Are Digital Health Point Solutions Worth the Investment? The Data Says Yes

Key takeaway: Analysis across 6,000 Hello Heart users shows up to 4X year one ROI for health benefit leaders

Let’s be honest: 2023 was a rocky year for the digital health industry. Between dried up funding and tighter budgets, the market seemed tougher than ever.

At Hello Heart, we saw this as an opportunity. We’re confident in our product, in the improvements our members feel in their heart health, and in the savings we generate for employers and health plans. We know there’s real value in being experts on a key chronic condition – in our case, cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death and top driver of healthcare claims costs in North America.

So, to add to our previous studies showing Hello Heart’s impact on outcomes and costs, we conducted our largest and most thorough ROI analysis to date.
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A deep dive into ROI

Towards the end of 2023, we worked with 12 Hello Heart clients covering about 6,000 users to conduct thorough ROI analyses based on year-over-year health insurance claims.

For each client, Hello Heart received member medical claims for 12 months pre-implementation and 12 months post-implementation. Our analysis also matched these members with non-Hello Heart members who also met our eligibility criteria (e.g. people with hypertension, cardiovascular disease, or other risk factors).

The results were really, really good.

A trust fund covering labor union members – including shift workers, a population that’s at higher risk of cardiovascular disease – saw a 2.2X ROI in their first year. And a retail industry employer saw an even greater return of 3.1X.

One local government client even earned 4.0X ROI. In their first year. That’s how quickly we’re able to help organizations take control of health claims costs.

This past year, we’ve had the pleasure of working with VHC Health, a leading health system in Arlington, VA. VHC took part in our 2023 year-over-year ROI analysis, and together we found estimated savings of $2,834 per Hello Heart user after the first year compared to similar non-users.

“As a health system, we believe that it’s especially important to provide our employees with the best healthcare benefits,” explains Rita Jensen, Director of Benefits at VHC Health. “With Hello Heart, we’re helping our staff take control of their heart health while also significantly saving on costs.”

And at Hello Heart, we’re lucky to work with benefit leaders like Rita who care so much about the health and well-being of their teams.

Hope for people’s heart health – and HR benefit budgets

These companies varied widely in their mission and populations, and results varied too. But one thing remained true: When people took control of their heart health with Hello Heart, they reported high satisfaction with the program and incurred significantly lower costs than those not engaged in the program.

As healthcare costs continue to rise because of everything from GLP-1s to global inflation, I’m glad we can help benefit managers take care of their people and decrease unnecessary spending. These are savings that can go right back into other programs that benefit employees.

Investing in heart health works. It’s a win-win strategy we can all get behind. And in this tough digital health market, it gives us a lot of hope for brighter days ahead.