Empirical Health

Don't die of heart disease. Start with 100+ biomarkers and a personalized plan:

[Empirical Health @EmpiricalHLTH]

Interesting study - Apple Watch and Samsung ECGs were able to flag a weak heart pump with 90% accuracy (AUC ROC):

[Empirical Health @EmpiricalHLTH]

Pelacarsen cut Lp(a) by 78%, but major cardiovascular events didn't budge (HR 1.02). A dramatic biomarker change without a detectable event benefit. https://t.co/JekDkfKbtQ

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

34% of U.S. women below age 50 have iron deficiency under new hematology guidelines, which raise the threshold of ferritin to 30, 50, or 100 ng/mL depending on circumstances:

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

An LDL of 70 mg/dL would already put you around the 10th percentile.

Yet a new study shows cutting cholesterol even further, to <55 mg/dL, reduced cardiovascular events by a third.

IMO, surprising that reductions at the low end still seem to yield such large benefits. I'd expect things to saturate much earlier.

[Empirical Health @EmpiricalHLTH]

How we built it: https://t.co/Gla0ViS7JW

[Empirical Health @EmpiricalHLTH]

iPhone Duo launches today. To test Empirical Health without hardware, we built a full 3D simulator with inverse camera projection, frosted-glass blur, hinge-anchored layouts, and path-traced lighting.

[Empirical Health @EmpiricalHLTH]

@ExcaliburCurse @function @superpower 👋

[Empirical Health @EmpiricalHLTH]

@TuckerGoodrich Why's that? They're one of the top modifiable risk factors.

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

FDA is reviewing Grails @GalleriTest test Wednesday. Its accuracy is highest for cancers with no current screening guidelines:

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

The new Apple Watch will track heart rate continuously. This enables at least 20 applications across medicine, stress, sleep, and fitness:

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

Apple is rumored to be upgrading the Watch's heart rate sensor tomorrow. If so, this would be the first major upgrade since 2020:

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

Imaging found arterial plaque in 34.6% of men in their 30s. By 60-70, it's 98.1% for men and 91.9% for women:

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

Yes!

The earlier you start getting cholesterol down, the longer you'll live.

One way we know this is by comparing people who have low LDL for genetic reasons to people in trials: people who have low LDL for life basically have consistent treatment for longer, and live longer.

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

Big labs don’t have a monopoly on AI research.

More than 20 YC startups have published research recently at top conferences like NeurIPS, ICLR, and ICML.

https://t.co/Tg0L8VA0qP

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

93% of cardiologists are now reviewing patient wearable data. Only 11% of those are integrated into their EMR workflows.

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

Drug development sounds an awful lot like startups.

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

Right now only 1% of eligible patients use injectable PCSK9 inhibitors, but that's going to change since the FDA just approved the first PCSK9 pill, enlicitide.

Cuts LDL cholesterol/ApoB by 50-60% AND reduces Lp(a) by 28%:

[Empirical Health @EmpiricalHLTH]

@PardonMyMess @afshineemrani @grok ApoB: more accurate cholesterol
Lp(a): strongest hereditary risk factor for heart disease
hs-CRP: inflammation, an independent risk factor for heart disease

You can get this from @EmpiricalHLTH and other providers.

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

This same dynamic is playing out in AI for health right now. Startups that price on outcomes (VBC, Medicare ACCESS), rather than fee for service, give themselves the incentive to invest in software that compounds.

[Brandon Ballinger @bballinger]

The biomarkers that rise and fall the most as we age: