March 10, 2016

By Norman Volsky, Director of Mobile Healthcare IT

As an executive search consultant in the Healthcare IT space, it is my job to be able to identify emerging technology companies that are poised for significant growth. I do research daily and during my discussions with industry thought leaders, I make it a point to ask them what companies in the space they find intriguing and unique. I feel it is my job as a member of this industry to share this knowledge/information with my network so that you could be exposed to these companies too. Below are companies I have had my eye on all year that I met up with in person at HIMSS to learn more about their story and vision.

Kurbo Health- Mobile health coaching app focused on helping obese children ages 6-18 to lose weight. Being that 1 in 3 kids are obese, this is a crucial tool to reduce risk for health plans and employers. The app coaches adolescents to make healthier eating decision by giving a color corresponding to types of foods (green for healthy, yellow for foods to be eaten in moderation, red for unhealthy) and allowing kids a certain number of each per day. The solution includes video chats with health coaches, some of which are Olympic athletes in training. Kurbo allows families to be happier and healthier by taking the role of “food police” from a child’s parents. Not only did this app help the kids decrease their BMI 88% of the time, but 55% of their parents decreased theirs too!

Omada Health- Chronic Disease Prevention company initially focused on preventing type 2 diabetes. 1 in 3 American adults (86 Million) are pre-diabetes and of that group, 9 out of 10 are unaware they are at risk. This lifestyle intervention mobile application helped patients reduce their A1C Blood Sugar from 6.0 to 5.6 on average. After 1 year, participants lost 4.6% of their BMI and decreased risk of type 2 diabetes by 58%. Omada is leveraging their success in diabetes prevention and branching out into hypertension and heart disease. Preventing diabetes saves a risk bearing organization $10K on average per year for the patient’s entire life.

Lyra Health- Behavioral Health technology enabled services vendor helping screen for mental health diseases. Each patient is assigned a care manager and all of the visits are done leveraging telemedicine. 1 in 5 Americans suffer from a mental health condition and this solution identifies patients that need care and connects them to the right form of care. Lyra closed a $35M Series A investment in fall of 2015. Lyra’s CEO David Ebersman is the former CFO of Facebook.

Alignment Healthcare- Hybrid organization that can function as both a payer and/or provider that is helping the healthcare market move towards value based care. Their solutions help providers make better decisions by giving them better data on their populations. Alignment mixes IT, Care Management and Chronic Disease Management to influence change by providing daily clinical interventions. This is designed to take burden off of a patient’s family members and give them better care. Alignment uses Vivify Health’s chronic disease management platform to monitor their high risk patients’ vital signs and biometric data remotely resulting in better outcomes at a lower cost.

Care Thread- Mobile Care Coordination solution that improves the way clinicians communicate with each other in real time. Their patient-centered messaging threads can eliminate gaps in clinical communication and improve clinical workflow and efficiency. Care Thread has seamless integration with all EMR systems (including Epic), and their secure VPN-less integration technology allows customers to be up and running in minutes. Care Thread helps customers such as Partners Healthcare in Boston improve productivity and increase patient safety.

VisualDx- Unique clinical decision support tool that leverages medical images to help their customers get the diagnosis correct as efficiently and quickly as possible. Although the company originated in the dermatology market (followed by ophthalmology and oral medicine), recently the company launched an innovative solution to address general medicine. VisualDx for the 5th year in a row won a Best in KLAS award. At HIMSS the VisualDx solution was exhibited integrated into Cerner using FHIR and is a part of their new app gallery. This solution is the most used diagnostic clinical decision support tool in healthcare. This solution helps physicians save an average of 26 minutes per day and increases diagnostic accuracy 120%.

Sentrian- Remote Patient Intelligence vendor focused on using data and analytics to avoid preventable hospitalizations (estimated $17B of Medicare’s annual readmission costs are avoidable). Using its analytics platform, Sentrian can help its customers identify which of its patients are deteriorating at 80% accuracy. In 2015, Sentrian won the ATA award for Innovation in Remote Healthcare and the Frost & Sullivan RPM Innovation Award.

