This edition covers:
- Stats from the American Heart Association’s 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Report
- AI applications transforming cardiovascular diagnosis and risk prediction
- Using AI-powered tools to support sustainable heart-healthy behavior change
It's February, which means it's officially American Heart Health Month—a month dedicated to raising awareness about heart disease. Yet despite this annual campaign, heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S., a status it's held since 1950. Now, don't stop reading. This won't be a lecture about the dangers of heart disease or how rates of poor cardiovascular health are only expected to rise unless we change our entire diet and hit 10,000 steps per day. Instead, this article focuses on the positive side of heart health: encouraging statistics and exciting innovations.
The American Heart Association (AHA) published its annual report on the most recent statistics related to heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular risk factors.
Earlier detection is another bright spot, as biomarkers such as Lp(a) (lipoprotein a) and hsCRP (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein) have made their way into guidelines as new tools providers can use to assess heart disease risk, in addition to traditional lab markers such as low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, also known as "bad" cholesterol. And new drugs, such as GLP-1 receptor agonists, have been shown to significantly reduce the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events.
This progress is noteworthy, especially as it relates to improving patient care. But what I really want to dive into are a few exciting advancements in heart health technology, including cuffless blood pressure monitors (BPM) and artificial intelligence (AI) in cardiovascular care.
New Ways to Monitor Blood Pressure
As a primary care provider (PCP), I often had to make treatment decisions based on just a few data points, especially if my patients weren't regularly checking their blood pressure at home. These days, I'm seeing more and more wearable devices that look more like fashion accessories than traditional blood pressure monitors, yet can still measure blood pressure as well as a patient might do on their own.
This enables them to engage with their health on an ongoing basis and understand how their behaviors impact their heart health. Additionally, this data is often synced to an app for storage, making it easy for patients to monitor trends over time, identify patterns, and share information with their PCP if they choose.
On the other hand, the usability of data from these devices is still a grey area. Organizations like the AHA and American College of Cardiology (ACC) recommend against using these devices for clinical decision-making until they demonstrate greater precision and reliability. Currently, critical gaps include lack of data on accuracy across skin tones, body types, pregnancy status, and coexisting conditions. And in January, the FDA updated its guidance in this area, allowing equipment like this for wellness tracking so long as the person is warned that it should not be used for diagnosis or treatment decisions.
However, these devices may support patient health engagement and help identify patterns (“is my blood pressure trending up or down with this medication?”), and that’s a step in the right direction.
Interpreting and Predicting Cardiovascular Risk with AI
Of course we can't talk about tech innovation in 2026 without mentioning AI. AI is being used across multiple domains of cardiovascular care to enable precision medicine, including diagnostic imaging interpretation, electrocardiogram analysis, risk prediction, and clinical decision support. Let's dive into a few examples:
AI-Enhanced ECG Interpretation:
During an electrocardiogram (ECG), a healthcare provider places electrodes on the skin to check your heartbeat. PCPs and cardiologists commonly read and interpret ECGs manually, which takes a great deal of time and leaves room for error. AI can help scale ECG reviewing and mimic expert interpretation, representing one of the most extensively studied AI applications in cardiovascular care. Deep learning models can detect conditions from standard 12-lead ECGs that extend beyond traditional interpretation.
Computed Tomography-Based AI Applications:
Computed tomography (CT) scans of blood vessels allow providers to determine a person's risk for a heart attack. AI applications that can process and assess these images have demonstrated strong impact on clinical workflows and resource optimization, with trials showing:
- 39.4% reduction in unnecessary invasive coronary angiography
- 7.4-fold increase in statin prescriptions
- 38.9% improvement in device implantation success rate
Despite these advances, the AHA notes that few AI tools have been shown to improve cardiovascular outcomes sufficiently to achieve wide clinical adoption. Key challenges include the need for greater external validation through multi-center prospective trials (similar to what we see for medications and medical devices), improvements in data accuracy from wearable devices, and addressing implementation barriers in routine healthcare.
From what I've seen, using smart device-embedded algorithms and ECG-AI to detect irregular heartbeats are among the most advanced applications closest to clinical adoption. These are supported by multiple studies, including randomized controlled trials and FDA approvals for certain use cases.
AI-Assisted Behavior Change Support
These days, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of all these tech advances and overlook or undervalue the most tried and tested tool we have for heart health—lifestyle modifications.
Not a whole lot has changed regarding nutrition and lifestyle recommendations for people with hypertension, high cholesterol, or heart disease, but the AHA reports that healthy behaviors, especially eating right, are where Americans struggle the most. That’s where technology may be most helpful for people managing their chronic condition risk—making it easier, and more accessible, to solidify daily health behaviors.
Our AI agent, OmadaSpark, is trained with robust clinical input that amplifies the work of our human care teams to help members create positive relationships with food. Here's how it works:
Motivational Interviewing:
For members who report barriers to healthy eating, OmadaSpark delivers guided conversations grounded in behavioral science to help members identify their own goals, reinforce autonomy, and find motivation to change habits (note: it does not provide therapy, which users are told up front). Through its integration with human-led care teams, OmadaSpark provides insights to help coaches and specialists understand the motivations and barriers reported by members, as well as the goals members have set so the care team can support them.
Nutrition Education:
OmadaSpark answers members’ nutrition questions in real time, helping to reduce the mental load of food decisions and encouraging them to gradually incorporate healthier food alternatives. It's designed with thoughtful input informed by evidence-based clinical protocols, offers relevant responses based on key member information (like age range, which Omada healthcare services a person is receiving, or whether they are aking GLP-1s), and accounts for self-disclosed food allergies and dietary preferences, to create tailored responses in the time between coach interactions.
Enhanced Food Tracking:
Along with motivational interviewing and real-time nutrition education, Omada’s nutrition tech offers updated tracking capabilities like water tracking, barcode scanning, and photo-recognition technology that provides an estimation of macro nutrients to promote nutrient-dense eating habits.
These AI program enhancements complement our human coaches and care teams to provide members with 24/7 education. These features also help members build an understanding of what drives their nutrition habits then ease them into healthier behaviors that will ultimately improve their cardiovascular health. And, because the care team knows how a member is using our AI, the tools ultimately help our professionals build rapport and respond to each member’s specific health journey.
