February is American Heart Month—a time to spotlight cardiovascular disease and highlight innovations that can improve patient outcomes. For the medtech community, it’s an opportunity to address persistent gaps in care through technology, data, collaboration, and policy advancement. Despite progress in treating heart conditions, sleep disorders—especially sleep apnea—remain a significant and underrecognized contributor to poor cardiovascular outcomes.1 Tackling this issue requires clinical awareness and supportive policies for timely diagnosis, coverage, and care beyond traditional settings.
Sleep apnea, including obstructive (OSA) and central sleep apnea (CSA), affects about 1 billion people globally, and its prevalence is especially high among those with cardiovascular disease.2 Decades of research link sleep-disordered breathing with adverse outcomes yet sleep apnea is still underdiagnosed and undertreated in cardiology. American Heart Month is a critical time to promote earlier identification and sustained care management by aligning clinical practice, technology adoption, and coverage pathways.
Medtech innovation is needed for scalable, technology-enabled approaches that support early identification and ongoing management of sleep-disordered breathing within cardiovascular care pathways, aided by modern payment policies and clear regulatory frameworks.
Cardiologists are in a prime position to identify patients at high risk for sleep apnea. Many people with heart failure, atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, obesity, or diabetes regularly visit cardiology clinics, yet they’re rarely screened for sleep apnea as part of their routine care. Importantly, major clinical guidelines for the clinical management of atrial fibrillation (AF), for example, emphasize lifestyle and risk factor modification such as screening for sleep-disordered breathing, as key components of managing individuals with AF.3 Routine sleep apnea screening can be simple, using questionnaires, risk assessments, and home sleep apnea tests. Integrating sleep health into cardiology clinic workflows, especially with support for home-based diagnostics and therapies, leads to earlier diagnoses and more comprehensive care.
Beyond screening, cardiologists guide patients toward effective treatments. Positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy is the first line, most studied treatment, reducing apnea burden, improving oxygenation, alleviating daytime sleepiness, and positively impacting cardiovascular risk factors such as blood pressure and arrhythmia recurrence.4
Integrating sleep health into cardiovascular care advances value-based care, has been associated with lowers costs, and demonstrates how medical technology can address chronic conditions and improve outcomes.5,6
Collaboration across specialties—cardiology, sleep medicine, pulmonology, and primary care—is essential for timely diagnosis, therapy, and ongoing support. Organizations like the American Academy of Cardiovascular Sleep Medicine (AACSM) support this multidisciplinary approach through clinician education, advocacy, and integration of sleep medicine within cardiovascular practice.7
Technology and digital health solutions support adherence, remote monitoring, and actionable insights, transforming sleep apnea management into an ongoing, data-informed partnership, 8,9 and highlighting the need for policies that support secure data use and reimbursement for digital care.
This Heart Month, let’s elevate sleep apnea as a core part of cardiovascular care. Increased awareness, routine screening, and interdisciplinary collaboration, backed by supportive policies, can close gaps in diagnosis and treatment. For patients with heart failure, arrhythmias, and cardiometabolic disorders, addressing sleep apnea is vital for comprehensive care. By integrating sleep health into cardiovascular practice, we improve outcomes, reduce healthcare utilization, and help patients live longer, healthier lives.10,11 For the medtech industry, this mission demands continued innovation, strong evidence, and collaboration with providers, payers, and policymakers to ensure effective solutions are accessible wherever care is delivered. Let’s commit to caring for the heart—day and night.
References:
1- Yeghiazarians Y, MD, et al. Circulation. 2021 Jun;144(3): e56-e67. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000988
2- Benjafield AV, et al. Lancet Respir Med. 2019 Aug;7(8):687-698. DOI: 10.1016/S2213-2600(19)30198-5
3- Joglar, J, Chung, M, Armbruster, A. et al. JACC. 2024 Jan, 83 (1) 109–279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2023.08.017
4- Nobuaki Tanaka, et al. J. Am Heart Assoc. 2025 May;14 (10): e038742. https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.124.038742
5 – Malhotra A, et al. J. Am Heart Assoc. 2023 May ;12(10): e028732. https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.122.028732
6 – Malhotra A et al. Sleep. 2025 Oct 27: zsaf333. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaf333
8 – Verbraecken J, et al. Eur Respir J. 2025; 66 (5):2500557. https://doi.org/10.1183/13993003.00557-2025
9 – Crocker, M, et al. CHEST 2017 Nov;153 (4): 843-850. DOI: 10.1016/j.chest.2017.11.005
10 – Benjafield AV, et al. Lancet Respir Med 2025 May; 13 (5): 403-413. DOI: 10.1016/S2213-2600(25)00002-5
11 – Sun L, et al. Curr Hypertens Rep 2024 Mar; 26, 201–211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11906-024-01294-4