Cadence vs Sword (2026)
Two remote care programs with different buyers and different clinical targets. Cadence runs chronic care management for older adults at home in partnership with health systems, monitoring daily vitals for hypertension, diabetes, heart failure and lung disease, and its home page says 99 percent of alerts are resolved without physician escalation, with care team calls answered within five minutes. Sword delivers musculoskeletal and adjacent care to employer and plan populations with motion tracking, at substantial documented scale, with HITRUST certification and a SOC 2 Type 2 examination named. They rarely compete for the same budget. Neither publishes engagement adjusted outcomes, which is the number that would show either program changed anything rather than selecting for people who were going to engage anyway.
- It runs chronic care management for older adults at home with health systems, billed through an existing reimbursement pathway.
- It states how its supervised agents are used: 99 percent of alerts resolved without physician escalation and care team calls answered within five minutes, though the thresholds that send an alert to a physician are not published.
- A peer reviewed, multi site study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, with a comparison group, stands behind its cost and utilization claim.
- It delivers musculoskeletal and adjacent care to employer and plan populations with motion tracking and real time feedback at documented scale.
- HITRUST certification and a SOC 2 Type 2 examination are named on its trust center, and the oversight structure is described per program.
- For an employer or plan, the contracting path and the population are different from a provider billed program.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. Cadence and Sword are each graded against the same capability taxonomy, from each vendor's own public materials and the regulatory record, under the AI Health Index verification standard. No vendor pays for placement, and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Plain facts
| Fact | Cadence | Sword |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Remote Monitoring & Chronic Care | Remote Monitoring & Chronic Care |
| Founded | Not recorded | 2015 |
| Headquarters | New York, New York | New York, New York |
| Website | cadence.care | sword.com |
Side by Side
Select any grade to read the note behind it.
Product updates
The latest logged changes from each vendor, newest first, each linked to its source.
Cadence
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Clinical evidence
Cadence reported an interim result from Hackensack Meridian Health, where more than 6,000 patients are managed at home with connected devices and a Cadence clinical team working under the health system's own protocols.
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Regulatory / FDA
Cadence announced that its HypertensionOS software was selected by the FDA as the second participant in the TEMPO for Digital Health Devices Pilot.
Source
Sword
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Pricing / packaging
From 13 October, physicians in Portugal's national health service, including family doctors and OB/GYN specialists, can prescribe Sword's remote pelvic health rehabilitation at no cost to patients.
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Clinical evidence
Sword Health published a clinical and economic evidence report on its continuous AI MSK care model, reporting $3,177 in direct savings per member per year, a 3.2x return on investment, and that 54% of members with moderate to severe surgery intent remained surgery-free.
Source
Each vendor in one paragraph
Written to be quoted whole. Each paragraph opens the AI Health Index profile of the vendor: what the product is, who buys it and what it does.
AI enabled chronic care management for older adults, run in partnership with health systems: AI agents monitor daily vitals from connected devices in patients' homes and handle medication titration, lifestyle coaching, alert triage, care coordination and symptom assessment, working with an embedded clinical team for patients with hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart failure and COPD. The company reports more than 20 partner health systems, 99 percent of alerts resolved without physician escalation and care team calls answered within five minutes.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
Sword Health, which now presents itself as Sword at sword.com (swordhealth.com forwards there), sells an AI care platform to self insured employers, health plans and unions. Phoenix, the company's AI Care Specialist, gives real time movement guidance from motion sensors and a computer vision feature that derives movement data from the device camera without storing raw images, and supports members between sessions, while a licensed clinician oversees each care plan; the company states that Phoenix makes no autonomous clinical decisions.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
Questions buyers ask
How do Cadence and Sword handle patient data?
For Cadence, three data streams need answers: daily readings from connected devices in patients' homes, which accumulate over years in a chronic care program; text and phone conversations between patients and automated agents, including any call audio; and clinical staff access to partner health system records.
With Sword, the computer vision feature processes the device camera feed in real time to derive movement tracking vectors and positional data, and raw images are not stored. Video or audio of sessions is not recorded without explicit prior consent. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 28, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How much do Cadence and Sword leave to the clinician?
In Cadence's case, the home page calls the service physician led with safety guardrails, says care team calls are answered within five minutes, and says 99 percent of alerts are resolved without physician escalation; agents handle titration, coaching, triage, coordination and symptom assessment.
For Sword, the home page line "Everyone gets the care they deserve" is a mission statement, not a claim that the system does not err. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 28, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers.
The buyers differ, one billed through provider reimbursement and the other contracted by employers and plans, so a like for like cost comparison does not exist. Neither publishes engagement adjusted outcomes, which is the figure separating a program that worked from one that recruited the already motivated. Cadence publishes no security attestation, retention position or training use statement; its security page is a vulnerability disclosure route rather than an independent check. Sword's member privacy notice says raw camera images are not stored and identifiable data is not used to train large language models.