HealthBook+ Empowers Patients with Personalized Health Data and Predictive Analytics
This “digital-first early identification and guidance platform” seeks to give patients greater ownership of their health and wellbeing. By combining comprehensive data consolidation with AI-driven predictive analytics, this startup helps patients better identify potential conditions and then suggests appropriate healthcare next steps.
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Challenge
While electronic health records (EHR) are becoming more the norm in the United States, medical information for an individual is still scattered across numerous systems. This results in healthcare providers having access to an inaccurate and incomplete picture of a patient’s state of health when they seek treatment. Many care components are not taken into consideration, leading to unnecessary emergency room or urgent care visits, higher costs, and even reticence to seek medical care — 50% of consumers avoid it because of how complex healthcare has become.
In the US alone, one in 20 people are misdiagnosed due to incomplete data, leading to major morbidity and mortality. Unnecessary medical visits are costing patients upwards of $750 billion annually with employers losing approximately $225 billion due to absenteeism from physical and mental maladies.
The lack of comprehensive and readily accessible EHR means that an individual’s care needs are often not addressed appropriately, leaving many to feel a lack of control over their physical and mental wellness journey.
While niche healthcare platforms have been created to great effect — such as those for musculoskeletal, diabetes, cancer, etc. — there has been no comprehensive digital system that presents individuals with a way to manage their entire health and wellness journey. That journey begins with understanding simple preventative measures, addressing acute needs, and management of chronic disease. Without a comprehensive record of an individual’s health history and status, care approaches can be mismanaged and conditions are either overlooked or over-treated.
HealthBook+ is working to change that paradigm.
Origin Story
It started in Greece — 35-year shipping veteran Stathis Topouzoglou had always been concerned with the health of his company’s seafarers. Providing medical care in the middle of the sea has always been a challenge. The process is difficult and over the years has resulted in misdiagnosis, bad health outcomes, and very high costs.
Obviously, timely remote care could help. Virtual health visits from the ship could avoid disastrous health situations in case of a serious emergency and also keep non-emergent situations from escalating to a costly diversion or transport. About 10 years ago, his determination to optimize the process drove Stathis to create a group of healthcare providers led by a very experienced physician. The team would perform pre-board history and physicals and keep information in a manual way for each seafarer. They provided remote healthcare before telemedicine was really on the scene more broadly. And they soon noticed that outcomes greatly improved. The key difference was being able to act on detailed knowledge of the patient’s medical history.
Stathis discussed the amazing results with his friend Panos Sechopoulos, MD, and they decided to build a digital health record owned by the patient. Dr. Sechopoulos is a practicing gastroenterologist who focuses on providing individualized recommendations. In his practice he integrates clinical gastroenterology with functional medicine and genetics. Review of all past records and obtaining detailed history of the patient’s health concerns are essential components he uses in providing personalized advice.
The two men believed digitizing entire health records and making them accessible on people’s phones, tablets, or computers would resolve the problem. For Stathis, this meant when someone got sick on ship, their detailed health record was there for the healthcare provider to view regardless of location, leading to better quality care and less money lost. For Dr. Sechopoulos, it meant better health outcomes for his patients.
The vision was to empower the patients to become owners of their health information and provide some basic features such as a symptom checker.
In 2018 they created a rough digital health record with some basic AI features. Stathis suggested the name HealthBook and the journey started.
They reached out to Chris Turner, who had years of success working with health companies. Instrumental in taking Healthgrades from an early startup to a 900 employee/$250 million company in just eight years and transforming WhatsApp in Healthcare from $800K in revenue to more than $5 million in 18 months by leading its commercial teams, Chris was working with a company in Poland that had an AI symptom tracker that Stathis and Dr. Sechopoulos thought would be good to add on top of the initial HealthBook.
As the three got to work, Chris pointed out that many companies attempted building EHR capability with a personalized health record but failed, and having someone own their health was more powerful if they had all the data. He proposed adding additional capabilities to the health record component, such as predictive analytics and AI, which would help individuals better understand their next best health action. With that, they would crack the code that many other companies had been unable to figure out.
The trio put together a team and decided to build their innovative early detection and guided health platform in the US because of its data accessibility.
