Dive Brief:

• Bayer worked with Huma Therapeutics to develop an online tool for assessing cardiovascular risk factors.
• The tool uses an individual’s answers to 15 questions and an algorithm based on a large-scale biomedical database to predict whether they are at higher, average or lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease over the next 10 years.
• Bayer has added the tool to its website for aspirin, a medicine used for heart health and stroke prevention, to support a push to encourage people to discuss cardiovascular disease with their doctors.

Dive Insight:

Huma is a digital health company that has developed a “hospital at home” platform to collect real-world data remotely and connect patients and clinical teams virtually. The company raised $130 million in 2021 in a financing round co-led by Leaps by Bayer, the venture capital wing of the German conglomerate. 

Now, Huma, a closely held British firm that lists AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson among its partners, has completed a project with the main Bayer business. The result is an online survey that poses 15 lifestyle and health questions to determine the risk of an individual developing cardiovascular disease in the coming years.

Huma developed the risk-predicting algorithm using data from UK Biobank, a database of genetic and health information from about 500,000 people in the U.K. The algorithm compares each individual’s responses to the questions to the UK Biobank population to predict their risk of cardiovascular disease.

Reese Fitzpatrick, SVP and global marketing head at Bayer, said in a statement that the company “is pleased to provide a cutting-edge educational resource that can effectively shape heart health conversations with anyone at risk and their physician,” adding that the project leverages Huma’s “pioneering digital assessment tool to help people get meaningful insights on their health in an accessible and direct way.”

Bayer is promoting the tool as part of a public awareness campaign that is intended to encourage people at elevated risk of cardiovascular disease to talk to their doctors about ways to manage the health risks.