When you work in any specialized field, you’re bound to see trends over time. Working with health startups is no exception – I work with them every day and I’m definitely seeing some trends.
One that has popped up on my radar lately are companies that are creating tools for patients to self-educate after they leave the hospital (and sometimes while they are still in recovery), as well as mobile-based tools that make the clinical communication with outpatients more effective and streamlined.
When I attended Vator Splash LA just a few weeks back, one of the finalists (out of over 100 startups who competed) was personalRN, a “coordinated care effort for patients and their care providers that begins at admission and follows them through to home care for better care, better compliance, and better recovery”. The personalRN system includes modules for various conditions including stroke, heart attack and heart failure, high-risk pregnancy, concussion and a number of others. Dr. Kourosh Pasapour, one of the company’s founders and its CEO, has been involved in teleheath for nearly 10 years.
Another company that is providing a solution in this same vein is GetWellNetwork. Truth be told, GetWellNetwork is no longer a startup – they were founded after their CEO, Michael O’Neil was a cancer patient in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD (I saw him speak at the recent Stanford MedicineX event). His experience as patient inspired his mission to improve patient care through interactive patient and family engagement. Their system provides twenty-five million patient interactions each year; they work with numerous healthcare systems such as Catholic Healthcare West, Veterans Health Administration, University of Chicago and 35 of the top children’s hospitals in the U.S. Check out their offerings via video demo here.
Yet another example is Core Mobile. Core Mobile combines mobile, big data and predictive analytics to provide cutting-edge solutions to make healthcare organizations more efficient and coordinated, allowing both clinicians and patients/families to be in touch moment by moment (its real-time capabilities are powered in part by SAP HANA), and hospital administrators to have robust data on their efficiency efforts. Their outpatient solutions, CoreyHealth and CoreyPatient work in tandem to facilitate care coordination, increase medication and discharge instruction compliance, and reduce readmissions. All of the Corey solutions are secure and HIPAA compliant. Core Mobile’s CEO, Chandra Tekwani, is a passionate serial entrepreneur with a deep technology background in enterprise and mobile solutions. Learn more about Core Mobile and its solutions here.
To me, this trend speaks to something bigger than patient engagement – it’s really about patient empowerment. We’re now starting to put the patient in the driver’s seat regarding their post-op care. Let’s hope this trend continues.
Hilary Weber, founder, Opportu Startup Leadership. http://opportu.com/