In this interview, Artella Solutions Cofounder and CEO Sepand Moshiri discusses business turnaround, corporate restructuring and growth within his homebase city and across several states with a roadmap to capture market share and gain trust to promote the next evolution of mobile cardiac monitoring, while advancing the well-being of patients with heart rhythm disorders.
What is the rebirth of ARTELLA?
The bottom line is that accountability should always flow up. In late 2021, I was asked to come back and get the company back on track to help shape it into a serious competitor in the industry. I stipulated lofty goals and promises, but I also expected high integrity with a paradigm shift in ways a company should run coupled with a blueprint to find the right talent to match the roadmap for an always-learning culture. In another company I cofounded during the Covid downturn, I coined the phrase “collaboration with integrity and intelligence.” That is my backbone philosophy. My mantra is to never take credit for others’ good work but take full credit for their bad work. Some of the first steps were to make sweeping changes in our verticals, promote our clinical operations industry guru Jacinta Fitzsimons, reshape the elite concierge customer service model I created as the industry’s first of its kind in Texas,* revamp the sales team, create the buzz for next stage funding, and secure the right strategy and sales leader, who became Joseph Hashim. With the support of new ARTELLA Chairman Larry Lawson, along with new Holding Company Chairman Leo Womack, I took deliberate strides with meticulous transparency to shape the organization into my distinct personality for an inclusive executive team. Lawson, who is the former Chairman and CEO of Preventice Solutions, founder and executive chairman of a local contract research organization headquartered in Texas Medical Center and a global ECG Core Lab business, also became our largest investor. His eye for former Preventice talent brought us Fitzsimons, and eventually Linda Nelson, who fit my vision for innovations in revenue cycle operations. Beyond all this, creating the win-win scenario comes easily to me. Consequently, I tore up the prior agreements, arrangements and deals with our vendor partners and started renegotiations. This was the necessary robust corporate reorganization and restructuring steps along with board realignment to ensure maximum shareholder value and pathway for substantial revenue growth.
Can you explain how your technology or product works and how it differs from existing solutions?
We have one of the most comprehensive solutions and differentiator in the market and industry. It centers around our three components: hardware, software and service. The hardware is the cutting-edge wireless patch device which has small, but powerful four-in-one hardware, coupled with a full-access data software package monitored by certified CCI technicians. These elegant devices are small, wireless, lightweight, silent and non-obtrusive making it easier for patients to wear. ARTELLA’s diverse range of customized solutions and services for both patients and health care providers allow flexibility to offer an easier experience. Data is continually collected, live-streamed and easily integrated into the company’s proprietary online, device-agnostic health platform. ARTELLA offers full disclosure of all this data/information for clinics to view at any time. We provide physicians and staff with these devices with an option for the clinic to patch their patients themselves or have the kit delivered to the patients. Our elite customer team, made up of certified cardiology medical assistants, monitors not only patient compliance but the device and gateway phone battery levels for the duration of the evaluation.
How has your technology been received by health care professionals or organizations that have implemented it?
Feedback from the clinics has been very encouraging as evidenced by ARTELLA’s exponential growth in the marketplace across several states. The application of the patches is a big hit with them and, more importantly, the patients. Our user-friendly portal makes staff’s process in enrolling patients into our service simple with open access to all the live feed data. The flexibility of our technology and our cohesive partnership with our clients have allowed our company to customize end of study reports for the physicians based on their input. These are nimble solutions that ARTELLA has brought to the field. Providing patients with survey cards has delivered us positive comments and suggestions that have assisted us in implementing change to better serve them.
Can you provide any real-world examples or case studies of how your technology has made a positive impact on patient care or health care outcomes?
Technology and elite service are the core elements that drive ARTELLA to positively impact lives. Catching critical rhythms in a timely manner and notifying the physician have prevented patient’s conditions from deteriorating. Atrial Fibrillation (Afib) is well known to cause strokes if left untreated. In the past three months, 27% of our critical calls to physicians regarded patients going into this abnormal rhythm at the very start of their study. In one situation, a 71-year-old male went into complete heart block, which is a condition where the chambers of the heart do not synchronize. Within four minutes of seeing this type of recording, we made a call to the clinic and subsequently the patient was asked by their staff to go immediately to the ER for treatment.
What are your plans for future innovations or developments in your industry?
ARTELLA’s comeback in such a short time is a testimony of what can be achieved with pinpoint precision to gain visibility, to capture next stage funding, and to scale to ultimately leapfrog the privately-held competition. What was accomplished during this period in the face of multiple barriers with a shoestring budget is very rare. We seek to solve pain points in this mobile cardiac telemetry (MCT) space. One of the innovations will be announced by the end of August and could change how the industry is perceived. As important, artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly, and ARTELLA is already using forms of it, including machine learning, to analyze and interpret specific data. We believe the future will include further opportunities to partner with like-minded organizations for the well-being of patients from care to cure. To ensure this road, I also cofounded the holding company CorMedica Group, which centers around acquisitions and growth of wholly-owned MedTech companies developing new and innovative AI-driven cardiovascular diagnostic technologies that align with our growing portfolio of SaaS offerings for health care professionals and patients. Plans are formulated for an initial public offering opportunity by mid to late 2025.
About Artella Solutions Inc.
For patients:
Artella Solutions Inc. is a digital health care company monitoring patients’ heart rhythms and assisting physicians’ paths from care to cure using the latest patch technology to detect and capture abnormal changes in heart rhythms.
For physicians:
Artella Solutions Inc. provides health care providers with one system that meets the diagnostic needs of physicians to easily monitor, diagnose and treat patients while ensuring clinical and economic benefits for providers and patients alike.