Jellyfish Health– Patient Experience platform designed to reduce wait times and improve patient satisfaction. Their mobile app allows patients to see available appointments and estimated wait times then schedule and confirm – all from the convenience of their mobile device.   By increasing patient satisfaction, the provider groups are able to keep their patients (on average, practices turn over 25% of their patients per year). It is 6 times more expensive (around $19,000) to acquire a new patient than to keep an existing one.  The tool helps drive revenue by increasing patient traffic, reducing staff interruptions, streamlining physician schedules, and improving patient throughput.

Propeller Health– FDA-cleared asthma and COPD management vendor that helps patients and physicians better manage chronic respiratory conditions. Digital products that have therapeutic benefit. Propeller Health recently announced a Development Agreement and R&D Collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline. They also partnered with Aptar Pharma for development of a next generation, integrated, connect metered dose inhaler. Propeller was named one of the “Fierce 15” Med Tech companies of 2015 and also mentioned in the following Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reenitadas/2016/02/04/the-internet-of-medical-things-digitalization-revolutionizes-respiratory-care-management/#55ead82c319d

Atigeo– Healthcare Analytics vendor that cut its teeth in predictive and prescriptive cybersecurity. Atigeo’s xPatterns currently protects and serves over 180 hospitals, and expects to double its workforce to 200 employees by the end of 2016. Cybersecurity and Fraud Prevention has been a key issue in healthcare and Atigeo helps its customers spot breaches before they happen.

healthfinch- Practice Automation solution that helps a provider automate, delegate, and simplify routine busywork so its clinicians can spend more time treating patients. It saves physicians, on average, 30 minutes per day. It helps increase staff efficiency at least 3x and reduces turnaround on patient prescription re-fill requests under 24 hours.

Qlik- Business Intelligence vendor that can analyze Clinical, Financial, Supply Chain or Operational data from any source. The end user not only gets the insights that they want but even for the ones they didn’t ask for but need to know. Qlik has strong relationships with Epic and Health Catalyst as well as some prominent consulting partners. Qlik allows its customers to qualify for Meaningful Use quicker. Implementation for an enterprise deal could only take weeks or at most several months. Qlik has over 1,500 customers relying on their technology, including Texas Children’s Hospital that achieved a tremendous ROI.

Caremerge- Care Coordination platform designed to bring the entire care team (families, clinicians, and patients) to communicate better resulting in better outcomes. Caremerge Improves the patient’s and their family’s satisfaction with the healthcare provider. Caremerge does a great job in independent living, skilled nursing, and assisted living markets.

Canary Health- Focused on tackling early stage chronic disease. Whether it be diabetes, COPD, arthritis or depression, Canary looks to identify populations that are at risk and make sure their condition does not get worse. They allow patients to self-manage themselves to reduce their risk of long term health problems.

Livongo- New approach to diabetes management. Having diabetes is a heavy burden, Livongo makes the patient’s life easier by allowing them to do less while receiving better outcomes. Livongo’s user spend less time managing their disease by leveraging technology. Run by the former CEO of Allscripts Glenn Tullman, Livongo has received investment from General Catalyst Partners, KPCB and DFJ. Customers include Lowe’s, Office Depot, Iron Mountain, Optima Health and Mount Sinai. Livongo was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 20 Best Entrepreneurial Stories of 2015.

Airstrip- Mobile Interoperability platform that allows its customers to connect in real time to any data source. This innovative tool enables care collaboration and single workflow visualization to improve decision making. Their new intelligence and analytics tools allow them to notify clinicians when a high acuity event may occur. Airstrip’s goal is to provide clinicians with less overall data to quiet the “noise” but more actionable data to help treat patients effectively. For one of Apple’s recent iOS releases, Airstrip was one of 3 companies to present on stage using the iWatch.

PatientPing- Backed by Google Ventures, First Round Capital and Fidelity Investments, PatientPing enables care teams to be informed regardless of where the patient is being treated. This simple, light weight, clean technology sends real time admissions and discharge notifications to providers to enable seamless care transitions. With over 15,000 providers using PatientPing, critical information can be shared and patient safety is improved.

