a highly flexible cardiac prevention + rehabilitation programme developed and operated by cardiologists for you
167,000
deaths from heart and circulatory diseases each year in the UK
—British Heart Foundation
800,000 +
Americans die each year from cardiovascular disease, more than all US casualties in all 20th century conflicts
—American Heart Association
contributors to poor heart health
Aging demographic
Poor diet and the rise of diabetes
High blood pressure and increased sedentary lifestyle
Smoking and substance abuse, poor diet
Lack of exercise, and increasingly overweight and obese population
“Heart attacks” occur at a rate of 64,000/year in the UK and 647,000/year in the US. Cardiovascular disease is the general term given to the range of disorders that affect the heart.
Programs to address prevention and treatment are limited, and less than half of those who qualify participate in cardiac rehabilitation.
“15% of adults in UK have a doctor-diagnosed CVD.”
—NHS
cardiac rehabilitation (rehab)
“...helps you get back to as full a life as possible after a cardiac event such as a heart attack, heart surgery or stent procedure.
You may also be able to attend a cardiac rehab programme if you have been diagnosed with heart failure or if you have a device such as an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD).”
—British Heart Foundation
Cardiac rehab gives patients and their families the information, support and advice they need to return to everyday life, and is a vital part of a patient’s long term recovery - considered as important as taking their medication.
Research has shown that cardiac rehab can reduce the risk of having another heart event, being readmitted to hospital and has a positive impact on wellbeing and quality of life.
Yet the majority (about half in the UK, and nearly three-quarter in the US) do not take up cardiac rehab post event.
“CR programmes should be more innovative to ensure they recruit the remaining 50%”.
—British Heart Foundation
cardiac prevention & rehabilitation (cpr) opportunity in the uk + us
living with with CVD (per 1,000)
113 uk
371 us
population (2018)
66.4m uk
327.2m us
high-income professionals with CVD (m)
1.1m uk
16.2m us
uptake of CR (%)
50% uk
19 - 35% us
population obese (%)
28.7% uk
37.7% us
people living with CVD (millions)
7.5m uk
121.5m us
91.9% unserved
in 2019 there were 5,753 cardiac rehabilitation programs globally that could serve 1,655,083 patients each year, despite an estimated 20,279,651 incidents of coronary heart disease cases globally every year.
Harry, 58
Harry was admitted to hospital with chest pain.
They told him he had a heart attack, but he presented early, received an early stent to unblock his arteries and has sustained minimal damage to the muscle of his heart. After discharge he completed 8 weeks of a cardiac rehabilitation course and has been “signed off” as fit to return to work.
But what is normal? What can he really do now? He used to love sport but has been in a sedentary job for many years with a busy family life and knows he doesn’t keep fit like he used. He knows he needs to adjust his diet and reduce his stress, but how, and how much exercise can he do without damaging his heart?
Helen, 47
Helen has battled with her weight for some time and is overweight.
She has just been told she has early diabetes and needs to urgently loose weight otherwise she will need medication. She already has some signs her kidneys are under strain and feels very breathless if she tries to do any exercise.
She wants to exercise but is self conscious in gyms, who are worried on her health screening questionnaire about what she is allowed to do. She is concerned she may damage herself if she over exercises.
2:55 mins
save a hospitalisation every 3 minutes (180k per annum) by increasing cardiac rehab participation from 20% to 70%.
21:03 mins
save a life every 21 minutes (25k per annum) by increasing cardiac rehab participation from 20% to 70%.
barriers to adoption of cardiac rehab
Work or home responsibilities
Hours of operation conflicting with work demands
Distance to CR facility from patient’s home
Access to public transportation or parking issues
Male gender-dominated programs and little racial staff diversity
Language problems and cultural beliefs
Lack of referral to participate from the patient’s physician
Lack of perceived need for rehabilitation/awareness of CR
Limited, or no health care coverage (cost)
Limited follow-up or facilitation of enrolment after referral
Scarcity of programs in rural areas and/or low income communities
personal + flexible services are key for uptake of cardiac prevention + rehabilitation
about metronome
Metronome is a cardiac prevention & rehabilitation program (CRP) that combines connected home equipment with a wearable, an app, a virtual clinic and AI.
Our mission is to improve the quality of life and increase the low take-up of cardiac rehab programs by those who have suffered a life impacting cardiac event.
We have also designed metronome to help those at higher risk of a cardiac event and diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes and increasing signs of obesity to improve their cardiovascular health through guided and supervised programs from the comfort of their homes at times that suit them best.
Metronome will further resonate with symptomatic, undiagnosed and those generally concerned with an underlying condition about their heart.
