Our Story
Two funerals in one year. One decision that followed.
Interceptor Health didn't start as a business plan. It started with two crew members who passed their last annual physical and were dead within months of undiagnosed cardiac disease — and a battalion chief who decided that ceiling had to be raised.
How It Began
A screening ceiling, not a screening failure.
Dr. Andre Castillo spent over a decade as a battalion chief before he went back to medicine. He had watched the standard NFPA 1582 physical clear firefighter after firefighter for duty — including two men on his own crew who died within the same year from cardiovascular disease the annual exam never flagged.
That was the moment the idea for Interceptor took shape: a mobile diagnostic program built specifically around the exposures of structural firefighting, using the advanced cardiac imaging, lab panels, and behavioral-health screening the literature actually supports — not the bare minimum a form requires.
He recruited clinicians who had lived the same world he had: an EMS-trained cardiologist, an oncologist embedded with the IAFF Cancer Project, a psychologist who had run peer-support programs after mass-casualty incidents. Every one of them had treated a firefighter who was cleared for duty right up until they weren't.
“We built Interceptor after losing two crew members to undiagnosed cardiac disease within the same year. Both passed their last physical. Both were cleared for duty. That is not a screening failure — that is a screening ceiling. We are here to raise it.”
Dr. Andre Castillo
Founder & CEO — Former Battalion Chief
Cardiology
3×
peer-reviewed publications on firefighter cardiovascular risk
Oncology
10+
cancer types screened, matched to firefighter exposure profiles
Behavioral Health
100%
of intake includes PTSD, sleep, and substance-use screening
Where We Are Now
Built to travel to the station, not the other way around.
Interceptor's mobile units now roll directly into apparatus bays, scheduling around shift rotations so a full crew can be screened without pulling anyone off the line. Every result stays with the firefighter — never the department. The mission hasn't changed since the day it started: catch what the standard physical can't, early enough that it matters.
Read the mission behind the program.
See the clinical philosophy, the disciplines involved, and the team carrying it forward.