Dr. David Albert and The AI Revolution in Cardiology

Harry Glorikian: Hello, I’m Harry Glorikian and this is The Harry Glorikian Show, where we explore how technology is changing everything we know about healthcare. Today’s guest is a pioneer in digital medicine. You’ve probably heard of AliveCor, the company that turned your smartphone into a clinical-grade ECG monitor. But what you might not know is that its founder, Dr. David Albert, has spent decades bringing disruptive medical technology to life.

From leading cardiology innovation at GE to launching AliveCor’s first mobile ECG on YouTube in 2011, before digital health was even a buzzword, Dr. Albert has consistently pushed the boundaries of what’s possible. Now, with the release of the Cardia 12L, AliveCor is delivering hospital-grade 12-lead ECG performance in a device that fits in your hands.

And thanks to a deep learning AI engine trained on more than a million ECGs, it can detect not just arrhythmias but also heart attacks. We’re going to unpack the evolution of mobile ECGs, the power of AI in cardiology, and how AliveCor is reimagining cardiac diagnostics, from hospitals to homes.

Harry Glorikian: Dr. Albert, welcome to the show.

David Albert: It’s an honor, sir. Thank you for inviting me.

Harry Glorikian: I usually like to start at the beginning because I never know who’s listening, and I think it helps to give some historical context. You were inventing even back in med school, if I’ve got my facts right, and later led cardiology efforts at GE. How did those early chapters influence your thinking when you set out to build AliveCor — or as you just mentioned, maybe a few other companies I didn’t even know about?

David Albert: Well, I have a nonlinear path. Not exactly a random walk function, but it’s pretty close. When I left clinical medicine in the 1980s, that wasn’t very common. Today, it’s different. Entrepreneurs like Sean Duffy of Omada, who left Harvard Medical School to start a company, are part of a bigger trend. In fact, a few years ago, a survey of third- and fourth-year medical students at UCSF and Stanford — right in Silicon Valley — found that half of them didn’t plan to practice medicine.

Back when I made that decision, almost 40 years ago, it was much less accepted. It was to the consternation of my wife, my father — we had a baby — and my mentors. I was just at a lectureship sponsored by the late Dr. Ralph Lazaro, a very famous cardiologist and chief of cardiology at the University of Oklahoma for 20 years. My mentor from Duke, Dr. Dalen Wagner, another well-known cardiologist, told my wife and my dad, “Don’t worry. Dave will just go back and be a cardiologist. He might waste some time and money, but he’s young. It’ll be fine.”

I’ve been fortunate. I invented a couple of things in medical school and engineering grad school and was able to monetize them. So I was driving a Corvette I bought myself while my med school friends were eating ramen noodles. It gave me a very different perspective.

Later, while I was in training, I had an idea. Nobody wanted to license it. People told me it wasn’t a good idea. I thought it was. So I dropped out of training to start a company. I knew nothing about business — it was literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. And yet, I’m still here, an entrepreneur at age 70. That says something — I’m an eternal optimist, and also pretty damn stubborn.

Harry Glorikian: That’s a perfect segue. I want to go back to that 2011 YouTube video — you literally held up an iPhone with an ECG case you hacked together and said, “Let me show you something amazing.” It went viral. But at that time, there wasn’t even a regulatory framework for what you were doing. The phrase “digital health” barely existed. What made you feel like the world was ready for this?

David Albert: It didn’t matter whether the world was ready. I was ready. I had retired in 2004 after spending a long time at GE and taking my first company public. But I kept tinkering. I would travel, and when I saw something interesting in consumer tech, I’d think, “Could this be used in medicine?”

When I saw the iPhone 4 with its 30-pin connector, I realized I could use it for data acquisition. Most people thought of phones as communication tools, not diagnostic devices. But I had worked on ECGs my whole career, and I knew the potential. So I built a prototype with a little circuit board, and that’s what you saw in the video.

That was the beginning of AliveCor. And to your point, there was no FDA pathway for what we were doing. The idea that a patient could take their own clinical-grade ECG was unheard of. We had to help define the category.

Harry Glorikian: And now it’s a common concept. Apple has an ECG in the watch. Other companies have similar tools. But you were really early. And AliveCor’s evolution didn’t stop there. Fast forward to today, and you’ve released the Kardia 12L — a 12-lead ECG device small enough to fit in a backpack. Why is this such a big leap?

David Albert: Let me be clear. The 12-lead ECG is the gold standard for diagnosing many cardiac issues, especially heart attacks. For a century, it’s been used in ambulances, ERs, and hospitals. But the equipment was bulky, expensive, and required training to operate.

Now we’ve miniaturized it. The Kardia 12L is battery-powered, wireless, and uses Bluetooth to connect to a smartphone or tablet. It records a true 12-lead ECG using six electrodes in a pre-cordial configuration. It’s been validated against hospital-grade systems and meets FDA requirements.

What’s even more exciting is the AI engine behind it. We’ve trained it on more than a million ECGs to recognize not just arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation, but also STEMIs — ST-elevation myocardial infarctions — in real time. That’s a huge deal. If you can catch a heart attack early, you save lives and reduce damage.

Harry Glorikian: And this is already being used in places like the Cincinnati Zoo, right?

David Albert: Yes. That’s a fun story. The Cincinnati Zoo has trained EMTs who carry the Kardia 12L. If a visitor collapses or reports chest pain, they can do a full 12-lead ECG on the spot and transmit it to a cardiologist. It’s not just convenient — it’s life-saving.

