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How Samsung and Lark Health are bringing chronic care to seniors' smartphones
Samsung and Lark Health are partnering to offer seniors free access to AI-powered preventative care and chronic disease management programs through Galaxy devices.
Though digital health technology has the potential to transform senior care, getting these programs and tools into seniors' hands is often challenging. A recent partnership aims to address that gap by bringing digital preventive and cardiometabolic care to seniors via devices many already have.
Samsung Electronics is joining forces with digital health provider Lark Health to offer seniors free access to Lark's programs through their Samsung Galaxy devices, including smartphones, tablets and smartwatches.
According to Hon Pak, M.D., senior vice president and head of the Digital Health Team, Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics, the partnership "represents a move away from fragmented, episodic care towards a widespread, integrated health ecosystem."
By making Lark's various digital care programs available for free on Samsung devices, the organizations hope to increase access to care and provide seniors with support between visits. That support is urgently needed as a vast majority (93%) of U.S. seniors have one or more chronic conditions.
Companies expand access to digital health programs
Through the partnership, seniors will be able to access Lark Health's 12 chronic disease management and prevention programs through the Samsung Health app for free. These include Lark Health's prevention suite and its Medicare Diabetes Prevention program.
The prevention suite comprises various AI-powered wellness programs targeting stress, sleep, nutrition, exercise and tobacco cessation, while the cardiometabolic programs offer AI-driven health coaching as well as remote patient monitoring.
"[The platform uses] both generative AI and deterministic clinical AI," Julia Hu, co-founder and CEO of Lark Health. "And it's basically 24/7 coaching plus remote patient monitoring."
Lark Health delivers various RPM devices to patients' homes, including scales, glucometers and blood pressure monitors.
"We're monitoring your health biomarkers, and we're coaching you on whatever condition you have, whether that's diabetes, prediabetes, hypertension, etcetera," Hu explained. "And today we've treated about two and a half million patients."
When needed, care is escalated to live healthcare professionals, she added. Lark Health has its own medical group comprising health coaches, registered dieticians and certified clinicians. The company also partners with the patient's existing care teams.
Seniors with Samsung Galaxy devices will be able to access the programs starting in the third quarter of 2026. Hu stated that all Samsung Health users aged 65 and older will be eligible for the preventive care programs, while those at risk for type 2 diabetes and diagnosed with cardiometabolic and behavioral health conditions will be eligible for the other programs. Users can verify their eligibility and enroll in the appropriate programs via their phones.
Lark Health has partnered with Particle Health to access patients' medical records and verify their clinical and insurance eligibility, she said.
Partnership aims to expand care access, extend support
The primary goal of the partnership is to expand access to preventative and chronic disease care services in a convenient manner.
According to Hu, because Lark's digital health programs are available through the Samsung Health app, which is on every Samsung Galaxy device, the partnership can boost accessibility. The availability on everyday devices will enable seniors to enroll and participate in these programs faster than if they went through their physicians, which could take months.
"We feel like accessibility is such a critical part of care that hasn't really been addressed as much," she said. "With Samsung, they are in everyone's homes -- from their phones to their watches and rings."
Not only that, but Android phones are also typically less expensive than those from other brands like Apple, Hu added. So, the companies hope to expand access to digital healthcare for lower socioeconomic populations that tend to use Samsung devices.
Another benefit of the partnership is that the AI coaching aspect of Lark's programs can help seniors interpret their data and make meaningful lifestyle changes, Pak highlighted.
"We believe that AI coaching can identify patterns and signals users might otherwise miss, provide continuous, personalized health insights and high-quality recommendations on how to proactively track their health, drive real action and provide personalized coaching to build healthier habits," he said.
The partnership comes amid federal efforts to advance technology-enabled care. CMS launched its Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions, or ACCESS, model on July 5, offering a new payment pathway for digital health tools focused on chronic disease management.
"I think that it symbolizes a real turning point," Hu said. "In the past, it's always been fee-for-service…And to have this reimbursement structure where it's value-based care, so you're only paying for the impact and the positive improvements from a patient, and also the ability to have AI and digital be a part of that solution and a large part of the solution, is a huge, huge step toward efficient, scalable care."
Samsung and Lark Health plan to ride this regulatory tailwind, accelerating their partnership as support for technology-supported care rises. For the companies, the partnership will be deemed successful based on its impact on patient outcomes, both leaders shared.
"I'm sure we will look at patient satisfaction ratings and engagement and so forth, but outcomes at scale are really the big metric of success," Hu said.
Pak echoed Hu, stating, "Success won't be defined by a single metric. It's about whether we can deliver meaningful value to users and, most importantly, improve outcomes for users at scale, over time."
Anuja Vaidya has covered the healthcare industry since 2012. She currently covers healthcare IT and innovation, including artificial intelligence, digital healthcare, EHRs and interoperability.
