iRhythm Technologies, Inc.

iRhythm Technologies, Inc.

IRTCยทNASDAQ

$104.56

+1.5%
HealthcareMedical - Devices

iRhythm Technologies, Inc., a digital healthcare company, provides ambulatory electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring products for patients at risk for arrhythmias in the United States. It offers Zio service, an ambulatory cardiac monitoring solution that combines a wire-free, patch-based, and wearable biosensor with a cloud-based data analytic platform to help physicians to monitor patients and diagnose arrhythmias. The company's Zio XT and AT monitors, a single-use, wire-free, and wearable patch-based biosensors, records patient's heartbeats and ECG data. It has a development collaboration agreement with Verily Life Sciences LLC to develop various next-generation atrial fibrillation screening, detection, or monitoring products. The company was incorporated in 2006 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

At a Glance

Live Snapshot
Market Cap$3.44B
EPS-1.3900
P/E Ratio-75.22
Earnings Date07/30/2026

Earnings Call Transcript

IRTC โ€ข 2025 โ€ข Q4

Operator
Hello, everyone. Thank you for attending today's iRhythm Holdings, Inc. Q4 2025 Earnings Conference Call. My name is William, and I will be your moderator today. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Stephanie
Stephanie Zhadkevich
Thank you all for participating in today's call. Earlier today, iRhythm released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained in this call that are not statements of historical fact should be deemed to be forward-looking statements. These are based upon our current estimates and various assumptions and reflect management's intentions, beliefs and expectations about future events, strategies, competition, products, operating plans and performance. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated or implied by these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these statements. For a list and description of the risks and uncertainties associated with our business, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our discussion today will also include certain financial measures that are not calculated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. We believe these non-GAAP financial measures provide additional information pertinent to our business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures [indiscernible] and should be read together with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the tables in our earnings release and 10-K for a reconciliation of these measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, February 19, 2026. iRhythm disclaims any intention or obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Quentin Blackford, iRhythm's President and CEO.
Quentin Blackford
Thank you, Stephanie. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to be here with Dan Wilson, our Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2025 performance and how we're positioning the company for 2026 and beyond. Dan will walk through our financials shortly, but I want to begin by framing where we stand today and where we're headed. 2025 was a breakout year for iRhythm. We delivered strong volume-led revenue growth and meaningfully expanded margins as we exited the year with momentum across cardiology, primary care, innovative channels and international markets. At the same time, we strengthened the underlying platform that will fuel the next several years of value creation. Growth in the quarter and for the full year continued to be driven by volume across all channels. With growth in the fourth quarter of 27%, this marked our fifth consecutive quarter of revenue growth above 20%, reinforcing the durability of our platform and breadth of our growth drivers. Our leadership in long-term continuous monitoring remains strong with nearly 72% share in a segment growing in the high teens, supported by more than 135 scientific publications to date. On profitability, we also made great progress as we reached a key inflection point, finishing the year with positive free cash flow results for the first time in our company's history and exceeding expectations with respect to adjusted EBITDA margins. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA margins meaningfully exceeded the 15% goal that we have identified as we approach $1 billion in revenue, demonstrating the profitable scalability of our business. But this year was about more than financial milestones. It is about validating the strategic direction we've set, moving from episodic detection to proactive, integrated and increasingly predictive care. The need for long-term continuous monitoring continues to grow. Arrhythmias remain episodic, often invisible until they cause downstream complications, and they are consistently missed by short duration or symptom-driven diagnostics. Data demonstrates that nearly 65% of all arrhythmias, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic are found after 48 hours of monitoring, reinforcing the need for longer duration. Yet nearly 2 million short duration Holter and event monitors continue to be prescribed in the U.S. market on an annual basis. We estimate that at least 27 million people in the U.S. are living with significant risk of undiagnosed arrhythmias, a