Digital ECG maker AliveCor is teaming up with Chinese wearable company Huami Corporation on a new effort to combine the pair’s technology into medical-grade wearables. 

The end goal is to have an ECG-enabled wearable with various heart features on the market by 2020.  

"AliveCor's agreement with Huami achieves our corporate goal of delivering AliveCor's AI-driven subscription services and solutions to enterprise customers and consumers worldwide at affordable price points," AliveCor CEO Priya Abani said in a statement. "AliveCor technology allows partners to easily deliver clinically validated, peer-reviewed medical features to their own customers, at scale."

WHY IT MATTERS

This news comes just months after AliveCor ended the sales of KardiaBand, its FDA-cleared ECG wristband designed for use with Apple Watches. The technology came into question last fall after Apple announced its Series 4 Apple Watch would come with built-in ECG capabilities. 

When AliveCor announced the end of KardiaBand the company told MobiHealthNews that it was going to focus on its KardiaMobile 6L, a six-lead mobile ECG. 

Huami and AliveCor are pitching its combined technology as ‘medical grade’ and ‘clinically validated’ — perhaps setting it apart from the consumer-focused Apple Watch. Regardless, this technology is poised to add one more ECG-enabled wearable into the market. 

THE LARGER TREND

However, AliveCor-Huami is not the only competition in within the medical-grade wearable market either. In January Alphabet subsidiary Verily got the FDA greenlight for its Verily Study Watch and on-demand ECG feature. The prescription-only device can record, store, transfer and display single-channel ECG rhythms. 

Earlier this month AliveCor scored $5.78 million in new funding, according to SEC filings. This came roughly three months after Amazon Alexa veteran Priya Abani was named the new CEO.