Heart Partner was created specifically for heart failure patients and their caregivers, based on principles set forth in the Coleman Transitions of Care program, which emphasizes giving patients and caregivers the tools and support needed to aid the transition from hospital to home.

A key goal of this program is to enhance the ability of health information technology to enable the exchange of health information across care settings. Two examples:

o Heart Partner can recognize when patients or caregivers track one or more symptoms that may indicate a worsening of heart failure, and then direct them to call their health care provider.

o The Health Card helps to consolidate a record of the patient’s doctor appointments, medications, hospital visits, and health-related information all in one place. 

More than 160 developers competed in the Novartis mHealth Hackathon, to create a mobile solution that helps heart failure patients and caregivers regain control over their lives and provide effective care.

Developing the app itself demanded a remarkable degree of coordination among all the key stakeholders -- internally at Novartis, agency partners who executed the design and development, and with the patients and caregivers who engaged in market research and usability testing. This coordination was fundamental to the creation of an app that patients and their entire caregiver support teams could use to help better manage chronic heart failure symptoms.

The App helps recognize warning signs, prompt calls to the physician, while consolidating appointments, medications, and hospital visits.

Heart Partner continues to scale, integrating with Connected Devices, including FITBIT, iHealth, Jawbone and Withings, the Wolters Kluwers medication database, and Walgreens where patients earn Balance Rewards points for tracking Vitals.

While the impact of Heart Partner is still being measured, early results from market research demonstrated that Heart Partner is helping to drive behavioral changes, with 50% having used the app during a doctor visit and 38% having taken some sort of action as a result of information from the app.

From a total users’ perspective, patients are averaging 8 minutes per visit, while Caregivers more than 11 minutes (more than 2x the anticipated goal). The App will soon roll out globally to other countries on iOS and a soon-to-be-released Android version.

The true positive impact can best be summarized by one of its loyal Caregivers:

“My mom had a heart attack during the holiday season. The Heart Partner app was a great benefit to have because it made it easy to answer questions at the ER … it had all the information readily available at my fingertips.”