staggering and costly gap in care. At the same time, the health care system is constrained. Nearly half of U.S. counties and close to 90% of rural counties have no cardiologists. Access is not improving, which means the point of arrhythmia detection must shift. In 2025, we demonstrated the power of enabling that shift. More than 1/3 of our volume originated in primary care settings, supported by our expanding footprint in integrated delivery networks, EHR integrated workflows and innovative channel partnerships. We now serve approximately 40,000 primary care physicians, creating a scalable proactive care model that aligns with the growing focus on value-based care and population health. This is not a shift away from cardiology. Rather, it expands the market for these important customers as our ability to help rule in and rule out patients can enable cardiology to focus on the highest acuity patients, while primary care becomes an effective front door for earlier detection meeting the majority of our patients where they are most often being seen. Helping to fuel this move upstream is the power of our EHR integration strategy. More than half of our volume now flows through EHR integrated accounts, and 75 of our top 100 customers are fully integrated. These integrations are not simply workflow enhancements, they create meaningful stickiness, increase prescribing consistency and drive long-term account durability. We also advanced our predictive AI capabilities significantly in 2025. With nearly 3 billion hours of curated ECG data, we're now combining internal and external data sets such as claims and EHR information to identify patients at risk of arrhythmias before diagnosis. Early pilots through our partnership with Lucem Health show more than 85% accuracy in pre-identifying patients with clinically relevant arrhythmias. While early, these programs reaffirm our conviction that iRhythm is positioned not just to detect disease but to help predict risk earlier and ultimately to help prevent it. Our initial programs focus on high-risk populations such as patients with diabetes, CKD, CAD, COPD, sleep and heart failure, where arrhythmias are common and costly. These programs are not just about diagnosing more patients, they are focused on doing so in a way that improves the efficiency, quality and cost of care delivery.
Daniel Wilson
Thank you, Quentin. iRhythm delivered continued strong financial performance in the fourth quarter and full year 2025, reflecting durable demand for iRhythm's Ambulatory Cardiac Monitoring Services and disciplined execution across the organization. We delivered fourth quarter 2025 revenue of $208.9 million representing 27.1% year-over-year growth and full year 2025 revenue of $747.1 million, representing 26.2% growth compared to 2024. Performance was driven primarily by sustained volume demand across our customer base, reflecting continued strength in our core business and contributions from newer growth channels. While volume remains the primary driver of growth, pricing was also favorable for full year 2025 and in the fourth quarter, including improvements with our estimated collections reserves related to our market access, contracting and collection efforts executed throughout 2025. New store growth with new store defined as accounts that have been open for less than 12 months accounted for approximately 68% of our year-over-year volume growth. Home enrollment for
Quentin Blackford
The fourth quarter capped an exceptional year for iRhythm. In 2025, we delivered strong top line growth, expanded margins and achieved profitability and free cash flow positivity for the first time in our company's history, all while continuing to invest in innovation and long-term growth. At its core, the challenge in arrhythmia detection remains clear. A reactive symptom-driven approach continues to miss patients. Arrhythmias are episodic, often asymptomatic and frequently undetected by short duration diagnostics, leaving millions undiagnosed and contributing to avoidable downstream events. At the same time, access constraints across the health care system are intensifying. With nearly half of U.S. counties lacking a cardiologist, the point of detection must move upstream. We believe these forces, rising clinical need and constrained access are fundamentally reshaping our market and play directly into iRhythms' strengths. As we enter 2026, our 20th year as a company, we do so with more momentum, scale and strategic clarity than at any point in our history. Looking ahead to 2026, we are confident in our ability to deliver another year of durable volume-led growth while continuing to expand profitability. Our focus remains on disciplined execution, expanding access through primary care and integrated networks, advancing our platform through AI and workflow innovation and investing selectively in product and international growth, all while maintaining financial discipline. We believe iRhythm is still in the early innings of unlocking a market that is far larger than historically recognized, and we are well positioned to lead that expansion in a way that creates long-term value for patients, providers, payers and shareholders. With that, we're now happy to take your questions.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Joanne Wuensch with Citigroup.
