VENTRICLE HEALTH
Year founded: 2021
No. of employees: 20
Top executives: Sean O'Donnell, CEO; Dr. Dan Bensimhon, founder and chief medical officer
Website: https://www.ventriclehealth.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ventriclehealth/about/
In a difficult year for venture capital, Greensboro’s Ventricle Health was one of the few Triad startups to raise money in 2023.
And when it did raise capital, $8 million in October, it surprised even Ventricle’s CEO Sean O’Donnell.
“I didn’t expect us to get to this point until [2024], frankly,” O’Donnell admitted. “I won’t say it was easy. In a tough climate, it made it a lot easier to attract investors that were aligned with wanting to put their resources towards high value and high growth.”
Ventricle Health’s telehealth platforms seek to bridge the gap in care that exists for heart failure patients after a hospitalization. On average, it takes 26 days for a heart failure patient to see his or her cardiologist; those days are critical, because the prognosis post-hospitalization is poor.
Drawing from a network of over 2,000 cardiologists across the country, Ventricle will get a patient seen within 72 hours of enrollment. From there, the startup seeks to get patients on the four guideline-directed medical therapies that significantly reduce the risk of death and to get the patients stabilized and on a path to better health within four months.
Through partnerships with hospital-sponsored accountable care organizations (ACOs), insurers and primary care management companies, Ventricle Health’s platform is currently live in four states: North Carolina, Texas, Ohio and Florida. O’Donnell intends to double that number by the end of the year using the $8 million fundraise, as well as double its in-house staff to 40.
Ventricle Health anticipates having several new partnerships this year with organizations such as Medicare payers in the Triad and as well as other new markets. O'Donnell also said he expects technology and marketing partnerships with cardiac diagnostics solutions companies to help diagnose and treat asymptotic heart failure earlier. He is also anticipating research collaborations with hospitals that serve populations with limited access to heart care.
For founder and chief medical officer Dr. Dan Bensimhon – who has been a cardiologist with Cone Health for two decades – Ventricle Health is not only about bridging the gap in heart failure care but also about democratizing it.
“You should have the same access to high-quality care whether you have a car or no car, whether you have a computer or no computer,” he said. “We will send you a computer so that you can interact with our doctors. And if you don’t have money to pay for your medicines, our pharmacists will find a way to help get you the medicines you need.”
Ventricle Health provides the necessary monitoring equipment – including a Ventricle-dedicated tablet if needed – that Bensimhon said gives physicians “all the information that [they] would have if the patient were in the office and maybe a little more.”
Although Cone Health is not involved in Ventricle Health, Bensimhon said that the health system, which consistently ranks as a top provider of heart care, gave him a strong foundation to achieve the goal of extending quality care to more people.
“It’s wonderful to feel that the care we focused on giving to patients in Greensboro can be available to people around the country,” he said.
