For all of the miracles available in our health care system, there is a glaring hole involving patient support and advocacy. Short of employing a patient advocate, mobile phone technology may help with health care reminders and care coordination. A new company, HeyRenee, is developing a mobile phone application to assist patients and caregivers with coordinating a variety of health care interactions.
Health Care Hole, Lack of Coordination Between Doctors and Drugs
Recently, a client contacted me and wanted to know if he should switch from his PPO health plan to an HMO style plan. He was dealing with a chronic health challenge where he was seeing multiple doctors and undergoing a variety of different tests. The problem was none of the doctors were in the same medical group, there was no communication between the providers, and he – while in staggering pain – was left to coordinate his own care.
An HMO health plan, with a Primary Care Physician, offers the promise of better care management and coordination. The downside is potentially losing the specialist providers he had grown to know and trust. Regardless of whether the health plan is a PPO or HMO, the worst time to be coordinating your appointments, test results, and medications is when you are in pain. Even if we have a trusted family member or friend, managing all of the health care services and drugs can be an overwhelming challenge.
Mobile App HeyRenee Could Fill the Void
Could a mobile phone application help manage the complexity of our health care system and our involvement in it? Nick Desai, CEO of HeyRenee, thinks a mobile app can vastly improve patient outcomes. The mobile app HeyRenee, now in development, will offer support, reminders, and health care coordination for both patients and caregivers. The app is not meant to be a patient advocate, but more of health care concierge or that trusted care giver in the next room. “Hey Renee, how many of these pills am I suppose to take and did the lab results get to my doctor?”
As envisioned, HeyRenee, will be more than a glorified calendar with notifications. As medical records are increasingly digitized, there can be sharing of patient information across different medical groups. This is particularly important when different doctors are prescribing medications to treat a different illness.
A single application that can be shared between different caregivers, perhaps several children take turns caring for an elderly parent, will keep the current caregiver abreast of the latest conditions and medications. HeyRenee would not become a patient advocate, but a program to support the patient, doctors, and caregivers. The app can be interactive prompting medication alerts and accepting a reply that the drug was taken. In addition, a telemedicine appointment could be included in the app for a quick diagnosis or update if conditions worsen.
One of the promises of the HMO plan type was better care coordination. In general, HMO plans do manage care better and have better patient outcomes. Unfortunately, not all regions have HMO plans for a variety of reasons. Plus, not all HMO primary care physicians are in a position to diligently manage a patient’s multiple conditions. Finally, asking a primary care physician to brief family members and caregivers on to their patient’s condition and medications on a regular basis is not feasible.
A mobile app like HeyRenee is a natural fit for seniors on Medicare. Original Medicare is very large PPO plan. The challenges are that many doctors a Medicare beneficiary visits are not in the same medical group or they are in private practice. Consequently, sharing records is difficult between different providers. Additionally, the Part D prescription drug plans are separate plans not affiliated with any doctor or medical group. This presents another challenge for distributing current drug prescription information among various doctors.
There are specialized Medicare Advantage plans that help coordinate care of Medicare beneficiaries and have the prescription drug plan embedded in it. However, all of the information is not always available to the caregiver or even the patient at times. The result is that many Medicare beneficiaries and their family members are in the dark about the status of the health care, appointments, or lab results.
I currently have an HMO plan with a fairly good online member portal. I can see my latest test results, correspondence with my doctor, vital statistics (height, weight, blood pressure, etc.) of the last visit, and current prescriptions. I can also get reminders about upcoming appointments. If I were truly ill, I would want my partner to have easy access to this information. A well-designed mobile app could have all the information necessary to help my partner or caregiver.
I detailed some of my health challenges and how the online medical group member portal helped navigate the health care system in https://insuremekevin.com/surviving-doctor-visits-prostate-problems-and-shoulder-paralysis/ My general conclusion was to skip the doctor visits and wait until I collapse and are taken to the emergency room. Of course, that is a fairly stupid strategy for avoiding the health care system.
A true patient advocate is an expensive proposition for most individuals and families. A solid mobile app for coordinating and managing health care, like HeyRenee, would be an excellent companion for caregivers and patients to keep track of all of their health care services and prescription medications. Technology cannot fix all of shortcomings of our medical system. We can use technology to work better for patients and achieve better long term outcomes. I hope HeyRenee has better success than my mobile phone app for historical sites and museum. But Hey Renee, who wants to live in the past?