Joanne Wuensch
I think part of what has been weighing on the stock is the language around the elimination of chart-derived diagnosis from CMS and what it might mean for
Quentin Blackford
Joanne, thanks for being here. Thanks for the question. Yes, I'd be happy to address that. I think that -- actually, I think there's two issues in and around Medicare to address. One is around the pricing and one is around the chart-derived diagnosis. And I think that
Joanne Wuensch
Just as a quick follow-up and a different topic. Did you give guidance for what you think gross and operating margins may look like for 2026?
Daniel Wilson
Yes. Joanne, we did give formal guidance for adjusted EBITDA. That was adjusted EBITDA margin of 11.5% to 12.5% for the full year. We also gave guidance there for Q1 of 3% to 4% for Q1 '26. On gross margin, I did comment, we expect incremental improvement relative to 2025, I can tell you we're thinking that in the range of 80 to 100 basis points of improvement relative to 2025. So hopefully, that gets you there for the '26 number.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI.
Vijay Kumar
One on the guidance kind of questions, right? Like, I know there's focus on CMS reimbursement. But I'm wondering, is the CMS proposal perhaps a tailwind if hospitals are doing chart scraping now, are they now being forced to use or should be using
Quentin Blackford
Yes. Maybe I'll let Dan hit on the international assumption in the guidance. With respect to your first question, in the chart scraping comments and again, having a confirmatory diagnosis that is in the medical records, I think that is something that our partners are very focused on. Again, in the discussions with them, I think that's exactly the path that they're heading down. I'm bullish on what that has the potential to mean for iRhythm and our company. I do think that folks are going to look for ways to continue to button up and bolster sort of their evidence and documentation around anything with particular Medicare focus on it. And so I do think this ends up being a tailwind. At the same time, we did not factor anything into our forward-looking expectations around this at this point in time. I think this is one where we'll let that play out. We'll let that show up in results. And if so, we'll talk about that in a very favorable way. But early indications, early conversations, I feel very bullish around sort of how folks are talking about the way that iRhythm and
Daniel Wilson
Yes. Vijay, so your question on international contribution within the 2026 guide. We'll tell you that we have that growing slightly ahead of overall company growth. I would say some upside there potentially, but really just getting started in a number of those markets, 5 of the 6 that we are in were opened, call it, in the last 18 months or so. So would expect the progress we're making in '26 to really show up more meaningfully in terms of contribution as we look to '27 and beyond.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Allen Gong with JPMorgan.
K. Gong
So let me get one. I kind of want to touch on some of the AI concerns that we've seen weighing on some stocks in med tech recently. I think in the past, you've talked about maybe like 20% of the customer base will want to do some of the analysis on their own. And in that case, you're not really able to bill CMS for that analysis portion of the code. But if your providers are more willing to use AI and potentially do some of that more analysis on their own with the help of third-party providers. Is that something that you're concerned about? And how do you address that concern?
