American Heart Association, Inc.

MDisrupt, a marketplace for healthcare technology, has received a $1 million milestone-based investment from American Heart Association Ventures, the newly established venture firm that leads AHA's investments. Texas-based MDisrupt also entered into a service agreement with the American Heart Association to co-develop a platform to connect experts and innovators. MDisrupt offers an AI-powered marketplace for healthcare technology, medtech and life sciences companies to connect experts with 10 years of experience and above with healthcare innovators to advise on building clinically valid companies that will positively affect the healthcare space. "We launched an AI-powered network matchmaking platform where clients can find the experts," Ruby Gadelrab, CEO and founder of MDisrupt, told MobiHealthNews. "We have AI-powered matching and transact with them so they can schedule their meetings. We take care of all of the contracting, we take care of liability insurance, we take care of all of the things that a clinician who wants to work in the industry does not want to take care of for themselves." The AHA has tens of thousands of members, including clinicians, scientists, researchers and business experts, many of whom will be available through the newly co-developed offering to contribute their expertise to innovators. "We often get asked, 'Can you hook me up with experts on this or that?'" Lisa Suennen, managing partner of American Heart Association Ventures, told MobiHealthNews. "People are looking for the expertise that our members have because they genuinely want to employ the best evidence, the best science, the best knowledge to their development of products and services for the market." Suennen said the AHA appreciated that MDisrupt cares about matching science and knowledge and that it was a startup. "We liked that they were a young company, so they were amenable to collaborating on the product, on the growth, the trajectory, all the rest. If you work with a really big, late-stage company, they just want you as a customer; they don't want to hear from you. We wanted to be partners in this endeavor," Suennen said. The AHA provided a $1 million milestone-based investment to MDisrupt, the majority of which MDisrupt has already received. "We gave them three-quarters of the money upfront, and one quarter is dependent on launching the beta of the new product," Suennen said. "So, the successful beta launch of the next-generation product will give them the rest." The platform the partners are co-developing will enable the AHA to make referrals to experts and disseminate evidence-based science to the broader world of innovation. The companies anticipate that the extended MDisrupt offerings that include AHA experts will be released in the second half of 2025. "We're going to be a big partner, and hopefully, this will help them grow significantly and get some additional credibility that will bring others to the table. We hope they're just wildly successful because if they are, we are," Suennen said. From MDisrupt's perspective, the offering will enable clinicians, scientists and people who understand healthcare to be at the industry table so the industry can make more responsible health products faster, Gadelrab said. "The ultimate mission is to actually find the most impactful healthcare products and bring them to market faster because they have the right regulatory people at the table, because they have the right clinicians and because they're solving the correct problem for health systems and for payers," relayed Gadelrab. "The impact, I believe, will be that we will see generation three of health tech and medtech products being much more evidence-based, much more clinically relevant, more integrated into clinical workflows and with a lot more evidence to support them, both for clinical outcomes and for their ROI story and budget impact analysis."