But beyond that, think of the global applications. In many parts of the world, there’s no access to ECG machines, much less cardiologists. This technology democratizes care. You can take hospital-grade diagnostics into remote clinics, rural areas, even people’s homes.

Harry Glorikian: So, you said you’re still an entrepreneur at 70. Most people are either retired by that point or, you know, winding things down. What keeps you going?

David Albert: I don’t play golf. I live in Oklahoma City. I love what I do. I have had a few wins in my life. I’ve had a few losses too, but I’ve had a few wins. I have a mission. My father, who was the original electrophysiologist in Oklahoma, used to say, “You know, you can do well by doing good.” And that’s sort of a mantra. I tell young people all the time — if you do good things that help people, especially in healthcare, you’ll do well.

That doesn’t mean you’ll get rich. I’m not Elon Musk. But I’ve been very fortunate and I don’t have to work. I work because I love it and I love the people I work with. I have a young team. Most of my team could be my kids. And they keep me young. And we’re doing meaningful work. I mean, we’re saving lives.

One of the cool things about AliveCor is every single day, somebody writes us — or posts online — about how our device saved their life. It’s a pretty good reason to keep going to work.

Harry Glorikian: And that’s something we don’t often hear about tech companies. I mean, people say they’re “changing lives,” but you’re literally getting emails that say, “Your product saved me.”

David Albert: We get them every single day. And it’s humbling. It’s not about me. It’s about the people who work here. It’s about our customers. It’s about our engineers who make this possible. I’m just the guy who started the thing.

But yeah, it’s pretty motivating. I’ve had people come up to me on airplanes and say, “Are you the guy from YouTube? I just want to thank you.” That’s better than any royalty check.

Harry Glorikian: I want to get back to the 12-lead device for a minute. You mentioned that it meets FDA standards. But when you’re dealing with heart attacks, every second matters. How do you ensure that what you’re delivering in a portable form is just as reliable as the hospital standard?

David Albert: That’s the key question. First, we validated the hardware. The Kardia 12L is a real 12-lead ECG, not some simulated version. Second, we went through all the regulatory steps to ensure it performs at the same level as hospital equipment. But maybe most important, we trained our AI models on a massive dataset of real-world ECGs. That’s where the intelligence comes from.

We didn’t just guess what a heart attack looks like. We fed our system a million examples. That gives it a level of diagnostic precision that’s on par with trained cardiologists — and in some cases, better. Because the AI doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t miss things.

Harry Glorikian: And is this AI being used outside of the US too?

David Albert: Yes. We have deployments in Europe, India, and other parts of Asia. One example I love is a program in rural India where community health workers carry KardiaMobile devices. They do basic ECGs, send them to a central hub, and get expert guidance in minutes. These are people who might otherwise wait hours or days to see a cardiologist — if they ever see one at all.

That’s the promise of digital health. Not just convenience, but access.

Harry Glorikian: How do you think this gets even better? What are the next big leaps for mobile cardiac diagnostics?

David Albert: I think we’re just scratching the surface. Right now, we’re focused on detection — identifying arrhythmias, heart attacks, things like that. But the future is in prediction. Imagine a system that can tell you days or weeks in advance that you’re at risk of a cardiac event. We’re working toward that.

We’re also working to reduce the barrier to care. That means making these devices even more affordable and accessible, improving the user experience, and continuing to prove that they’re not just gadgets, but real medical tools that make a clinical difference.

Harry Glorikian: Are you also thinking about integrating other types of data? Like continuous blood pressure, pulse ox, maybe glucose?

David Albert: Absolutely. The more contextual data we have, the better our predictions and diagnostics can be. ECG is powerful, but when you combine it with other physiological signals — especially over time — that’s when things really get interesting.

For example, heart rate variability, oxygen saturation, respiration rate — they all tell you something. And when you see them change together, you can detect deterioration early. That’s what we want. Early detection, better outcomes.

Harry Glorikian: We’ve seen companies attempt to enter this space and flame out. What’s kept AliveCor steady over the years?

David Albert: Discipline, focus, and credibility. We didn’t chase every shiny object. We stayed focused on cardiac care. And we made sure everything we did was clinically validated, FDA-cleared, and backed by evidence.

Also, we’ve had great partners — Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, big payers and health systems. That’s helped us stay on the right path. We never wanted to be a toy company. We wanted to be a trusted medical company.

Harry Glorikian: That’s a key distinction, especially in digital health. There’s been a flood of wearable devices, but not all of them are clinically meaningful.

David Albert: Right. There’s a difference between wellness and medicine. We live in the medical world. That means regulation, reimbursement, and responsibility. But it also means you can save lives. And that’s worth it.

Harry Glorikian: What are you most excited about over the next 12 to 24 months?

David Albert: We’re expanding the reach of the 12-lead device. Getting it into more hands, especially in underserved areas. We’re also building deeper AI models that can do more than just identify a condition — they’ll help stratify risk and guide treatment.

We’re working on partnerships that will bring our technology into new care pathways. And we’re always thinking about how to make things smaller, cheaper, and more powerful.

Harry Glorikian: Last question — if someone listening is a young entrepreneur in health tech, what advice would you give them?

David Albert: Solve a real problem. Don’t build something because it’s cool, build something because it matters. Talk to clinicians. Talk to patients. Understand the pain points.

And be patient. Healthcare moves slowly. It’s not like consumer tech. But if you stay focused and stay true to your mission, you can make an enormous impact. I’m living proof of that.

Harry Glorikian: That’s a perfect note to end on. Dr. Albert, thank you for everything you’ve built and everything you’re still building. It’s been a pleasure.

David Albert: Thank you, Harry. Appreciate the conversation.