Quentin Blackford
Thanks, Allen. Look, I think we're all incredibly excited about the prospects of AI and where that can go over the future years. I think at the same time, we've been doing this for 20 years. And frankly, our platform is pretty much a closed platform. But I think what sets us apart and continues to give me confidence that we're going to have success in this area is that it's more than just a software capability. It's more than just an AI capability. It starts with the data. The AI is only as good as the data coming into it. And we have very specific purpose-built hardware that allows us to capture very clean ECG data, having a clean signal is very important. If you're starting to bring together disparate data sets, ECG data sets that are very unique and different and marked in different ways. I think it's hard for that AI to truly be specific and as good as what iRhythm is able to generate and provide. You also have to keep in mind, we operate in a very highly regulated space where each of these algorithms require FDA clearance. And that clearance takes years and years of clinical validation. It takes real-world evidence, things that are measured in time frames of years, not months or quarters. There's work to be done in and around reimbursement and workflow as well that become major barriers. You look at our past. We've done the work to establish the CPT codes. We've got CMS coverage in place, national coverage decisions. We've got commercial payer contracts that are in place and importantly, I think, deep EHR integrations. Physicians don't just simply adopt algorithms and they're not going to just simply bolt on a bunch of AI algorithmic capabilities onto their existing platforms. It has to fit within their workflow. And I think that's something that we continue to build out and have a tremendous focus on. We've commented on this in the past. Over half of our volumes flow through integrated systems with our customers. And I think that ends up being a very important aspect of how AI will continue to get introduced into the future. And then just given the size, and we've got 13 million patients, we've got 3 billion hours. That data set is growing incredibly fast, which is going to give us the ability to stay ahead from an AI perspective. So I feel really good about our opportunity to continue to have success here and protect the business but also grow it really, really well and frankly, even take advantage of the platform that we have, where we can drop in other AI capabilities as we go into the future that I think allows us to be unique and differentiated. So I like our position here, and I feel good about it, and I think we're in a unique spot here.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Richard Newitter with Truist.
Richard Newitter
I wanted to just ask on MCT. I know it sounds like that's going to -- you guys are committing -- or recommitting to that coming commercial in the first half '27. Good to hear that. I guess, Quentin, can you just run through what exactly you need to do to get that over the finish line? At the JPMorgan conference, you talked through some enhancements and feature sets that you're going to integrate into it. Can you just remind us what those are, what's involved there and the confidence in the time lines here?
Quentin Blackford
Yes. Look, nobody is more excited about MCT than we are. I can tell you that as well as our commercial team and even our customers. I think we're in a great spot right now. Clearly,
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Brandon Vazquez with William Blair.
Brandon Vazquez
Maybe, Dan, for you, I wanted to go back to guidance real quick. I think you used the phrase disciplined approach to forecasting when you gave the guidance update. Maybe just talk to us a little bit about what that means, what is, what isn't embedded? What are the risks and opportunities as you think about the 2026 guidance frame that you gave us?
Daniel Wilson
Yes. Thanks, Brandon, for the question. So maybe we'll just start. No change to kind of our philosophy on guidance. We want to be thoughtful. We want to put something out there that we're confident that we can deliver. And as you've heard us talk about a few times now, leave some of the upside opportunities out of the guide that ultimately, if they do play through, we'll be happy and can overdeliver on that initial guidance. In terms of kind of the different areas of contribution within that guidance, maybe starting with core U.S. monitor continue to -- that continues to fuel the majority of our growth from an absolute dollar standpoint. We're growing in line with the market, if not a bit faster than the market. We're seeing primary care continue to expand the opportunity and then certainly a large remaining opportunity to continue to shift share away from legacy technology. So feel really good about kind of the durable growth there. That was a source of upside in '25, the core U.S. monitor that there's an opportunity for that in '26 as well. With
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Marie Thibault with BTIG.
Marie Thibault
Just wanted to follow up on that question about guidance and try to see if we could learn a little bit more about what's being included in that outlook for the partnerships. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit more about the number of partners you now have that you're working with? How many might be scaling up this year after pilots last year? Just any more detail? I know it's always a focus of interest for us.
Daniel Wilson
Yes. Thank you, Marie. So I would say we -- as I just mentioned, we continue to add partners to that part of the business, the innovative channel business. I will tell you it will start to blur -- has started to blur with the core part of our business as these partners are monitoring both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. So in terms of the number of absolute partners, we're likely not to give that kind of quarter-to-quarter, but I did mention, we've added incremental partners both in Q4 and the early part of Q1. So I feel good about where that business is headed. It's early. It's an emerging part of our business. So as we think about setting up guidance, really want to make sure we're not getting ahead of ourselves there.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Nathan Treybeck with Wells Fargo.
