The Problem: 80% of Patients Leave the Doctor’s Office Confused

Most patients see their cardiologist or primary care provider a handful of times a year. Even patients enrolled in remote patient monitoring or chronic care management programs get limited additional touches, often no more than a few hundred interactions annually. The rest of the time, patients are on their own.

On a recent episode of the Kinetic Innovators Podcast, host CW Hall sat down with Dr. Ali Rahimi, a practicing cardiologist and founder of Alyka Health, to talk about a statistic that drove him to build something new: roughly 80 percent of patients leave a medical office with a misunderstanding of their own condition and cannot fully grasp why they were prescribed the medications they were given. They go home and start searching for answers, often turning to general search engines or AI chatbots. Dr. Rahimi noted that one in three searches on tools like ChatGPT today is health related.

That gap, between the small number of hours patients spend with their care team and the hundreds of hours they spend managing their health on their own, is what Alyka Health set out to close.

What Is ALYKA?

ALYKA is a patient-facing app available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, built by Alyka Health to serve as what Dr. Rahimi calls a digital extension of the care team. The name itself comes from the initials of his own family, reflecting the company’s belief that everyone has their own reason, their own Alyka, for wanting to get and stay healthy.

The app was originally launched as an open, consumer-facing product available to English-speaking users worldwide. Alyka Health used that period to learn what design, content, and experience resonated most with users. Over time, the company shifted its distribution strategy: rather than relying on direct-to-consumer downloads, ALYKA is now primarily distributed through cardiovascular practices, primary care clinics, hospitals, and health systems that recommend it directly to their patients.

How the App Works

ALYKA connects to a patient’s electronic health record and to wearable devices and home monitoring equipment, including Apple Watch, blood pressure cuffs, and glucose monitors. Instead of patients juggling separate apps for each device or condition, all of that data lives in one place.

The app also collects self-reported data through surveys covering exercise, nutrition, stress, sleep, alcohol use, and tobacco use, giving both the patient and their care team a fuller picture of risk factors such as being overweight or obese, prediabetes, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, heart failure, coronary artery disease, and atrial fibrillation. Dr. Rahimi pointed out that 80 to 90 percent of individuals age 65 and older have at least one of these risk factors or conditions.

Importantly, the goal is not to route more data and messages to already overwhelmed physicians. Dr. Rahimi noted that in-basket messaging volume to practices has increased more than 150 percent in recent years. Instead, ALYKA is designed to reduce that burden. Practices working with Alyka Health have seen up to a 20 percent reduction in in-basket messages and phone calls, since patients now have a dedicated resource to turn to first.

Evidence-Based Content, Built Like an App People Actually Want to Use

Rather than building another clinical portal, Alyka Health studied how people actually spend time on their phones, primarily on social media, gaming, and entertainment apps, and designed ALYKA’s content experience to match. All content is evidence-based and written at approximately a sixth grade reading level so it is accessible and digestible. There is no advertising, no third-party marketing, and no cookie tracking. Content formats include short videos, recipes, and trivia, tailored to what each user engages with most.

Gamification and Patient Engagement

One of the more distinctive features is the app’s gamification system. As patients consume educational content and log their vitals, they earn what the app calls Coins. Accumulating coins moves patients up levels, creating a visible signal, both for the patient and for their care team, of how engaged someone is in managing their own health.

Dr. Rahimi explained that this creates a useful proxy for care teams. A patient who is not progressing through levels may be at higher risk of skipping medications, missing appointments, or not filling prescriptions, giving the practice an early opportunity to intervene before a small issue becomes a bigger one.

Who Should Use ALYKA

According to Dr. Rahimi, ALYKA is built to serve the full continuum of cardiometabolic care, starting with primary prevention around lifestyle risk factors, extending through management of chronic conditions like hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol, and continuing into post-acute care for patients recovering from a hospitalization for heart failure, a stent placement, or a cardiac ablation.

While the platform is designed with cardiology and primary care in mind, Dr. Rahimi noted there is also clear value for nephrology and endocrinology practices given the overlap in chronic disease management.

In terms of age, the average ALYKA user is between 50 and 55 years old, though Dr. Rahimi described the sweet spot as anyone between 40 and 80.

Free for Traditional Medicare Patients

Perhaps the most significant update Dr. Rahimi shared is that ALYKA has been approved under the Medicare Access model. Any patient with traditional Medicare can now use ALYKA at no cost, with no charge to the patient and no charge to the practice. Alyka Health waives the patient copay, and practices can bill Medicare for up to $100 per beneficiary they refer into the program.

For patients under 65 who are not on Medicare, Alyka Health works directly with practices and health systems to structure access as part of a broader partnership.

How Practices Can Get Started

Practices or health systems interested in offering ALYKA to their patients can visit alykahealth.com to schedule a meeting. From there, the Alyka Health team walks through a live demonstration, discusses the practice’s operational challenges and quality goals, and outlines how the program can reduce administrative burden while improving patient engagement and outcomes.

The Bigger Goal: 10 Million Hearts in 10 Years

Dr. Rahimi summed up Alyka Health’s mission simply: 10 million hearts in 10 years. The underlying philosophy is that healthcare has made enormous progress in research, guidelines, and published literature, but the next major opportunity lies in giving patients greater self-agency, engaging them directly, and shifting more of the system’s focus toward prevention rather than treatment after the fact.

To hear the full conversation between CW Hall and Dr. Ali Rahimi, listen to this episode of the Kinetic Innovators Podcast, available on Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more: alykahealth.com

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Kinetic Innovators is a podcast covering the people and technology reshaping healthcare delivery. Subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and TikTok.