How Cath Lab Nurse JD Ramos Built Arxova, a Health Data App Patients Control
Working in the cardiac cath lab, Jose David “JD” Ramos, BSN, RN, from Miami, Florida, witnessed firsthand the frustration, and sometimes danger, that delayed access to care data can lead to. For instance, treatment pushed back because a necessary image couldn’t be found; records scattered across electronic health systems that don’t “talk” to each other, or vital research and potential life-saving care slowed due to recruitment bottlenecks.
“At some point, I decided I was done just complaining about it at the bedside,” Ramos tells Nurse.org. “I wanted to build the solution.” So, he did, building the healthcare data platform, Arxova. The free mobile app allows users to own and control their own health data.
“Arxova connects two problems: it gives patients the full picture of their own health and lets them choose to help research move faster,” Ramos explains.
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Ramos says that he became a nurse for one simple reason: to make a visible and immediate impact. After starting at Miami Dade College to earn his associate’s in nursing, he completed his BSN at UCF.
“Completing both degrees while working a full-time job shaped me,” he notes. “I had a clear destination and wanted to get there, so I had to walk that path. Nursing gave me a career where I could actually see the impact of my work the same day I did it.”
He took that desire to make an impact straight to the cath lab, where he is able to handle a mix of nursing and medicine that he says not everyone gets to see. The pace is fast, the margin for error is small, and as a hybrid lab, his team handles cardiac as well as neuro and vascular cases. That includes chronic total occlusions, or CTOs, fully blocked coronary arteries.
“One morning you have a CTO and get to be part of the experience of opening a blocked coronary, and hours later you get to see and understand a complex vascular case,” he points out.
Ramos’ experience in the cath lab is where he says he began to directly see the impact that data had on decision-making: “Looking back, that’s probably where Arxova started, even before I knew it. Where does that data go, and what if patients could not only have access to and control over their data but also understand it? The goal is a more educated and healthier patient.”
Trust In The Right Hands
As a nurse, Ramos says he most values the trust that patients put in their healthcare team. “Patients tell nurses things they don’t tell anyone else,” he explains. “That trust is the most valuable thing in healthcare.”
That level of trust is exactly what Ramos says he’s translating into a software version.
The software, of course, is Arxova, a health data platform and free mobile app that gives users one secure place to own and control their health data. The platform holds:
- Medical records
- Wearable data
- Opt-ins to share data to be matched with research studies
- Direct researcher connections
- An AI health assistant (ARIA) to explain your own health data
“Arxova gives control back to the patient over their health data,” Ramos explains. “It empowers the user to know and understand their own health. This is something nurses have seen for years, if not decades. We spend time trying to gather information the patient should have, but unfortunately they don’t because access to that data is something they can’t control until now. With Arxova, you have control over your data. Over who sees it and who can use it for research. And all this, in an easy-to-use free mobile app.”
If you’re wondering how it works on a practical level, the app pulls medical records through its connectivity partner, Fasten Health, which says it connects to more than 70,000 healthcare institutions across the US, and links major wearables in just a few taps.
All records are encrypted before they are stored. According to Arxova’s published security documentation, a growing set of records is encrypted with a key only the user can produce, meaning Arxova itself cannot open them; the rest are encrypted with keys the company stores separately from its databases, so a stolen database alone would be unreadable. For the records protected by user-held keys, Ramos says that limit is the point: “If we can’t unlock your data, no one can unlock it without you.”
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While there are other health data platforms in the marketplace that link patient health records and wearables with AI technology, such as Microsoft’s Copilot Health, now rolling out in preview, Ramos says that the existence of such software giants entering the healthcare data space only proves the intense need for the resource.
Everyone is free to use whatever health app they would like, of course, but Ramos points out that understanding where and how your data lives is important. For instance, Copilot Health lives within what he calls “Microsoft’s ecosystem.”
Additionally, Ramos prides himself on the fact that all user data within Arxova is under the user’s full control, not a company or even the app itself.
“We don’t sell your data,” he says. “We give you complete control of what you want to do with it.”
Plus, he adds, Arxova goes a step further: if you choose, you can be matched with medical research studies that fit your health profile and consent directly with the researcher, with what the company describes as tamper-proof consent records. And last but definitely not least, Ramos says this: “Arxova is built by a bedside nurse who’s still working shifts, as an independent company whose entire mission is the patient, not a feature inside a larger tech platform where the designers have not entered a patient’s room.”
As a bedside nurse and CEO, Ramos is passionate about the difference a nursing focus, both in and outward, can make for advances in healthcare.
“Nurses are the natural translators of health data; we already do it every shift,” he points out. “We see the problems first.”
Ramos says he constantly sees nurses recommending Arxova to patients who feel lost in their own records, and he envisions nurses working in research using his platform to run studies with cleaner consent and better participant relationships.
His other goals include growing the platform, deepening research partnerships with universities and clinical research sites in Florida and beyond, and continuing to add integrations. His longer-term goals include making patient-controlled data the standard for research recruitment.
“My goal with Arxova is the democratization of personal health data, which means a world where every patient has access to and understands their complete health picture,” he explains. “Where care is personalized, not painted with the same brush as everyone else’s. And where patients can choose to advance medicine with their data, and be treated as partners in research, not data points.”
Ramos is working as hard as he does, continuing his full-time work as an RN, because he says he is on a mission.
“I’ve seen too many patients get their care delayed, and too many people die, because we don’t have access to the full picture of someone’s health data,” he says. “That’s what slows science down.”
He stresses that he believes the Arxova platform will help people access and control their health data, and by making that data understandable, it will make patients more knowledgeable and ultimately healthier.
As a solo nurse founder who built Arxova while working full-time in the cath lab (something he says often surprises people when they find out), Ramos is also passionate about connecting and learning from other nurses and healthcare professionals in the entrepreneurial and tech spaces. He calls himself a “big learner” and values input and feedback from his fellow nurses.
“I’ve been building Arxova for a little over a year, and a lot of the features in the app today came directly from coworkers and other nurses,” he explains. “I joke that I’ve had more than ten years to think about it, but honestly, a lot of the credit goes to the nurses who told me what they needed.”
He tells Nurse.org that meeting other nurse leaders and founders along the way has been one of his favorite aspects of working on Arxova. “Learning from people who’ve walked this path means a lot,” he says. Ramos says he is also forming an advisory board and has secured the founding member of his research board, who he says is an associate dean of research at one of the country’s top nursing schools.
And if there’s one message he could leave with other nurses, Ramos says it’s this:
“We need more nurse innovators and entrepreneurs. We’re at the bedside: we see the problems before anyone else does. To know one idea can resonate with people who could help so many, that’s what keeps me going.”
You can download the Arxova app on the App Store or Google Play.
🤔 Nurses, what problem do you see at the bedside that you’d build a solution for? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Published on
September 14, 2026
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