Nathan Treybeck
So Quentin, just kind of as you mentioned, in this quarter, you were operating income positive. You hit 16% EBITDA margin at an annualized revenue that's below $1 billion. I guess, one when can we expect you to refresh your LRP targets? And it seems like there could be pretty significant upside to those LRP targets considering that you still have remediation costs in your cost base. And Dan, just on the OpEx, it came in considerably below my forecast. I just want to understand what's going on there? And how should we think about OpEx in '26?
Quentin Blackford
Yes. Maybe I'll hit on the $1 billion and the long-range plan. I think as we get close to that in '27, certainly, Nathan, we'll take a look at refreshing what that looks like further out into the future. But look, we're going to deliver on what we said we were going to do. And as we get close to doing that, then that's going to make the right sort of sense in terms of time to reset some expectations. I do feel very good about it. You think back 4 years ago, almost when we set that expectation, certainly, a lot of things played out very differently than what we anticipated. We thought we would have had the MCT product here, frankly, a couple of years ago. But to see the way the team has been able to really drive the core business, and what we've seen in our core monitor business, what we've opened up in the innovative channel partners, what we are seeing in that MCT category, even without -- what we think is a much better product than the new MCT offering, we know that, that market share property is real. What we're validating in our sleep pilots gives us confidence that sleep is going to be a nice contributor to us well out into the future. And so I am very excited by where the company can go and the position that we're in. But I think for the time being, let's get to the $1 billion in '27, and then we'll start to think about how we reset those expectations further out. On the profitability side, I'll let Dan speak to it, but he's done a terrific job driving the team and just identifying where those levers are at in our company. I think we've got great confidence on how we drive into the 15%, and then we know we can go beyond that, but I'll let him speak a little bit more to that.
Daniel Wilson
Yes. Thanks for the question, Nathan. So I'd say the formula for Q4 and 2026 are kind of consistent. Driving efficiencies within gross margin and G&A while reinvesting back into the business, both for commercial initiatives and -- as well as a number of the innovation efforts that we're focused on. So we always try to set up a balanced plan where we're driving efficiencies, really looking at gross margin. You heard my comments about gross margin stepping up incrementally in 2026. And then within OpEx, certainly, continuing to drive leverage within that G&A line. And that's leveraging our global footprint, leveraging the global business services center that we have stood up now for the last few years. There's a number of G&A functions that are fixed and won't need to scale with volume. And then certainly, FDA remediation, as you noted, as that moderates overtime, that will be a nice source of leverage for us as well. And then we look at that and then decide what should be reinvested back into the business, both from a sales and marketing standpoint and an R&D standpoint. And look to have a balanced plan that is ultimately driving to deliver long-term value for shareholders.
Nathan Treybeck
If I could just follow up with one more. Just on chart scraping, I guess how do you expect a potential tailwind could unfold? Would it be a directive from regulators to do confirmatory diagnoses or would it be more self-driven by the providers? And then just beyond the potential near-term tailwind, are you hearing any concerns from your customers that have high Medicare Advantage populations that continuing asymptomatic screening could be risky for them?
Quentin Blackford
No. I would say, certainly not on the latter part of that question. As a matter of fact, in the discussions we're having with customers, and I sat with one just about 2 weeks ago, who's been a terrific partner of ours, they're expanding their program even further. Just they're starting to see real cost data accumulate now that their program has been in place for over a year that is demonstrating very clearly that they are able to reduce the cost of caring for these populations. So they'll end up, I believe, expanding that population, and that's going to be a nice opportunity for us, but I think it's indicative of even where the future of more of these partners end up heading. So I'm excited by where that goes. I think your specific question on chart scraping, I expect it's going to be much more of a self-driven behavior and change in maybe approach of some of these folks from the past. I think that they want to have the confirmatory records in the patient records, having a
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of David Rescott with Baird.
David Rescott
Great. Congrats on all the progress in '25. Dan, you mentioned that pricing was favorable in 2025. I think you pointed to improvements in the estimated collections of reserves that were a factor there. So wondering if you could maybe just unpack exactly what's going on in that front? And when you think about 2026, I think you called out pricing as being relatively flat this year. I believe there is an uplift broadly in the reimburse rate from Medicare this year and '26. So can you help us understand maybe why pricing should be flat this year relative to the Medicare uplift and then relative to some of the pricing comments you made for 2025?
