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TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURS STRATEGIES INVESTING
J ohn Stevens’ corner offi ce in Redwood
City, California, has a nice view of the
San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. His
desk, though, is a hand-me-down, and the
cracked leather upholstery on the chairs reveals
their history as Ikea fl oor models. “We can
probably aff ord some new chairs now,” he says.
You’d think. HeartFlow, the health-tech
startup of which Stevens is chief executive and
president, has raised $467 million, most re-
cently at a $1.5 billion valuation, from inves-
tors such as Wellington Management, Baillie
Giff ord & Co., GE Ventures and BlueCross
BlueShield Ventures, according to Pitchbook.
Th e valuation is based on a big idea: a non-
invasive test that peers into a patient’s coronary
arteries to see how blocked they are. Right now,
such a test involves threading a catheter from
the groin up to the heart and measuring blood
fl ow, a slightly risky procedure called fractional
HEALTHTECH fl ow reserve (FFR) that is done a million times
a year worldwide to decide whether a patient
Breaking needs a stent to open a clogged artery. Using
soft ware trained with a deep-learning algo-
Hearts rithm, HeartFlow says it can get a similar mea-
surement from a CT scan, a lower-risk, three-
dimensional picture of the heart constructed
HeartFlow has raised $467 million for a with X-rays. Medicare reimburses HeartFlow
test to detect heart disease. Problem: It $1,450 per test.
might not make patients better off . “Th is will be the most eff ective way of look-
ing at cardiovascular disease and safer than
anything else on the market,” says Bill Weldon,
BY ELLIE KINCAID
HeartFlow’s chairman and the former chief ex-
ecutive of Johnson & Johnson. “And when you
put those together, it’s a combination you can’t
beat.” He sees the test being used routinely.
Skeptics are legion. “Over time, these kinds
of technologies get hyped, and when they get
studied, reality sets in,” says Steven Nissen, the
chairman of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic.
“Someone takes an idea that seems very sexy
and attractive, but when you get down to the
science, it isn’t solid.”
Th e technology’s usefulness may come down
HeartFlow CEO John Stevens
at the Grand American Hotel
in Salt Lake City. He says he
quit being a heart surgeon
because he could help more
people as an entrepreneur.
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SEPTEMBER 30, 2018 FORBES | 43