January 2022 HeyRenee Press Release
HeyRenee Raises Another $4.4M in Oversubscribed Seed II Funding Round Led by Quiet Capital; New Capital Accelerates Mission to Enable Effective Whole Person Healthcare
Highly Anticipated Platform Triples its Valuation in Five Months, Bringing its Total Pre-Launch Funding to $8.2M
LOS ANGELES — January 13, 2022 — HeyRenee, the newest health-tech innovation from Dr. Renee Dua and Nick Desai, the founders of Heal, today announced an oversubscribed $4.4 million Seed II funding round led by Quiet Capital, with participation from City Light Capital, Fika Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Mucker Capital, SaaS Ventures, and Tau Ventures. HeyRenee has raised a total of $8.2 million and tripled its valuation in just five months.
The Company was also named a health-tech finalist in the Mass Challenge, which includes a pilot with PandemicX, the new health equity focused initiative of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “I’m excited for the PandemicX Accelerator cohort (which includes HeyRenee),” said Admiral Rachel L. Levine, MD, Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS. “We are at our best when all segments of society work together; we must work collaboratively to achieve the best solutions.”
“HeyRenee is a personal healthcare assistant that unifies the myriad complex aspects of healthcare into one intuitive, delightful experience specifically designed for underprivileged, older Americans who often have lower health and tech literacy and multiple health, social, and cultural factors that require coordinated attention to realize improved outcomes,” said Nick Desai, Co-Founder and CEO of HeyRenee. “Quiet Capital and Morgan Livermore are exceptionally high value-added lead investors. Along with Fika, Tau, and our other investors, they fuel our unrelenting pursuit of health equity for all Americans.”
Though coordinated care has been reportedly proven to lower healthcare costs by $7,700 per patient per year, a staggering 74 percent of seniors still lack a coordinated care plan. This problem is exacerbated by the reality that 53 million Americans already struggle to care for older loved ones and there will be a shortage of 1.2 million home health aides in the next decade. An aging population with over 100 million Americans suffering from two or more chronic diseases is driving the fast growing $9.6 billion per year U.S. market for care management software solutions. HeyRenee aims to ease this burden through high touch, coordinated care across the entire healthcare ecosystem, starting with patients and doctors.
“U.S. healthcare desperately needs scalable, cost-effective, whole person digital care coordination. We can’t think of two better people to deliver on these needs than Nick and Renee,” said Morgan Livermore, Partner at Quiet Capital. “Their backgrounds in innovating healthcare technologies and their commitment to ensuring quality care are ideal for delivering a solution that empowers all healthcare stakeholders to collaborate and improve patients’ health.”
Set to launch in early spring 2022, HeyRenee aims to be the first-ever open platform to work with every provider, partner, and point solution to seamlessly curate the perfect combination of services for each patient’s specific needs and then guide patients through an easy, interactive daily plan.
“I was immediately drawn to Renee and Nick’s mission and their incredible progress in five short months is breathtaking,” said Eva Ho, Partner at Fika Ventures. “We are thrilled to support their journey to be the personal care concierge every American needs to care for themselves and their loved ones.”
“As a practicing physician of nearly 20 years, I have personally felt the need for whole person care coordination,” said Dr. Renee Dua, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of HeyRenee. “With the help of all our investors, we can fulfill this need in a way that delights patients, alleviates doctors, and drives down healthcare costs.”
ABOUT HEYRENEE
HeyRenee is the personal health concierge, everyone, especially those managing chronic illnesses and conditions, has wanted and needed. The patient centric, HeyRenee platform is designed to consolidate, coordinate, communicate and connect all aspects of medical care. Through long-sought data integration with healthcare providers, the platform endeavors to eventually help all Americans, the underserved especially, connect with their entire healthcare team and relieve the burdens of appointment scheduling, in-home visits, prescription medication administration to Telehealth and remote patient monitoring, and more. Co-founders, Dr. Renee Dua and Nick Desai, have created HeyRenee to serve as a digital best friend that can bridge the divide in the digital transformation of American healthcare. The HeyRenee platform will help achieve health equity through innovation. Learn more here: HeyRenee.co