Health wearables startup iBeat, founded and run by somewhat well-known former Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard, now has a very famous name behind it: TV physician Dr. Mehmet Oz. Oz, host of the “Dr. Oz Show” and a cardiothoraciac surgeon at Columbia University in New York, has invested in and been named a special adviser to iBeat.
San Francisco-based iBeat is kicking off its association with the controversial doctor on Thursday by announcing the launch of a heart-monitoring smartwatch called the iBeat Life Monitor. The company started taking pre-orders on crowdfunding site Indiegogo Thursday morning; as of 4:30 p.m. Eastern, about 150 units had been sold.
The company didn’t say how much money Oz invested, but Howard said iBeat has raised about $2 million from private sources to date.
The iBeat Life Monitor continuously monitors heart function and, according to iBeat, can detect warning signs for cardiac arrest. In case of abnormality, the watch asks the wearer to indicate whether he or she is OK. If there is no response or the response is, “no,” the watch can call for an ambulance and notify designated family members over a built-in cellular connection.
iBeat has priced pre-orders as low as $99, or 78 percent off the expected retail price of $459. The fee includes 12 months of monitoring; additional monitoring costs $200 annually, Howard said. (The 100 units allocated at that price were sold out by Thursday afternoon.)
The company plans on bringing the Life Monitor to retail stores by next summer.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
In a teleconference with media, Oz said the idea behind the iBeat Life Monitor is to prevent sudden death from cardiac arrest. “We’re optimistic we can move the needle here quite dramatically,” the TV host said.
“There are lot of people at risk for sudden death,” Oz said. He noted that the survival rate of those who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital is just 5 percent.
The product is aimed at people in their 50s and 60s with the three most common risk factors for sudden death: diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol.
Howard said there is about a $6 billion market for personal emergency response systems in the U.S., a sector traditionally dominated by those who are 75 or older. Howard believes the opportunity could be worth more like $24 billion to $25 billion annually when including people over 50.
Middle-aged people have shied away from monitors like the iconic — but truly limited — Life Alert panic buttons that date to the 1980s.
Many potential users, particularly those in the younger part of iBeat’s target market, have ignored doctor suggestions to get Life Alert-type devices, according to Howard. “It looked like a dog collar. It dehumanized them,” he said.
Plus, older models of PERS devices were not “passive,” in that the wearer had to press the panic button to summon help. “Many people don’t have the ability to press the button,” Oz noted.
The iBeat Life Monitor, like a number of more modern PERS, has a built-in accelerometer to sense falls and automatically make the call. There is a thumb-operated button as well for users to call for help if they are able to do so, Howard noted.
With this in mind, iBeat wanted to build something that is both fashionable and functional. “Before we tackled a lot of the tech, we engaged a design firm,” Howard said.
“Our hope is this device is not a symbol of illness or fear,” Oz added.
Howard started Practice Fusion in 2005. Four years later, it became the first company to offer a free, advertising-supported electronic health record on a wide scale to office-based physicians.
Though Practice Fusion has raised $160 million — Howard specified that number in the call with Oz — and claims more than 110,000 active monthly clinician users, it reportedly has never made a profit. Howard was ousted as CEO in August 2015, but stayed on as chairman. The company cut 25 percent of its workforce early this year.
This is not Oz’s first foray into digital health. He also co-founded social wellness platform Sharecare with WebMD founder Jeff Arnold.
On Thursday, Sharecare announced that it would acquire healthcare virtual reality company BioLucid for unspecified terms.
Photo: iBeat
