.

How?

It goes back to 1999 and the services will be provided by different service providers that we work with. Partners, publishing, distributors wherever we were going to go.

And what's your BOM on the 499? Sorry? What's your bill of materials, what's your cost on the 500 dollars?

Not physically but not that expensive.

Okay.

Alright Chris.

I could tell you backstage.

You can tell this is on Tech Crunch TV.

Watch it.

So you kind of position this as addressing the entire heart disease market. And it's not necessarily responsive to everything in the heart disease world. I mean EKG's come up in two situations; regular doctor check ups, then when they're confirming.

What? No?

No. Regular doctor check ups don't necessarily come up with an ECG. Unless you have a very good Doctor.

Sure. Okay. And second it comes up in an emergency situations and it helps diagnose whether someone is actually having a heart attack or it's some other congential defect, heartburn, that kind of stuff. So, tell me how you're going to address both those markets with this device?

Well, because there's a lot of stuff related related to heart disease that an ECG doesn't actually address. So I mean we are already talking about a smaller piece of the pie, but how are you going to go after those two markets?

ECG is a golden standard of the medical domain diagnosing something related to the heart. Whenever a heart problem occurs, especially in cardiac disease, you will do an EKG. What we are addressing with this product is actually the need and availability for every user wherever they are, it doesn't matter if they have a cardiac disease or not, to be able to do an ECG and get a response in real time.

It will address many people, not just a few. And sometimes not for any heart disease, it will be the right solution, but it will be part of the social.

So where does this device reside though? Is it in a clinic? I mean are individuals buying this device and then asking doctors to check in every now and then?

It will reside with you in your back.

So every person is going to buy a five hundred dollar device to have regular EKG's that are monitored by a doctor somewhere else remotely?

Yes.

I don't buy it.

I'd buy an iPhone for four hundred ninety-nine, and it doesn't monitor anything.

Because an iPhone is a pervasive communication platform for everything I do in my life. Like that takes a heart measurement that I need maybe once annually, and then when I'm totally fucked.

I hope you won't be totally fucked, but if you could pay that much for saving your life, I would reconsider it.

I think I'd be more convinced if you said look, the major health care institutions are concentrated in large cities. We have all these rural areas where people don't get access to this kind of technology and so we see those community health care clinics buyingtrying one of these, and it can be operated by people who aren't fully licensed doctors, etcetera.

So, a volunteer at one of those clinics could wrap one of these things around you and then awesome, highly qualified doctors, who are either in major hospitals or working from home. can be evaluating EKGs from across the world for people who are maybe impoverished, don't have access to health care, etcetera.

I would buy that pitch.

The idea that everyone in this country, or other countries, is going to buy one of those things, carry it around in their backpack - utter bullshit.

Okay, so maybe not everyone. But what we're trying to do with this, is not you going to the clinic in the wrong timing after you've already had a severe cardiac event.

It's in order to save you from being in that severe situation. If you will go to the professional that will have one of our professional devices, it will be probably a little too late.

Bijan, are you convinced, bullshit or buy it?

No, I don't think it's bullshit. I think, I think it's great. I, you know.

Give it some hands. Come on. It's not bullshit.

I had a situation a couple of years ago, I had to stay in a hospital for a weekend. They're hooking all this crap up to me. I had to stay there a couple of days just for observation and it sucks. Being in the hospital just absolutely sucks.

I mean, I would much rather be at home. I would have loved it if I had one of these at my house instead. And I think for some percentage of the population, being in the hospital is, is the worst place to be. And if you can be on top of your own medical situation, it's, it's a good thing.

So, I'd like to see other types of apps being built on top of this. So, maybe you notify your physician, or there's a network that gets established. Like if it's just a pure hardware company, I think it's maybe a missed opportunity, I think that if it's a service, I mean kind of like OnStar, or I, I don't know, but there's got to be something else you can do with this, yeah.

So you're going to buy this when it launches?

I, I'll buy one.

And keep it around the house?

Yeah.

I mean you didn't spend two days in the hospital to get one EKG, though.

And then, and then when you come over, I'll hook one up to you.

You didn't spend two days in the hospital to get one EKG, right?

No, no, they, they left it on me to just keep observations. You know, to observe me, to make sure that everything was okay. But it's two days I'm just standing, sitting around and I've got all this crap hooked up to me, and that was lame.

I mean, we've got, we've got the paddles out there, the heart attack paddles.

Well that's when, that's when you -

Right, but I'm just saying,
people haven't really - that's not a major market.they appeared in public spaces.

I don't like that.

And so, but no one's buying paddles for their house or carrying them around in their backpack.

So, 15 seconds but you are not ready.

I think it comes down to the marketing vision and the plan which we don't access too, but I think you have to be realistic about how you package this to which customer, because I'd rather be in the hospital if I thought I had heart problems than at home with that. So, at some point if I had heart problems, as bad as the hospital is, I'd rather be in the hospital.

Ok, we're out of time, but a huge round of applause for SHL Telemedicine and Smart heart.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, so I love it when the judges argue amongst themselves. That always makes for good entertainment.

Company: SHL Telemedicine
Launch Date: 1987

SHL was founded in 1987 by Yoram Alroy and Elon Shalev. Alroy had previously held several senior management roles at IBM and his expertise in the field of information technology made him aware of the immense potential inherent in the electronic transmission and analysis of medical data. Following a major cardiac event, which his father Nachman had suffered, Alroy also came to realize the value of reliable medical data and prompt medical assistance during a cardiac event. These were the...

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