PokitDok– API platform that helps enable mHealth apps to function better. This solution allows its customers to do transactions easier and have access to powerful data. McKesson recently made a strategic investment in the company with a total series B of $34M. PokitDok anables organizations to get connectivity to health plans.

Healthloop -“Patient Experience” company in regards to its high touch cloud-based patient engagement platform. The goal was to develop technology that had the ability to feel empathy. Healthloop sends educational content to the patient to not only answer any questions that the patient currently has but more importantly answers question he or she might have in the future. This takes a lot of stress away from the patient and makes him or her confident with what to expect in the future. They have a staggering 86% patient satisfaction rate, 11% increase in HCAHPS scores and 25% reduction in readmissions.

Catalyze.io- HIPAA compliant cloud computing vendor that enables innovative mHealth partners to scale appropriately. Its hosting and managed services encourage interoperability and allows its customers to save significant dollars. Catalyze.io is a “Last Mile Provider” that enables many companies to thrive affordably.

Avizia- End-to-end Telemedicine provider. Spun off from Cisco with the goal in bridging gaps in care. Recently launched a direct to consumer product to allow a patient to interact with their personal doctor. They provide 5,000 remote visits per month and are live in 36 countries. They have 7 of the top 10 IDN’s using Avizia.

Persivia- An Alere spinoff focused on Chronic Disease Management. They have a clinical decision support platform that focuses on bundled payment, care management, and quality management. Persivia recently partnered with Aprima Medical Software.

Opisoft- Clinical, Financial and Operational Business Intelligence tool. Opisoft was founded in Israel and recently launched in the US market. Predictive analytics at the point of care enabled by NLP tool. In Israel, they went head to head on deals against dbMotion (also an Israeli company later acquired by Allscripts). Opisoft owns 90% of the hospital market share in Israel which is ranked #4 in the world for healthcare quality.

iVEDiX– Mobile Business Intelligence platform that enables the flow of bidirectional data. iVEDiX secured business with the United Nations and has gotten some significant traction with healthcare providers. It saves one of its customers 1 hour per physician per day. iVEDiX received a Series A investment of $10M.

Lightbeam Health Solutions- Population Health Management vendor that is fully integrated, requires zero IT footprint, and is cloud hosted. Lightbeam Health Solutions can aggregate both clinical and claims data and analyze it to identify at risk patients. Software suite includes: Data Warehouse, Risk Stratification, Physician and Patient Engagement, Quality Measure Optimization and Care Management. Lightbeam Health Solutions has over 70 ACO customers.

Validic- Digital Health Platform that allows accessibility and integration to patient recorded data from mHealth apps, devices and wearables. Validic is getting a lot of traction recently into the pharma and clinical trials market along with international markets. Validic recently came out with innovative VitalSnap solution that enables real time data transfer from non-connected devices.

CareSync- Chronic Disease Management/Care Coordination solution with over 100,000 patients using their solution/service. Their goal is to allow collaboration between every stakeholder in the care continuum and help get the right information to the right care team member at the right time. In helping their patients navigate their way through the Health System, they improve the quality of care and patient experience drastically. CareSync members avoided duplicate tests 64%, 33% found errors in their medical records and 84% better followed their post visit care plans. Recently announced partnership with NextGen Healthcare.

Glooko- Diabetes Remote Monitoring solution to help a patient manage their chronic condition. This mobile solution addresses both type 1 and 2 diabetes. Glooko is significantly helping its patients reduce their A1C using its patient engagement and education tools. They recently announced an EPIC integration. Their CEO Rick Altinger was recently invited to speak at the Vator Splash Health conference in San Francisco.

Vivify Health- Remote Patient Care Platform helping move the industry toward value based care. Vivify is one of the leaders in mobile population health management. Their customers typically accomplish a >50% reduction in acute utilization, by engaging patients on any device and connecting caregivers at any interval. Vivify recently not only signed UPMC as a customer but the health system also participated in their recent $17M Series B investment round.

This was my fourth HIMSS show and I always come back amazed at how passionate and innovative this industry is as a whole. All of the companies above are helping drive change towards value based care and I feel so lucky to be able work in this industry every day.

The next trade show I am planning on attending is ATA in Minneapolis…if you are interested in having your company highlighted in my next blog, please let me know.