Adults at risk for heart disease who participated in produce prescription programs for an average of six months increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables and had reduced blood pressure, body mass index and blood sugar levels. People at increased risk for cardiovascular disease who participated in produce prescription programs increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables, which was associated with improved body mass index (BMI), blood sugar and blood pressure levels, as well as a decrease in food insecurity. This new research was published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, a peer-reviewed American Heart Association journal. Produce prescription programs enable doctors to prescribe fruits and vegetables in addition to medications. Patients receive electronic cards or vouchers to access free or discounted produce of their choice at retail grocery or farmers' markets, explained study lead author Kurt Hager, Ph.D., M.S., an instructor at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts. Although previous research has examined the effects of small, individual produce prescription programs, this analysis is believed to be the largest produce prescription study by pooling data from nine programs across the U.S. to assess health outcomes after about six months. "We know that food insecurity impacts health through several important pathways, including overall dietary quality, but also through stress and anxiety, mental health and tradeoffs between paying for food and other basic needs such as housing costs, utilities and medications," said Hager, who completed these analyses while a doctoral student at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston. "These results indicate produce prescriptions may lay an important foundation for improved health and well-being." Study participants received a median of $63 per month to purchase produce at local stores and farmers markets. In addition, participants attended nutrition classes. At the beginning and after completing the program -- which ranged from 4 to 10 months -- participants completed questionnaires about fruit and vegetable consumption, food insecurity and health status. Routine testing of blood pressure; weight and height; and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) -a measure of blood sugar -- was completed at enrollment and at the conclusion of the program. The study did not include a control group and compared outcomes among participants before and after program participation. The analysis of all participants found: "Poor nutrition and nutrition insecurity are major drivers of chronic disease globally, including cardiometabolic conditions like Type 2 diabetes and their cardiovascular consequences, including heart failure, heart attack and stroke," according to Mitchell Elkind, M.D., M.S., FAHA, chief clinical science officer of the American Heart Association and a tenured professor of neurology and epidemiology at Columbia University. "This analysis of produce prescription programs illustrates the potential of subsidized produce prescriptions to increase consumption of nutritious fruits and vegetables, reduce food insecurity and, hopefully, improve subjective and objective health measures. Future research will need to include randomized controlled trials to offset any potential bias and prove more rigorously the benefits of produce prescription programs. The American Heart Association's new Food Is Medicine Initiative will be focused on supporting such trials." The Food is Medicine Initiative, announced in September 2022 by the American Heart Association and The Rockefeller Foundation -- at a White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health -- seeks to ensure patients receive medical prescriptions for healthy food to help prevent and manage chronic disease. Poor nutrition plays a major role in serious long-term illness, including cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, according to a 2022 American Heart Association Policy Statement: Strengthening U.S. Food Policies and Programs to Promote Equity in Nutrition Security. In 2019 alone, poor nutrition contributed to nearly 8 million deaths, according to the Association's statistics. Food insecurity is the lack of equitable and stable availability, access, affordability to foods and beverages that promote well-being and prevent and treat disease. Study details: The analysis had several limitations, including the lack of a control group for comparison; high rates of missing survey data for food insecurity and fruit and vegetable intake data at the end of some programs; and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on programs that started during that period.

MONDAY, Aug. 7, 2023 (American Heart Association News) -- Rekha Desai planned to play Legos and blocks with her 2-year-old grandson, Kaveh, as she watched him in his Atlanta home. But Rekha never arrived. Instead, the 73-year-old lay in a gurney thousands of feet in the air after having a stroke . A helicopter raced Rekha to a hospital that could perform a specialized procedure. Her son, Dr. Dhaval Desai, drove 20 minutes to meet her. His wife, Dr. Yogita Tailor, also a doctor, waited nervously at home with Kaveh and their daughter, Kaiya. "Will Dida be OK?" Kaiya asked about her grandmother, or dida, her best friend and cooking and slumber party partner. Yogita hugged Kaiya and hoped the answer would be yes. Rekha's medical drama started in July 2022 when her son asked her to watch Kaveh while he worked so Yogita could take Kaiya to a friend's birthday party. That morning, Yogita called Dhaval at the hospital. "Your mom isn't feeling well," she said. "She doesn't think she should watch Kaveh." Rekha was dehydrated and vomiting. Yogita speculated that her mother-in-law had a stomach bug. Dhaval wasn't overly concerned. With his mother's small stature, vegetarian diet and "go, go, go" attitude, it wasn't unusual for her to get weak from not eating or drinking enough. Still, he left work to go check on her. He found her in bed. Dhaval took her blood pressure. It was normal. A COVID-19 test was negative. He gave her water and saltines and nausea medicine. Soon after, Rekha vomited again. The room was spinning. "Something's not right," said Dhaval, who works in internal medicine and pediatrics. "We're going to the ER." "No," Rekha said. "I'll drink more water and hydrate." But Dhaval wouldn't take no for an answer. He called a colleague in the ER. "We're on our way," he said. Rekha got IV fluids and nausea medicine and had bloodwork done. Still, she felt nauseous. She got a different nausea medicine. But it didn't agree with her. She twitched and writhed in bed until it wore off. A CT scan didn't show any bleeding or a tumor, though the doctor noticed calcium deposits in blood vessels in the back of her brain. Still, "stroke was the last thing on my mind," Dhaval said. Rekha didn't have any of the classic signs: face drooping, arm weakness or slurred speech. Rekha met with her doctors, his colleagues. One suggested a CTA scan of Rekha's head and neck. It's a more specialized test that combines a CT scan with a dye to create pictures of blood vessels and tissues. Dhaval agreed. Rekha's doctor said she'd call in a few hours with results. It's not going to show anything, Dhaval told himself. He went home to change and check on the kids. Less than an hour after Dhaval arrived home, his phone rang. "Your mom had a cerebellar stroke," the doctor said. This meant Rekha's stroke affected her cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls movement. It was caused by a blood clot in her brain. The doctor said she may need a thrombectomy, a time-sensitive procedure to remove the clot. Their hospital wasn't equipped to perform the procedure. Rekha needed to be flown to a hospital that could. "I don't want a procedure," Rekha told Dhaval on the phone. "I don't want to go in a helicopter." Dhaval conferenced in his brother, Seemal Desai, who is a doctor in Dallas. Their father got on the phone, too. "You have to," they told her. "You need to do this." The main helicopter had a two-hour delay. "I was in near tears," Dhaval said. With more work, he found a helicopter to transport her right away. At the new hospital, doctors determined a thrombectomy was too risky because of where the clot was located. They gave her medication to thin her blood in hopes it would dissolve the clot. Doctors said they didn't think the plaque in her artery was due to cholesterol, as can be the case. Dhaval suspects his mother's stroke was related to having had COVID-19 six months prior. His uncle, Rekha's brother, died from a post-COVID-19 stroke. At first, Rekha had trouble with her peripheral vision. She was unstable walking. Five days later, Rekha was strong enough to go home. She needed help bathing and dressing. For three months, she did occupational and vocational therapy. Exercises helped Rekha graduate from her walker. Therapists took her to a grocery store to make sure she could shop on her own. They assessed her driving ability, too, and cleared her to drive, though she avoids highways. She takes a daily blood thinner. "Sometimes I have little memory lapse, but I'm 99.9% fine now," Rekha said. "And it's because of the instant reaction on my son's part that I'm here today." The reaction was Dhaval in doctor mode. The rest of the time he was in son mode, which proved to be eye-opening. "It was frightening and stressful being on 'the other side,'" he said. While her dida was hospitalized, Kaiya worried. She called to check on her. She made a card Dhaval delivered. During Rekha's recovery, Kaiya was eager to help. One day, when Rekha had a dizzy spell, Kaiya ran to bring the walker. "She was always there," Rekha said. "She wanted to make sure I was safe." "I'm not too little to help," Kaiya said more than once. She bought a word search book to help Rekha with her letters. Dhaval called Kaiya "a little coach on the sidelines always helping." Nine months after her dida's stroke, Kaiya, who's now 7, decided to write a book about what happened. She sat down with crayons and markers, drew pictures, then wrote words. Kaiya's teacher, Tiffany Churchwell, helped her piece together and bind the book, "My Life: Dida and the Stroke." Kaiya read the story to her classmates and filmed a reading. "I have a wild story to tell you," she wrote. Then, "I was so scared!!!" Finally, she wrote about how excited she was that her dida was coming home. "What inspired you to write this story?" a classmate asked Kaiya after the reading. "I want people to see how I solved my problems," she answered. "Maybe this can help them or give them ideas on how to solve their own problem." American Heart Association News covers heart and brain health. Not all views expressed in this story reflect the official position of the American Heart Association. Copyright is owned or held by the American Heart Association, Inc., and all rights are reserved. By Deborah Lynn Blumberg, American Heart Association News Posted August 2023