Heart disease remains the silent assassin of the American healthcare system, claiming one in three lives and costing the economy hundreds of billions annually. Yet, for decades, the tools cardiologists use to catch it have been stuck in the pager era. Patients sent home for monitoring are often strapped with wired and bulky monitors that make showering impossible, or given single-lead adhesive patches that miss the nuanced electrical signals a doctor actually needs to see.
Konrad Morzkowski, a Stanford engineer and Forbes 30 Under 30 alum, thinks he has the answer. His company, Wearlinq, has built the eWave, a device the size of a large bandage that delivers the clinical power of a hospital setup directly to a patient’s smartphone.
Today, Wearlinq announced it has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by AIX Ventures to scale this vision nationally. The round, which includes backing from SpringTide, Berkeley Catalyst Fund, and others, validates a shift in how investors are viewing remote care: it’s no longer just about collecting data; it’s about using AI to make that data life-saving.
The “Data Deluge” Problem
“The status quo in cardiac monitoring still relies on single-lead patches and delayed insights,” says Krish Ramadurai, Partner at AIX Ventures. “Wearlinq brings the world’s first six-lead monitoring technology and an AI stack to the cloud… It’s a step-function leap for cardiologists.”
That leap is technical, but its impact is deeply practical. Most consumer wearables, like the Apple Watch, offer a “single-lead” view of the heart, imagine trying to identify a person by looking at them through a keyhole. You might see an eye or a nose, but you miss the full picture. Hospital EKGs use 12 leads for a 360-degree view but require a patient to be tethered to a machine.
Wearlinq’s eWave sits in the “Goldilocks” zone. It is a 6-lead device, offering a multi-dimensional view of the heart’s electrical activity, but it is wireless and runs for five days on a single charge. This allows doctors to detect complex arrhythmias that single-lead devices miss, without the logistical nightmare of wired telemetry.
The AI Cardiologist
Wearlinq is using artificial intelligence to tackle one of the biggest bottlenecks in cardiology: noise. A continuous heart monitor generates millions of data points per week. For a human technician, sifting through that to find a fleeting arrhythmia is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Wearlinq’s AI platform filters this data in near real-time, stripping away artifacts and false positives so that cardiologists only see actionable data. This “AI-native” approach means reports can be delivered to clinicians in under 48 hours, a stark contrast to the weeks-long delays common with traditional patch monitors.
“This is the kind of technology that can reshape how we detect arrhythmias and deliver personalized care,” says Dr. Albert Rogers, an electrophysiologist at Stanford and Wearlinq co-founder.
Beyond the Heart: The Sleep Apnea Frontier
With the fresh $14 million capital injection, Wearlinq is looking beyond just heart rhythm. The company plans to train its AI models to detect other insidious conditions, most notably sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea affects millions of Americans and is notoriously difficult to diagnose, typically requiring an expensive and uncomfortable overnight stay in a sleep lab. However, the condition leaves a distinct fingerprint on heart rate variability and respiration, signals that the eWave is already capturing.
By expanding their AI algorithms to recognize these patterns, Wearlinq aims to turn their cardiac monitor into a general-purpose diagnostic tool. A patient prescribed the device for palpitations could potentially find out they also suffer from sleep apnea, allowing doctors to treat the root cause (poor sleep) rather than just the symptom (irregular heartbeat).
“Even a 10% reduction in early heart disease death in the U.S. equates to over 100,000 lives saved,” Morzkowski says. “There is no bigger mission for us.”
With FDA clearance already secured and thousands of patients currently using the platform, the new funding ensures that Wearlinq’s “hospital-on-a-chip” will soon be arriving in mailboxes across the country. For the millions of Americans living with undiagnosed heart issues, the signal is finally getting clearer.
Patients, cardiologists, and interested companies can learn more at: https://wearlinq.com/.