Daniel Wilson
Yes. Thanks, Dave. Happy to take those questions. I maybe start -- we did start out 2025 with guidance, expecting price to be down low single digits for the year. Ultimately, the year did come in call it, up low single digits. So we were able to overdeliver on the price expectations or guidance that we gave for 2025. A few things behind that. Certainly, product mix was a portion of that. But as noted in that Q4 price benefit, we book a net revenue amount that is an estimate of what we expect to ultimately collect. And that's gross revenue less contractual allowance. As we go through the collection cycle, we're comparing actual collections versus what was estimated and we true up our estimate kind of as appropriate. And that's what we saw in the fourth quarter. Our collections were running ahead of our estimates. And so we had a true-up of, call it, low single-digit millions in the quarter. It is onetime in the quarter, but I would say the performance of our market access teams, our payer contracting, our revenue cycle operations, that performance certainly should sustain and give us a really solid foundation as we think about price in '26 and beyond. We're not going to factor that into guidance just yet, but certainly a good tailwind for us. You did comment on the Medicare rates being up in 2026. That is specific to
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Michael Polark with Wolfe Research.
Michael Polark
I want to better understand the mobile gateway comment for next-gen MCT. How is this different than the existing gateway? Is this an app on a patient's own smartphone? Is that the illusion? Or does mobile gateway mean something different? Any color would be welcome.
Quentin Blackford
Yes. Mike, thanks for that question. I'm glad you asked it so that we could clarify. The initial version of the mobile gateway will essentially be a smart device, but it will be locked in to where it only communicates directly with our
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of David Saxon with Needham.
David Saxon
I had a follow-up on the innovative channel just around when the right time is to start engaging those partners around repeat monitoring. Is that something you can standardize either across the channel or partner by partner? And -- I mean, you guys are good at generating data. So like is there any data you have internally that shows there is some value to monitoring after a certain period of time?
Quentin Blackford
Yes, I think it's a great question. And to be honest with you, I think with every one of these channel partners, the discussion is a little bit unique and different to their own practices. Some will talk about repeat testing every 12 months, others will talk about it every 3 years. I do think, for the most part, everybody is talking about some sort of repeat testing, but what the frequency looks like is just too early to identify just yet. I think that importantly, once you get to a confirmatory diagnosis and you start to treat that patient, you're going to want to make sure that, that arrhythmia is either being addressed or if it's reappeared, you're going to want to know that, which naturally leads into why there would be repeat testing here. At the same time, I think that the further we go into this, payers are understanding sort of the cost benefit associated with these monitoring programs. And I think that annual monitoring, annual patching is something that you could see start to be used from a risk perspective to identify how they even think about pricing their programs with their patient population. So there's a lot of reasons to see this move towards more of an annual sort of monitoring program, but it's still too early to speak to exactly how that's going to play out. But those are discussions that are being had, and I think there will be some aspect to annual monitoring in these partner programs.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Suraj Kalia with Oppenheimer.
Suraj Kalia
Quentin and Dan, congrats on a great quarter. Can you hear me all right?
Quentin Blackford
Yes, we got you.
Suraj Kalia
Perfect. So Quentin, many calls going on. Forgive me if you've already talked about this. Our math suggests you guys grew
Quentin Blackford
Yes, I got it, Suraj. And thank you for the question. Just to clarify on AT and just to speak to the strength of that product, and I put this in our prepared remarks as well. It's growing at more than twice the rate of the overall company average. So for the year, our
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of David Roman with Goldman Sachs.
David Roman
Maybe you could talk a little bit more about the referral channel within the innovative partners and the extent to which you're seeing consumer-based devices drive patients into that channel, maybe the degree to which some of the false positives that come off of those devices are actually increasing testing volume? And then maybe if you can tie that back to some of the AI questions you got earlier, maybe it would help just complete the picture a little bit about how to think about the implications.
