Huml Health, a Bentonville-based health care technology startup, will soon offer technology to help people recover from drug addiction and prevent relapse after being released from treatment centers.
The startup’s technology is being used at treatment centers nationwide, including in Arkansas. It collects data from the smartwatches patients wear while undergoing treatment. As of the end of 2025, it’s monitoring about 400 patients.
Rachel Hobert and Robby Stempler are co-CEOs of Huml Health.
“We define ourselves as mom and dad of the company,” Hobert said. “When you’re in a startup in terms of titles, there’s two titles: chief of get shit done and chief of common sense.”
Hobert of Bentonville is the previous, while Stempler is the latter.
About 15 years ago Stempler was a music executive who became addicted to Vicodin, a prescription pain medication containing a combination of the opioid hydrocodone and non-opioid pain reliever acetaminophen. He entered rehab in Florida, and during treatment, discovered the industry’s lack of technology.
After treatment, he started an electronic medical records company and sold it to private equity for $290 million. “He was like, ‘Wow, this is incredible. Technology can really change the game in addiction treatment,’” Hobert said.
Then, in Baltimore, Stempler’s best friend died of a drug overdose. Amid a lack of treatment centers there, Stempler began opening them. He identified a gap in recovery between treatment and post-treatment. And that “85% of all people that go through addiction treatment will relapse within the first year, which is astonishing,” Hobert said. “It blew my mind when I found out those stats.”
Stempler learned that Fitbit smartwatches could help with recovery and gave them to patients at his treatment centers. And after they leave the center, he would know when to call them if something was off, such as if they didn’t sleep well.”
Hobert said Stempler connected with Harvard Medical School and its psychiatric teaching hospital affiliate, McLean Hospital. Dr. Scott Lukas, a longtime psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, had the idea of using wearable technology to predict relapse.
PERSONAL CONNECTION
At the time, Hobert was working in venture capital and investing in startups. She spent eight years in venture capital and became connected with Stempler after her younger sister went through addiction relapse for the fifth time and overdosed three times.
“I loved investing in early-stage companies,” Hobert said. “But I saw a real problem with my family, and I felt helpless and didn’t know how to help her.
“We came together, we fundraised capital for it, and we started building off the beta testing.”
She invested in the company, formerly known as Pretaa, before joining the company in 2025. It completed about three years of beta testing before rebranding to Huml Health in March 2025. The testing included working with treatment centers and collecting data to help them better treat their patients.
“We collect biomarkers like heart rate variability, heart rate, sleep, SpO2, stress levels, steps, and we also collect voice biomarkers,” Hobert said. “We partnered with a company called Canary Speech, which has over 10 years of data on detecting whether or not you’re stressed or depressed based off of your voice.”
Huml Health uses Samsung smartwatches. Users speak into the watch for 60 seconds, “and then we can detect, on a scale of low, medium, high, if you’re stressed or depressed,” she said. “And we collect that data, and we deliver that data to care teams, who are then better able to treat patients.”
The data allows Huml Health “to track someone all the way from detox, which is a 4.0 level of care, all the way through detox, residential, outpatient, sober living and beyond.”
‘HOLISTIC VIEW’
Something that sets it apart from other addiction recovery companies is it collects real-time biometric markers. Typically, self-reported assessments are used to track progress in addiction recovery.
“And I think that’s fantastic, and we’re not trying to change it,” Hobert said. “We’re trying to supplement that.”
The assessments track various information, including patients’ weekly motivation and suicidal ideation levels.
“The problem with the self-reporting assessments is that it’s a moment in time,” she said. “If my dog has just died that day, I’m going to report that day that things aren’t going well, and that’s not going to be reflective of … the previous week. But that’s what’s going to be reported on my medical records.
“We’re trying to create a holistic view of, ‘OK, what’s actually happening in the patient.’ And with what we’re doing, we give clinicians and family members insight into loved ones who are going through addiction recovery, kind of what’s going on under the hood, because a lot of times when you’re going through recovery, you are disconnected from your body. You might not always know how well you’re doing or be forthright in how you’re doing.”
She said her sister would report that she’s OK on the self-reported assessments, indicating to insurance that she’s doing well. Insurance would stop covering additional treatment days, and she would be released from the center.
“She wasn’t fully treated,” Hobert said. “And she would go back, use drugs and then end up back in treatment.”
Huml Health is trying to “create more tools in the toolbelt,” she said. “We’re trying to add more data points to really start to see the full picture of how someone is actually doing in recovery … There isn’t much innovation happening in this industry. It’s a very small, niche industry of mom and pop owner and operators, and they’re very slow to adopt technology.”
Huml Health is focused on helping people recover from drug addiction, or substance use disorder, including “alcohol, opioids, you name it,” Hobert said. The technology has a broader application, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. But the existing target is substance use disorder.
‘LIFELONG BATTLE’
“Success looks like happy and healthy people who are able to live and contribute in society without this heavy cloud of addiction above them,” Hobert said. “Substance use disorder is a lifelong battle. It doesn’t just go away … It’s kind of like diabetes, where every single day you … have to treat and manage it. And for us, what we’re looking for is reduced readmission rates into facilities and people who are successfully on track to become the best versions of themselves.”
The startup works with treatment centers that purchase Huml Health’s software and lease the smartwatches their patients wear during treatment.
This year, the company plans to launch the post-treatment model, allowing users to either keep the watch or use another wearable device, including Apple Watch. Users will connect to Huml Health’s app, which collects the biometric data from the device. The app will also be available on smartphones. The data tracks users to determine whether they’re at a normal level, depending on their diagnosis code.
“When you’re going through detox, if you sleep four hours a night as you’re detoxing, that’s really great,” she said. “So at that 4.0 level of care, getting four hours of sleep, that will indicate a thumbs up, everything’s normal at this stage of care compared to the rest of the population.”
She highlighted the importance of clients involving family members and sponsors once discharged from the treatment center. She said the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It’s connection.
“People are less likely to relapse if they feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves,” she said.
Hobert is one of two Northwest Arkansas employees. The Bentonville-based company has eight employees and a Baltimore office.
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