Virtual women’s heart health company Systole raised a $2 million pre-seed round, led by Benchstrength. January Ventures, J Ventures and Tom X. Lee, founder of One Medical, also contributed to the round.
Systole is addressing women’s heart health through an established but underutilized method of care: group visits.
Shared medical visits, also called group care, have been utilized since the 1990s to provide patients with support for their conditions in a communal setting. Systole is placing its bet on the care model in a virtual format, with the right technology partners to expand the hard-to-scale model.
Physician founder Simin Lee, M.D., told Fierce Healthcare she became interested in finding a new way to provide women’s cardiology care when her clinic in Boston was overrun by women who had delayed care during the pandemic. Many of these women came to their cardiology appointments with high cholesterol, weight gain and diabetes, and some had experienced their first cardiac episodes.
Combined with the more than 12-month wait time to get an appointment at the cardiology practice, Lee sought another way to provide care. At the time, a colleague of Lee’s at MassGeneral Brigham was running a pilot program for virtual shared medical appointments, which Lee began to shadow.
“It takes the scarcest thing in healthcare, which is providers’ time, and makes them more accessible and scalable, not to mention [it] provided this amazing community experience that we can't provide in a normal one-on-one setting … I saw the appeal as well as how hard it was to scale up within the Harvard affiliated health system,” Lee explained.
In the group virtual visits with Systole, a cohort of women with heart disease receive weekly education and support for their heart health. The group visits are run by Systole’s physician Lee and a health coach. For six weeks, the women discuss topics like the main causes of heart disease, weight loss and blood pressure control and lifestyle choices as a contributing or mitigating factor to heart disease.
After the short information session, the women in the group begin to share.
“We sort of just go do a round robin, me and the health coach, with each patient focusing on them, their goals, their problems they're trying to solve, and making a little care plan that oftentimes is both medical and, you know, lifestyle-related, thanks to the coach,” Lee said.
In between sessions, patients and Lee have an open dialogue through individual chat functions and a group chat with the cohort.
Lee and co-founder Lauren McConnell, who has worked in operations for telehealth startups like One Medical and health systems like Mount Sinai, built the company on the premise that they could scale group virtual visits as a better model of care for treating heart disease in women.
The majority of traditional providers are scheduled to see patients one-on-one in 15-minute increments and have a hard time accommodating group care that lasts one to two hours, McConnell said. By focusing solely on group virtual care, Systole has charted its path to avoid the constraints of traditional providers.
Yet, the model is still easily reimbursable through insurance by billing for the complexity of care provided to the patient.
Systole’s technology choices are also paramount in scaling a virtual group care solution. Systole chose electronic health record vendor Healthie, which facilitates group visits. McConnell and Lee sought a clear vision for the company’s technology infrastructure before they began rendering services last summer.
Lee emphasized the patient-informed consent process and the onboarding visits they do with patients to prepare them for the group setting. The preparation includes best practices, like conducting the group virtual visit from a private space and using headphones.
Systole has also begun to offer a maintenance program, out of patients’ desire to continue with the group virtual visits.
“What we definitely know, and what we hear all the time from our partners and partners-to-be, is that one visit a year for 15 minutes, or maybe two, is definitely not enough to really nail these clinical problems and actually move the needle on risk of heart disease in women,” Lee said.
Ken Chenault Jr., managing partner at lead investor Benchstrength, explained why the firm invested in Systole.
"When we look at investments, we prioritize new companies that address an unmet need with a novel approach, brought to us by founders who have both vision and a distinct ability to execute," Chenault said in a press release. "Systole Health meets all these criteria with its innovative group virtual care model, which leverages technology to provide scalable and sustainable solutions for women’s heart health. Their patient-first approach, designed specifically to address systemic gaps in cardiovascular care for women, is transformative, and we’re excited to support their mission to deliver meaningful outcomes and expand access to quality care."