Quentin Blackford
Yes. Look, it's an interesting question because I think if you look across our business, there's no question that wearable devices, forget just the innovative channel partners. Just in general, wearable devices have tended to be a pretty good lead generator for our company, meaning that folks or patients show up in their clinicians' office with a wearable device indicating maybe there's an arrhythmia or something there that needs to be monitored. And ultimately, a
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Stephanie Piazzola with Bank of America.
Stephanie Piazzola
I wanted to follow up on the innovative channel partnerships and how the 2026 guide includes a step-up in the '25 exit rate? And just any help on how to think about what that exit rate was? I think, volume from innovative partners had been low single digits, but stepping up each quarter. So did that trend continue in Q4? And is it still around low single digits or more in mid-single-digit range? And any other help in how to think about the step-up factored into 2026?
Daniel Wilson
Yes. Stephanie, good question there. So innovative channel partner, I would continue to point to low single digits as a percentage of overall business. We did see that trend positively upward as we were going through 2025. My comments on exit rate, if you took revenue from innovative channel in Q4 and annualize that, that's essentially -- or gets you a good amount of what we have contemplated in guidance. And then also mentioned, we have had new partners come on board in both Q4 and Q1. So feel good about that base of business continuing to grow. I'll reiterate though, that is an emerging part of our business. The visibility there isn't as great as it is in our core business. Each of our partners are unique in terms of how quickly they ramp their business, the patients that they're proactively monitoring. And so for all those reasons, we want to be thoughtful. We want to make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves. But really excited about what that business can contribute in 2026, both from a guidance standpoint as well as potentially upside.
Operator
Our last question comes from the line of John Young with Canaccord Genuity.
John Young
I wanted to ask on Epic Aura accounts. I don't think it was discussed. Was that the 75 number that you provided in the prepared remarks? And any commentary on volume improvements that you're seeing from Aura? And is that embedded in the core company guidance expectations for 2026? Or is that another source of potential upside?
Quentin Blackford
Yes. Good question. Epic continues to be a terrific partner for us and one that we continue to be excited about. Just to be clear, when I mentioned the top 75 of 100, that's all integrated systems, not just Epic systems. So just to be clear, it's across all EHR platforms, but Epic is a big part of that. Epic itself continues to perform incredibly well. I will tell you, we had a record number of Epic integrations performed in the fourth quarter. We're on pace to set another record in the first quarter of this year. So it's growing quite nicely, and the pipeline is incredibly strong, and that's going to continue to play out over the course of the year. We know that when we get integrated with these folks, our data would tell us 6 months post integration, we see roughly a 25% increase in overall prescribing volume. We're not setting up our guidance that way. Again, I think we like to be thoughtful on those things and let some of those play through before we would factor all that into guidance. But the Epic partnership and the integrations associated with it have been going very, very well and I would say, ahead of plan. And we're bullish on what Q1 and the rest of this year is going to look like.
Operator
Thank you. At this time, I would now like to pass the call back over to the management team for any closing remarks.
Quentin Blackford
Well, thank you. As we close, I just want to take a moment to thank the iRhythm employees around the globe. The progress that we shared today, the strong growth, expanding profitability, the increasing impact that we're making on patients, it's only made possible by their dedication, the expertise and the relentless focus that they demonstrate each and every day on doing the right thing for our patients and our customers. It's their work ethic, it's their commitment that continues to set us apart, especially as we operate in an increasingly complex environment. And as I think ahead of entering into our 20th year, I couldn't be more proud of the team and more confident in what we're going to accomplish together. And I just want to put a big shout out to the team. Congratulations on all you've done and look forward to the future. Thank you to the folks that are on the call today. I look forward to seeing all of you guys in the near future and look forward to a great 2026. Thank you.
Transcript from February 20, 2026

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