Innovating hardware to empower telemedicine - one heartbeat at a time.
A blue pulse on a white field: the HelpWear mark, photographed like a patient chart clipped to a hospital wall - small, clinical, and quietly insistent that someone is watching the heart.
Here is a fact about heart monitors that nobody puts on a billboard: the sticky electrodes irritate skin. Wear an adhesive patch monitor long enough and the skin underneath complains, then breaks down, and the patient - reasonably - takes it off. Which is a problem, because the whole point of a long-term ECG monitor is that you keep it on long enough to catch the rare, dangerous heartbeat that only shows up once a week.
HelpWear's answer is almost annoyingly simple. What if you did not need the adhesive at all? The company's flagship device, the HeartWatch, uses a dry-electrode, non-adhesive design. No glue, no rash, no reason to rip it off on day three. That is the kind of unglamorous engineering choice that does not trend on social media but does change whether a monitor actually monitors.
The company frames the HeartWatch as the world's first medical-grade ambulatory ECG monitor engineered for extended continuous wear. The target is not the worried-well checking their resting heart rate - it is patients with cryptogenic stroke (medical shorthand for "we don't know why it happened"), unexplained syncope ("we don't know why you fainted"), and long-term arrhythmias that hide in the gaps between clinic visits.
HelpWear's bet is that if you make a monitor comfortable enough to wear for weeks and clinical enough for a cardiologist to trust, the unexplained starts explaining itself. It is a hardware company that thinks the future of telemedicine depends, unglamorously, on hardware people will keep on.
Figures compiled from public sources and company materials; treat funding totals as approximate.
A wearable that reads your heart rhythm continuously, streams clinical-grade data toward your care team, and - the quiet feature that matters most - can flag a cardiac event and reach out for help.
Medical-grade ambulatory ECG built for extended continuous wear. The dry-electrode, non-adhesive design avoids the skin irritation of traditional patch monitors, so patients can wear it longer and catch arrhythmias that shorter tests miss.
Near-real-time ECG data routed to care providers, aimed at cryptogenic stroke, unexplained syncope and long-term arrhythmia detection. Designed to slot into remote patient monitoring and telemedicine workflows.
Electrophysiologists, hospitals and cardiology practices monitoring patients at risk of arrhythmia and stroke recurrence - people for whom the answer is literally a matter of catching one irregular beat.
Beyond passive recording, the system is built to detect a cardiac event and contact emergency help - the feature born directly from the founding story.
HelpWear's origin is not a lab notebook - it is a staircase. Co-founder Frank Nguyen found his mother at the bottom of the stairs with a broken leg; doctors determined a minor cardiac event had caused the fall. The HeartWatch grew out of that moment. The founding team pairs young hardware-first builders with serious clinical credibility.
The engineer whose family emergency sparked the company. Named Ascend Innovator of the Year (2019) for his work on the HeartWatch.
Co-founder who helped pitch the device to national audiences, including the celebrated Dragons' Den appearance. Later recognized as a Thiel Fellow.
Practicing electrophysiologist, clinical trialist and Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Clinical Trials, with roughly 300 peer-reviewed publications - the clinical rigor behind the device.
Biomedical engineer with an MBA and 25+ years in cardiology medtech at Medtronic and Abbott, focused on remote monitoring devices. The operator steering commercialization.
HelpWear's capital story is less "one giant round" and more "a long string of prizes, grants and a very good day on television." Reported private funding is modest - roughly a quarter-million dollars - but the company has pulled in $300,000+ across grants and competitions.
Note: reported totals vary by source (Crunchbase, PitchBook, Tracxn). Figures shown are approximate.
Collaborations span St. Michael's Hospital, Mount Sinai, and the University of Calgary (home of CMO Dr. Exner and the UCeed fund). The company got its start in Toronto's Biomedical Zone incubator at what is now Toronto Metropolitan University.
HelpWear competes with established ambulatory-ECG players like iRhythm (Zio), Bittium, Bardy Diagnostics and BioTel/Preventice, newer entrants such as Vivalink and Wearlinq, and - at the lighter end - consumer wearables like the Apple Watch ECG.
Product demos and founder interviews live across CBC's Dragons' Den and Toronto's tech press. Start with the pitch, then follow the company's own channels.
Compiled from public sources including HelpWear's website, CBC Dragons' Den, Crunchbase, PitchBook, Tracxn, CB Insights and Toronto-area press. Funding figures and totals vary by source and are approximate. The HeartWatch has been described in materials as an investigational device in some jurisdictions; regulatory status may differ by market and over time.