For someone living with heart failure, a few pounds of weight gain or a change in symptoms can be an early sign that their condition is worsening. For many members, that change raises an urgent question: can this wait until the next appointment? But those changes often happen at home, between appointments, where they may go unnoticed until more intensive care is needed.
For Medicare Advantage plans, that gap represents both a clinical challenge and a significant financial burden. Heart failure affects approximately 6.7 million U.S. adults, and it is one of the most costly cardiovascular conditions. A 2026 study in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy estimated average direct health care spending of $45,893 per patient in the first year after diagnosis, with inpatient and emergency care accounting for the largest share.
Hello Guard brings together a connected scale and pill box, personalized AI, and cardiologist-led virtual care, so members get guidance between doctor visits and care teams can respond earlier.
Why care is still too reactive
Today's heart failure model struggles for three main reasons.
Contact is intermittent. Patients see their clinicians on a schedule, but their condition changes every day. Most of what happens to them happens between those visits.
Visibility at home is limited. Weight, blood pressure, medication use, and symptoms can all tell a story. Without a way to gather and review that information, the signs of change often go unnoticed until a member ends up in the hospital.
Converting information into action is hard. Even when a change is noticed, turning it into a timely clinical decision takes time, context, and coordination that the current model rarely provides.
Hello Heart's CEO, Maayan Cohen, puts it this way: "A hospital admission is too late to be the first sign someone with heart failure needs more support.” Hello Guard is designed to notice when something changes at home and turn those moments into opportunities to act, helping people stay out of the hospital.
How Hello Guard works
Hello Guard connects at-home tracking and member engagement with a clinical pathway capable of acting on changes in weight, blood pressure, heart rate, symptoms and more. It brings together three capabilities:
- Connected tracking. A connected scale, blood pressure monitor, and pill box bring together information about weight, blood pressure, and medication adherence, along with symptoms reported by members and data from personal wearables.
- 24/7 support. Nia, Hello Heart's AI assistant, helps members understand their condition and medications, build daily tracking routines, and report symptoms. When changes arise, Nia gathers additional context for clinical review.
- Cardiologist-led care. Cardiologists review changes in context and determine the appropriate next step, including whether emergency care is needed. After each encounter, the clinical record is shared with the member and their existing care team.
Hello Guard helps care teams understand what has changed while keeping the member's existing care team informed.
What the evidence shows
Hello Guard builds on research linking Hello Heart's core cardiovascular solution to approximately $7,000 lower medical spending per person in the first year among adults with heart failure, compared with matched nonparticipants. Participation was also associated with 47 fewer inpatient admissions, 297 fewer inpatient hospital days, and 139 additional primary care visits, per 100 participants with heart failure.
The pattern points to an opportunity: moving care away from expensive hospital settings and toward earlier outpatient management.
Built for members
"Living with heart failure means making many and often difficult decisions about health every day," said Dr. Bernardo Perez Villa, VP of Medical Affairs at Hello Heart. "With Hello Guard, we want members to feel more confident in those decisions and better prepared for conversations with their regular doctor."
Who Hello Guard is for
Hello Guard is designed for health plans and the members they serve who are living with heart failure. For plans, repeat hospitalizations and acute care create major clinical and financial pressure, and Hello Guard is built to help members at home.
What's next
Hello Guard is launching now. We'll show it live at HLTH, November 16-18, and we invite health plans and care leaders to see how it works.
This content is for educational purposes only. Hello Heart is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, and treatment.