Five startups in the health information management (HIM) field pitched their ideas for a new product, service or business that harnesses health data and information to advance healthcare at the AHIMA19: Health Data and Information Conference. The winner, Drugviu, presented their population health platform that empowers communities of color to use their data to improve health outcomes.
The American Health Information Management Association’s (AHIMA) Pitch Competition, hosted in collaboration with MATTER, the health technology incubator based in Chicago, underscored the conference’s focus on innovation and change. The event served as an opportunity to inspire creative thinking at AHIMA19 and provide startups with a platform to present their health data and information solutions to a group of leading HIM experts.
Only six percent of clinical trials and research involves minorities. Drugviu, which received $5,000 for winning the competition, aims to end this under representation and improve health outcomes among minority communities by sourcing more minorities into clinical trials, providing education tailored to people of color and empowering people to share their medication experiences with their online community engagement platform.
Kwaku Owusu
“This award money will allow us to pursue our mission of expanding the data set of medication and health experiences to include minorities,” said Drugviu CEO Kwaku Owusu.
“Innovations that help connect people, health systems and ideas are key to improving health outcomes,” said AHIMA CEO Wylecia Wiggs Harris, PhD, CAE. “With the inaugural AHIMA pitch competition, we’re putting the power to impact health in the hands of enterprising HIM professionals who are developing solutions to advance the healthcare industry. We congratulate Drugviu on their impressive platform to engage more minorities in clinical trials and research.”
Valhalla Healthcare received second place, winning $2,500 for its product Allevia, a fully patient-driven, AI-powered intake solution that automates clinical documentation for healthcare providers. Uppstroms received third place and $1,500 for their machine-learning application that addresses upstream social risk for promoting better health.
Additional semi-finalists included:
Smarter Health: A digital health startup aimed at transforming the way people collaborate to improve value-based healthcare
Tapcloud: A remote patient monitoring and engagement platform that helps patients and their clinicians achieve better health outcomes
“The best solutions to improve the healthcare experience are developed through collaboration between entrepreneurs and industry leaders,” said MATTER CEO Steven Collens. “Winning this competition is a great recognition for Drugviu and gives them the opportunity to work closely with leading health information professionals to further develop their solution.”
TapCloud creates a real-time stream of data that enables care teams to quickly grasp whether a patient is getting better or worse, assess the effectiveness of treatments and medications and identify the onset of emerging complications. TapCloud is currently being used in settings from single practitioner to national hospital systems.
Elevator pitch
TapCloud allows patient’s and provider’s to communicate in ways never before possible to improve the doctor/patient relationship, focus clinicians on patients that need the most attention and insure that the patients that require services receive them in a timely manner to maximize health benefits to the patient (including quality of life, not just physical issues) and minimize the expenditure of health resources.
Product/service description
TapCloud is a solution for gathering key patient information in between clinical visits. There are two parts to the TapCloud solution: a patient facing instructional and information collecting APP and a web-based clinician dashboard. Typical use is for patients to follow/consume their provider-based care plan/educational info and enter their well-being, pain levels, symptoms, side effects, medication compliance and vitals into the APP (unique design allows patients to complete this in less than 1 minute per day). This information is then presented in a comprehensive dashboard that allows clinicians to rapidly interpret key insights into a patients overall well-being. Based on this patient reported information, clinical protocols will dictate if any specific patient needs to be seen, have a home health visit or meds adjusted, etc.
Origin story
Tom Riley
Our CEO, Tom Riley, is a former health insurance executive who spent the past 25 years living at the intersection of healthcare and technology. A few years ago, after his mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, his experience with the healthcare system became much more personal as he became a primary caregiver for her. During that time he attended office visits with his mom on a regular basis, and discovered that there is an inherent gap in communications between the way doctors organize/accept information from patients, and the way patients organize and deliver information to their doctors and other clinical staff.
Over and over again, he found himself serving as a translator between his mom and her doctors. He would help his mom by creating easy to understand checklists of things she was supposed to be doing each day, activity, medications, etc. And he would help the doctors by keeping track of his mom’s symptoms and watching for developing complications and then making sure that the information was shared during her appointments. It frequently made a significant impact on the diagnosis of issues, and the assessment of treatment effectiveness. It also helped his mom regain a measure of “quality of life” by making sure that even non-critical complications like chronic constipation were identified and addressed.
After his mom passed away, he decided to devote his time to taking what he had learned first-hand and developing a solution to improve patient-doctor communications in acute-care settings like post-surgical recovery and chemotherapy and since has morphed into a chronic disease management solution as well. TapCloud runs on smart-phones and tablets and includes personalized services for the patient, helping them organize and customize generic discharge/care plan instructions into a personalized daily plan for them to follow. At the same time, the technology uses a sophisticated, but incredibly easy to use, interface to probe for indications of developing complications and/or medication side-effects. It allows clinicians to effectively monitor patient progress remotely and focus their attention on the right patients. It also ensures that doctors are aware of all of the issues affecting a patient, not just the life-threatening ones that have their patients end up in the ED or admitted to the hospital without them even realizing their patients were experiencing any issues.
TapCloud creates a real-time stream of data that enables care teams to quickly grasp whether a patient is getting better or worse, assess the effectiveness of treatments and medications and identify the onset of emerging complications. TapCloud is currently being used in settings from single practitioner to national hospital systems.