If you've ever had any kind of hospital procedure, you were probably given some directions on how to prepare. Sometimes they come in the form of printed instructions. In other cases, a staff member will tell you in-person or over the phone.
You can see where this becomes a problem: you lose or forget the instructions and all of a sudden you have to reschedule the whole procedure. This creates a problem for yourself, as someone who needs to take care of oneself, and the hospital, which loses money and a chance to fill the unexpected gap with someone else.
This is a problem being tackled by Medumo, a Boston startup that is among the 32 participants in the 2018 PULSE@MassChallenge digital health accelerator. To help it expand its software business for automating patient instructions, the company has raised a $2 million seed round from Cherrystone Angel Group, Launchpad Venture Group and Sky Ventures.
"I don’t think this would have been possible without communities like PULSE@MassChallenge."
Through PULSE@MassChallenge, the startup has been working with Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Brigham and Women's on its software platforms, which sends instructions to patients in a text message. The text message contains a reminder of when the procedure is happening and a link to mobile-optimized preparation instructions, which includes easy-to-follow instructions and sometimes images and video.
Adeel Yang, Medumo's CEO and co-founder, told BostInno that the company found in a clinical study with more than 4,000 patients that it was able to reduce the number of no-shows for procedures by more than 50 percent and improve preparedness by more than 40 percent. For hospitals, this has resulted in a half million to a million dollars in annual revenue recovered from procedures that would have been canceled.
"Our value proposition is to increase clinical operation efficiency," said Yang, who got his medical degree from the University of Arizona School of Medicine. "Clinical operational efficiency means getting patients showing up on time prepared."
Medumo is currently working with a total of 13 hospitals, Yang said, and the company plans to use the new funding to work with more institutions and expand beyond the seven specialties Medumo is currently focused on. Yang said he gives a lot of credit to PULSE@MassChallenge, which aims to connect startups with various stakeholders in the healthcare industry, for the current progress it has been making.
"I don’t think this would have been possible without communities like PULSE@MassChallenge," Yang said.