Under the Hood
As stated on the HealthBook+ website, “HealthBook+ identifies potential conditions early on and facilitates access to healthcare screening and services through secure chats, peer coaching, and education.” The platform does this in a two-step process. First, there is the aggregation of data from many sources to create an individual’s comprehensive ‘healthbook’.
The healthbook is a secure, private database that gathers information from: 1) health provider-based EHR systems — HealthBook+ is able to connect with 85% of such systems implemented in the US; 2) claims data through its partnership with 40% of US payors; 3) biometric data gathered by wearables, such as smartphones and medical trackers; and 4) socio-economic factors.
The platform also supports self-reporting via simple health checks and access to an individual’s medical history, procedures, treatments, and illnesses. Personal notes can be created to clarify medical history information derived from a provider EHR. In addition, a document center component holds personal care directives, including do-not-resuscitate orders, medical powers of attorney, and living wills.
Importantly, all of the data in the personalized healthbook is fully owned by the individual and is completely private. The individual alone determines who else can access it, what data is shared, and for how long. This data ownership paradigm underpins an individual’s ability to “own their health.”
The second process of the platform is the “+” part of HealthBook+, which provides AI-driven predictive analytics on the data that is collected into the healthbook. The analytics provide suggestions for three different health requirements: 1) prevention; 2) addressing acute conditions; and 3) chronic care management.
Prevention encompasses early identification and risk prediction. Based on information provided to the platform, the analytics engine determines a variety of potential future issues. For example, it can determine whether someone is likely to have depression later in the year, if a pregnancy is potentially a high risk, or even if an individual may develop diabetes or hypertension down the line. Upon early identification of risk of a particular condition, the platform alerts the individual to direct them to the right point of care within their network.
Acute care is for those not feeling well at a point in time — such as experiencing a headache, nausea, fever, etc. Individuals share how they are feeling with the HealthBook+ instant health check, which will guide the interaction to arrive at a list of possible conditions and, more importantly, triage direction. For example, HealthBook+ might suggest an individual seek an ER or urgent care visit or a telemedicine appointment.
Chronic care management, vital to the wellbeing of users with ongoing health issues, includes tracking of pertinent data, medications, self-assessments, reminders, calendars, journaling, etc, all designed to ensure quality care management.
An important factor in HealthBook+’s ability to provide accurate predictive analysis of an individual’s health is daily engagement. Analysis of simple, daily, emoji-based check-ins advises individuals when further investigation is necessary. Additionally, biometric information provided by wearables may also trigger the need for the individual to pursue further investigation. Based on the results of the predictive analytics, the user is then directed to the appropriate next step.
An innovation being implemented is the ability to interact with a digital human (a conversational AI). Research has shown that some people have conditions or symptoms they feel are stigmatized and they don’t want to share them in-person with a doctor. Speaking with a digital human allows them to receive an empathetic response without such discomfort.
Currently, HealthBook+ digital human interactions are conversational, especially in the instant health check component. A goal is to have the digital human analyze the individual’s facial expression through the camera on their phone or computer and then adjust its own tone and facial expression to react appropriately, with empathy.
Why We’re Proud to Support
Launched in January, HealthBook+ currently has four pilots and released its mobile app at the ViVE digital healthcare conference. It is subscription-based and family-centric — one household can manage their care and even that of their pets in one place.
HealthBook+ ultimately sees itself as a hub that can build upon different point solutions to guide individuals, simply and efficiently, to the most appropriate treatment steps at the appropriate time. With healthcare costs steadily rising and the healthcare system becoming more complex and fractured, many people are postponing medical care or are ignoring it completely. When it comes to navigating healthcare choices, some 19% of US consumers are novices and 33% have no experience with it whatsoever. As a result, many individuals are not getting the care they not only deserve but desperately need.
By putting the power to own their health, and their family’s health, literally in the palm of an individual’s hands, HealthBook+ is focused on creating savvy, well-informed, and well-cared for people for a healthier society.
StartUp Health is drawn to the collaborative model that HealthBook+ is engaging to build its platform. HealthBook+ is wisely partnering with many companies and utilizing a broad range of APIs to bring its vision to life in a viable, sustainable way. Doing so means that HealthBook+ can provide care more quickly and with the launch of its platform this past January, it is already making headway.
Join us in welcoming Chris Turner and the HealthBook+ team to the StartUp Health family.
Connect with the HealthBook+ team via email.
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Published: May 24, 2023