Electronic Health Reporter

The Medical Memory’s mission is provide simple and convenient methods for video recording medical conversations and sharing them with patients and their families.

Elevator Pitch

The Medical Memory provides a simple and convenient method of recording medical conversations and distributing them to patients and their families.

Founder’s story

Dr. Randall Porter founded The Medical Memory to help his own patients better understand their condition and treatments. Dr. Porter recognized that his neurology patients did not comprehend the information imparted to them during appointments. Furthermore, Dr. Porter was frustrated with his inability to receive information regarding his own father’s cancer treatment in another state. Since its inception, the company’s vision has been to use video recording technologies to enhance patient understanding of their medical conditions and treatments and to share that information with family members and loved ones.

To achieve this The Medical Memory partners with doctor’s offices to make it simple for patients to request video recordings of their visits. A portable video camera is used to record discussions, imaging and demonstrations. Post visit, an email is sent to the patient with log in information to a page containing the videos. The patient simply logs in from any location with internet access to start reviewing what the doctor said. If desired, the patient can share the page with family and loved ones.

The Medical Memory is a simple and convenient method to keep patients and their loved ones informed of important medical discussions in many cases eliminating unnecessary follow-up appointments.

Marketing Strategy

The marketing strategy for The Medical Memory is a comprehensive local and national marketing and public relations campaign focusing on Dr. Porter’s personal experience with patients’ recall, the need for The Medical Memory and the benefit. The media focus is on editors, bloggers, and publications covering health, technology and startups.

 Market Opportunity

In today’s medical landscape, there are several patient-focused services designed to better inform patients about their medical conditions. These services are varied in number and quality and movement into this space is rapidly growing. The Medical Memory is the only digital health company focused on enhancing the patient experience through personalized medical recordings. Since 2008, Dr. Porter has been recording his exam room visits with patients to help them remember the critical information they receive during these limited visits. Responses from the more than 1700 patients who have utilized this unique personalized service have been overwhelmingly positive. The Medical Memory has reduced the number of phone calls his office receives from patients by 25 percent (out of 10,000 annually) and lowered the amount of redundant office visits allowing patients to make more rapid and better informed medical treatment decisions.

The timing of The Medical Memory’s service is part of the reason for its success. Research shows that most patients have difficulty comprehending and adhering to large amounts of medical information, typically recalling less than 15 percent of what their physician tells them after one month. The results are redundancies and avoidable misinformation that currently plagues our healthcare system. The only time that patients have their medical conditions and treatment options interpreted for them in lay terms is during actual visits with their physicians. These interactions are limited in time and scope and face growing pressures as reimbursement continues to drop for providers. Initiatives such as Open Notes, which provides patients with full access to their medical records, have little value for most people who do not understand the complex medical terminology used in the physician records. Other services that provide “stock” medical footage designed to help augment patient comprehension can become frustratingly irrelevant because the animations are vague and used on a macro level. These tutorials rarely apply to the specific variation of the patients’ medical conditions. The Medical Memory bridges the gap in doctor/patient communication by allowing patients to re-watch critical interactions with their physicians about their specific condition when they want, as often as they want and allows them to share these video interactions with the person of their choosing in a HIPAA-compliant and HITECH secure manner.

How Company Differentiates Itself

There are several digital health companies addressing patient memory support. The Medical Memory is the only digital health company focused on the interpretation of patient medical information by providing personalized patient recordings. There are more than 700 million specialist visits per year in the US.

Business Model

The Medical Memory makes money through a typical SAAS model charging enterprise accounts a fee and/or through advertising via unique marketing channels

Current Needs

Currently the focus is on introducing The Medical Memory to both the medical community and the general public. The plan is to hire and train additional sales staff in the summer of 2015.

Elevator Pitch

The Medical Memory provides a simple and convenient method of recording medical conversations and distributing them to patients and their families.

Founded

2008

Number of employees

Three full-time and eight “partners”

Headquarters

Phoenix, Arizona