Exclusive: Vector Remote Care Lands $12.5M Series A For Cardiac Remote Monitoring

Cardiac digital health provider Vector Remote Care is out to improve the lives of the more than 10 million people with implanted cardiac devices.

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The Bend, Oregon-based company closed a $12.5 million Series A investment, led by Updata Partners, to accelerate its remote cardiac monitoring tools. The new funding gives the company a total of $12.9 million, according to Vector founder and CEO Kevin Hoffman.

Like many entrepreneurs, Hoffman’s drive to start a company was based on personal experience. He described how he came to be fascinated by how implants worked: When he was in middle school, his mother had a cardiac event while on vacation. Fortunately, she was able to receive CPR quickly, but her treatment included a defibrillator implant.

“When I was in high school, her device was always malfunctioning and would shock her, which was scary, but insightful because I wanted to figure this out,” Hoffman told Crunchbase News. “We found out it was a broken wire that caused the implant to think she had a fast heart rate. That is something we monitor for daily and are able to have the patient come in before there is a problem.”

After attending the Arrhythmia Technology Institute and getting a firsthand experience helping to program devices and implant them while working at St. Jude Medical, Hoffman noticed that implant technology was evolving to the point where it could be monitored daily to see what was happening during a cardiac event, as well as monitor and prevent problems.

He founded Vector in 2017 to enable care teams to accurately capture, manage, analyze and act on the remote data generated from cardiac devices. Today, the company monitors for hypertension, heart rhythms and all other services within a cardiology practice. The company said it was able to prove a 90 percent increase in patient compliance of connecting to Vector so their data could be monitored, as well as a 90 percent decrease in false alerts and 58 percent increase in clinic revenue.

“Baby boomers are hitting an age where heart disease is a reality,” Hoffman said. “There is a major investment being taken by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to manage care and costs, especially because heart disease is preventable. If we keep tabs on health along the way, it could prevent people from having an event or needing an implant.”

With the new funding, Vector is rounding out its executive team and expanding its monitoring presence. The company will invest in engineering technology with plans to double the team this year, Hoffman said. In addition, it will invest in sales growth, also looking to double its patient management this year.

The investment follows some significant growth for the company, especially when the global pandemic caused much cardiac care to take place at home, the CEO said. Vector tripled its annual recurring revenue in the last two years, a growth trajectory Hoffman expects to stay on over the next two years.

Jon Seeber, general partner at Updata Partners, a firm focused on business-to-business software, believes Vector has a solid value proposition and is in the right place at the right time. Hoffman’s leadership was also a big part of the investment, he said.

“Remotely monitoring cardiac devices has become a critical and valuable piece for people who had to have that treatment,” Seeber said in an interview. “Vector reduces complexity and overhead for cardiac care for health care organizations that are in the business of delivering care, but not the part of monitoring data and determining what to do with it. Vector does that well.”

Illustration: Dom Guzman