The central objective is to provide guided care and review to improve the cardiovascular fitness of all. Cardiovascular related deaths remain one of the top two reasons for morbidity in the UK, the US and much of the rest of the world.
prevention
Symptoms: Blood pressure, weight, diabetes
“Primary prevention” is the medical term used for measures to try and stop an event happening - ie getting fit, losing weight, controlling BP and lipids to prevent a heart attack (Helen). The more risk factors - the greater the benefit. We call this simply prevention.
rehabilitation
Symptoms: MI, heart failure
“Secondary prevention” is when you have had an event and you want to stop it happening again - like Harry. We refer to this simply as rehabilitation.
medical advisory panel
The MAP consists of 4 cardiologists (Dr Van Lingen heads this advisory unit), 2 GPs, 2 Cardiac Physiologists and 2 Specialist Cardiac Nurses. Their names, qualifications and experience are detailed below, and they represent a collective experience in the cardiology field of over 200 years, with hundreds of thousands of patients seen and countless tests performed and analysed.
Dr Robin Van Lingen
Medical Director | Founder
Robin is an experienced Consultant Cardiologist who is Founder and Medical Director of Metronome Health. He has sub-speciality interests and training in Interventional Cardiology and Cardiac CT and a wealth of clinical experience in most aspects of cardiology. He has been Clinical Lead for the Royal Cornwall Hospital Cardiology Department and many other speciality services. He co-founded the Cardiology R&D Department and was Principal Investigator in multiple research trials. He is now based in the private sector as a Cardiologist at the Duchy Hospital in Truro, Cornwall.
Dr Patrick Owens
Consultant Cardiologist
Currently working at the University Hospital Waterford in Ireland he has an MD, an Honour’s degree in Mathematics in the Open University and is currently collaborating with a local Technical University in the development of a novel diagnostic device in the field of blood pressure measurement. He has explored alternative business models for health care delivery in the UK and Ireland and has established, and is a director of, The Heart Clinic, a cardiology assessment and testing service for the South East of Ireland.
Dr Stephen Evans
Consultant Cardiologist BSc PhD FRCP
Stephen Evans trained in London, Bristol and Auckland, New Zealand. He has been a Consultant Cardiologist in Cornwall since 2000. His interests are Coronary Intervention with Stent implantation, Transoesophageal Echocardiography and General Adult Cardiology. He is a member of the British Cardiac Interventional Society (BCIS) and has been a faculty member, giving presentations at national meetings.
Dr Audrius Simaitis
Consultant Cardiologist
Dr Simaitis is a Consultant Cardiologist, who trained at Vilnius University. He has practised at Royal Cornwall Hospital and Ramsay Duchy Hospital since 2005. During his career, he has assumed a variety of management and leadership roles including Director of the Catheterisation Laboratory, Head of Cardiology Department in Lithuania and Lead of Cardiology services in Royal Cornwall Hospital. Dr Simaitis has a particular interest in the heart atherosclerotic processes which culminated in his PhD thesis.
“Heart disease can strike you down quickly without any warning, and if we made early and accurate diagnosis you can powerfully transform patient’s lives.”
Dr. Robin Van Lingen — Medical Director, Founder
executive team
Kaveh Memari
Executive Director| Co-Founder
Former CEO and Founder of AYR, worked for the last 17 years in start-ups spinning out new technologies and products, raising significant private capital (+£30m) and expanding internationally. For his last two projects, he was both Founder and CEO and attracted over 200 private investors to back the development of his concepts from concept to launch.
Adrian Bennett
Product Director | Co-Founder
With over 20 years experience in industrial design. A founding director of Curventa shaping disruptive products for blue-chip clients & start-ups. Adrian has taken over 200 products to market and won over a dozen awards across multiple consumer sectors.
Nader Akaghband
Digital Director
Founder and CEO of Ampersand & Ampersand, a leading health innovation business focused on social impact. Ampersand works with the NHS to co-develop digital services that support thousands of clinicians and millions of patients. Recognised among the 2017 Global Digital Health 100, Ampersand has been the recipient of Design 100, EMMA, MOMA, EHI, HSJ and other industry awards for its work with the NHS, leading universities, medtech and pharma companies.
Laurens De Brujin
Commercial Advisor
Laurens, as Commercial Advisor and part of the founding team, is a critical part of Metronome’s commercial multi-channel strategy. As an entrepreneur Laurens started a series of highly successful cardiology outpatient centres in the Netherlands, integrating clinic architecture, IT and standardised patient pathways to cut costs and waiting times (Cardiologie Centra Nederland). More recently, and after his successful 2012-exit, Laurens spent significant time and effort to launch the same concept in the UK, in the NHS and private healthcare sector.
Abel Ureta-Vidal
ML/AI Advisor
Over 20 years bioinformatics and scientific background (PhD Pasteur Institute), Abel post PhD joined Genoscope in ramping up the human genome project, putting in place the automatic gene annotation system for human chromosome 14. Founder of Eagle Genomics for over 10 years with extensive direct experience in extraction of knowledge and insight from Life Sciences, R&D data analysis, Genomics, Cloud, Big Data, Machine Learning and now AI.
Charl van Zyl
NXD | Pharma
Over 20 years experience working in the pharmaceutical industry with Eli Lilly, Novatis, Bauch & Lomb and currently COO of UCB. Experience across the full Health Care Value Chain including, Business Development and Licensing, Manufacturing, Marketing and Sales and Research & Clinical Development.