Building the Future of Heart Health: Year 1 Review and Outlook
It’s hard to believe we announced our $12 million seed round over a year ago. A lot has changed in the world since then. Yet heart health remains an urgent crisis.
As in 2022, every twenty seconds someone has a heart attack or a stroke — many preventable. Behind these statistics are real people, with families and communities, across the country (and the world).
We started Miga to overcome this unacceptable status quo — and to build the future of heart health we all deserve. A future in which everyone gets access to the products and services they need to lead long, healthy lives.
We have embarked on what will be a multi-decade journey, with an initial focus on preventing the next million heart attacks and strokes — a level of ambition commensurate to the magnitude of the problem. As we progress on this journey, we want to share more on our strategy, our progress, and what’s on the horizon, recognizing we can amplify our impact through collaboration.
At Miga, we believe that generational, iconic companies will emerge from this moment — and that we need to raise the bar for what’s possible in healthcare, with success defined as new paradigms in care, available to hundreds of millions (not thousands) of people.
Our big vision, to build the future of heart health, ultimately comes down to the master plan we launched with — and which we have made a ton of progress on in the last year:
Achieve 10x engagement through a character-driven, gamified app
Deliver personalized plans and full-stack clinical services across obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia
Build a tech platform that enables scalable, efficient, and high-quality clinical services
Demonstrate A+ health outcomes relevant to patients, providers, payors, and employers
Our master plan emerges from the recognition that we know what behaviors promote heart health, and that we have safe and effective medications that improve weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. This combination of behavior change and targeted medications reduces cumulative exposure to the risk factors that lead to heart attacks and strokes. As a result, the real unlock for much better outcomes, in enormously common conditions like obesity and hypertension, is patient engagement and implementation of comprehensive, guideline-based clinical services. These outcomes accelerate a virtuous cycle in which we deliver value to all stakeholders, with our tech platform enabling the operational excellence required to sustainably serve millions.
As we deliver on our master plan, we envision a future in which Miga is a trusted, household brand, a platform that engages entire populations in their health, distributing (and developing) a wide range of products and services across the entire spectrum of heart health. By executing on this initial phase, we are also building a foundation upon which everything from clinical trial recruitment to value-based contracts is possible over time. Just as Amazon started with books, but set into motion a much larger enterprise, we have been laser-focused on the success of our first offering — with lots of progress to report.
In heart health, every second counts — and the stakes couldn’t be higher. That’s why we spend every single day advancing our purpose, embracing grind over glamor, alongside a world-class team of life-savers, change-makers, and forward-thinkers.
In a short period of time, we have created a network of medical groups that can practice medicine in over 35 states, with a total population of over 300 million. We have built a clinical team, led by Dr. Grace Hunter, a Stanford- and UCSF-trained physician, that brings together outstanding physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and registered dietitians to deliver the multidisciplinary care needed to achieve the best outcomes. We have also formed a Medical Advisory Board with leading preventive cardiologists, like Dr. Michael Honigberg (Harvard) and Dr. Neha Pagidipati (Duke), to partner with us in disseminating cutting-edge strategies to patients.
Earlier this year, we launched with Medicare in California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Texas, representing over 10 million eligible patients. Our current focus is on Medicare, with our archetypal patient a woman in her 70s who gained weight during menopause, is navigating multiple heart health conditions, and is anxious to make better progress in order to live a longer, healthier life. We have signed contracts with payors across the country and will be expanding into Medicare Advantage and commercial plans in the coming months, deepening our presence in Medicare while broadening the demographics of those we serve.
We have done all of the above while launching our initial app on the App Store, and introducing our character, Mi, to patients. At the heart of our app, which includes integrated scales and blood pressure monitors, is a daily action list that focuses patients on completing the highest-yield actions for their heart health, while providing them with the piece of mind they crave. Inspired by companies like Duolingo, we are building an entire world around Mi and will be layering in and experimenting with streaks, points, levels, and more over time.
As much as we need to deliver a delightful patient experience, we also need the tech platform to supercharge our clinical team to provide excellent, scalable care. This is why we are developing a single place, a command center, for our clinicians to do everything from chat with patients to manage tasks to complete clinical documentation. This platform, which is API-first and FHIR-native, will provide huge benefits across speed, safety and compliance, and interoperability, while also laying the foundation for us to realize significant efficiency with AI / ML.
We do all of this work with patients at heart, with a zealotry to create the experience and deliver the outcomes that everyone deserves. So while we execute with a dogged focus on the fundamentals that will enable our big vision (e.g., acquisition, payback period), our ultimate success will be measured by how much we improve the lives of our patients — patients like Donna who, before Miga, spent decades trying to find the progress she realized with us in just weeks.
"I feel like it's making me a better person. Honestly, I really do. It's making me more active and more conscious of what I eat, and when I eat, and I think those are good things and I think it's going to make me healthier.”
A ton has happened at Miga since we announced our seed round over a year ago. We have made tremendous progress in building the future of heart health — and are just getting started. It is a future that we consider predestined, one that will happen — as long as the right people come together with the requisite ambition, determination, and creativity to deliver what we know is possible. We will share more about our progress and momentum later this year, so stay tuned – and reach out if you, too, are ready to take a big swing and reshape the world around us.
— Jarrad Aguirre, MD, and Dre Limberopoulos
View open roles on our careers page or email us at hello@migahealth.com.
This is exactly what I work for in my job position. I am very passionate about getting patients to their health goals not only to feel great personally and medially, but to have the best quality of life. Miga is definitely a company I desire to work for as this hits every detail on what I LOVE and what I am qualified to do! FANTASTIC CONCEPT!