For almost two decades, I have been working on a deceptively simple question: what would change if we could understand the heart not only when a patient enters a hospital, but wherever life happens?
It matters because cardiovascular disease remains the world’s biggest killer. The latest global analysis estimates that it claimed 19.2 million lives in 2023, accounting for nearly one in every three deaths worldwide. Yet for all the progress made in cardiac medicine, much of the information used to guide care is still collected during isolated appointments, after symptoms emerge or when a clinician already has reason to suspect a problem.
These assessments are essential. But they provide moments in time.
The heart, meanwhile, is continuously responding to age, illness, medication, treatment, stress, sleep, physical activity and countless other influences. Its performance can change gradually, long before those changes become visible through an acute event.
The next frontier in cardiac care is therefore not simply another test. It is the ability to build a clearer, more continuous picture of how the heart performs over time.
A heartbeat contains a world of information that we don’t routinely capture
Modern cardiac care relies heavily on two powerful tools. An electrocardiogram measures the heart’s electrical activity. An echocardiogram uses imaging to examine its structure and function. Both have transformed medicine and will remain central to cardiac assessment.
But there is another layer of information that receives far less attention: the mechanical activity created as the heart contracts, relaxes, twists and moves blood through its chambers and valves.
Seismocardiography, or SCG, measures the tiny vibrations generated by this mechanical activity at the chest wall. It is non-invasive and can increasingly be captured using compact sensors, creating the potential for cardiac measurements to be taken in clinics, community settings and other environments where conventional imaging may not be immediately available.
That does not make SCG a replacement for established diagnostics. Nor should it be positioned as one.
Its value lies in providing an additional layer of clinical-grade cardiac data: one that can help establish a baseline, support repeatable measurements and reveal how mechanical heart performance changes between traditional assessments.
Data is not the same as insight
Healthcare technology companies often speak about collecting more data. But more data alone does not improve care.
A single measurement may be interesting. A standardized measurement, compared with an individual baseline and tracked consistently over time, can become clinically meaningful. This distinction is crucial.
The real innovation is not about making a cardiac sensor smaller. It is about creating the infrastructure around that technology: consistent signal acquisition, secure data management, comparable measurements, population context and reports that a clinician can understand and use.
That is how raw cardiac data begins to support better decisions.
Silicon Valley is understandably focused on artificial intelligence, but AI is only as useful as the information beneath it. Algorithms cannot compensate for inconsistent measurements, missing baselines or data collected too infrequently to reveal meaningful change.
In cardiac health, the first challenge is not asking an algorithm to produce an answer. It is capturing the right physiological information, in a repeatable form, at the right moment.
From episodic care to heart-centered care
Most healthcare systems are organized around facilities, appointments and episodes of treatment. Patients travel to where the equipment and expertise are located, receive an assessment and then return weeks, months or even years later.
A heart-centered model would work differently.
It would bring appropriate measurement closer to the patient. It would make it easier to establish a cardiac baseline before something goes wrong. And it would allow clinicians to observe meaningful changes between major appointments rather than relying exclusively on isolated snapshots.
This could be especially valuable for people undergoing treatments that may affect cardiac function, patients living with progressive valve conditions, individuals in remote communities and populations for whom frequent specialist assessment is impractical.
The objective is not continuous surveillance of everyone, nor to generate unnecessary alarms. It is to give clinicians a more complete timeline and help them determine who requires reassurance, who should be monitored more closely and who needs advanced investigation.
Portable technologies can help create that front-line layer. Imaging and specialist assessment can then be directed towards the patients who need them most.
The clinician must remain at the centre
Healthcare innovation frequently falls into the trap of promising to remove the professional from the process.
In my opinion, that’s the wrong ambition.
Cardiac data requires context. A measurement can be influenced by medical history, medication, age, treatment and many other factors that no isolated device should interpret on its own. The role of technology is to help clinicians see more, sooner and more consistently, not to make decisions in their place.
This is particularly important as healthcare systems face rising demand and limited specialist capacity. The best technologies will not attempt to turn every patient into their own cardiologist. They will make every clinician better equipped to identify change, prioritize resources and decide what happens next.
The next breakthrough may be a better timeline
Some of the most important advances in medicine have come from seeing something that was previously hidden.
The stethoscope allowed physicians to hear the heart. The ECG made its electrical activity visible. Echocardiography allowed clinicians to see its structure and movement.
The next major shift may come from connecting those clinical moments into a more meaningful timeline.
Portable, non-invasive cardiac measurement will not eliminate the need for hospitals, imaging or specialists. But it could help move cardiac care upstream, from reacting to events towards understanding change before an event occurs.
I genuinely believe that the future of heart health will be defined by the quality of the data: whether we can capture the right data, place it in context and give clinicians the tools to act on it.
That is how cardiac data becomes more than information. It becomes part of a healthcare system built around the heart itself.
