In college, Jon Savage went into electrical engineering to design robotics for the operating room. He was inspired by the Jarvik artificial heart and wanted to create the next revolutionary medical technology.
Plans change, and Savage, not his robotics, ended up in hospitals as an emergency room doctor.
As an ER doc, Savage saw the frequent, unnecessary trips people took to the ER firsthand.
“I realized years ago that people were using the ER for non-ER reasons,” he said. “One of the big reasons is it’s too costly and too confusing to know what to do [during illness], so the natural instinct is to run to the ER.”
That led Savage to telemedicine, where he once again saw a flaw in the system.
While he worked in telemedicine, Savage learned that patients in need of more care than what could be provided over the conference were often left out in the cold.
So, he launched Care on Location, a telemedicine, hardware and software service company that connects patients to the right level of care, at a location close to them.
Savage said the startup's goal is to improve access to care, creating a more efficient system that better serves patients.
“I’d like to see the system realize that there are ways to improve what they’re doing and turn things back to the patient,” he said.
In certain rural parts of Colorado, access to care is sparse. The municipality may not have any local clinics, instead operating only with an ambulance system. Savage said this is where Care on Location can be a resource.
The company has designed mobile, telemedicine kits with a computer, digital stethoscope, heart rate monitor and other diagnostic devices. EMT’s can take these to patients, connecting them with a doctor to determine the most logical next step in their care. This could eliminate a long, costly trip to the ER if it is unnecessary.
“A doctor can look at vitals and make an educated decision if that patient needs to be transported,” Savage said.
If an ER trip is ruled out, Care on Location will find a local clinic with availability, using geolocation software, to steer the patient to for further care.
It’s this part that Savage said differentiates Care on Location from its competition.
“There’s a lot of telemedicine competition and there’s hundreds of telemedicine software companies out there, but I would say the differentiator for Care on Location is the ability to connect the patients to the resources on the ground,” he said.
Care on Location currently has four employees and work out of an office in the Catalyst HTI building, a healthcare hub that opened earlier this year in RiNo.
Savage said the company has been entirely bootstrapped to this point, although a recent second place prize at the Prime Health Challenge earned them $50,000. Savage said the company is currently weighing the need for additional funding.
The software officially launched in May 2017, and Savage said Care on Location serves an average of 2 to 4 patients per hour over the course of a month.
In the coming months, the company will roll out a program to service Denver’s homeless population, in conjunction with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and Stout Street Health Center. Savage said the company is designing a mobile-care backpack they hope to launch in the next few months.
Although he took a roundabout path to get there, Savage is back on the engineering side of medicine, as he initially intended years ago.
“I was so into medicine that I totally forgot where I started, and it all came flowing back,” he said.
