The realization struck Pranam Ben as he walked through a hospital parking lot.
Ben was returning to his car after a bout of stomach pain put him in the emergency room of an Orlando hospital before he was discharged with no diagnosis — but plenty of bills. That walk 13 years ago was when Ben realized the opportunity for technology to boost communication among doctors offices, hospitals and others to make health care more efficient.
This led him to launch an electronic medical records startup that sold two years later, and start another health care tech firm, Orlando-based The Garage, in 2012. That company is expected to undergo rapid growth by the end of 2022, as the use of digital tools in health care accelerates.
The Garage, which employs 216 people globally and 18 at its downtown Orlando headquarters, expects to add 110-135 workers companywide and triple its revenue in the next 18 months, Ben, founder and CEO, told Orlando Inno.
The firm's population health management technology platform Bridge provides physicians with a broad range of solutions to exchange patient information, make electronic referrals, schedule appointments, track follow-ups and more. The goal is to make primary care more efficient, ensure fewer people seek care in high-cost centers like hospitals and save the industry and customers money.
The Garage's primary customers are accountable care organizations and independent physician associations. The company's technology is used by 120 of these organizations across 30 states, representing 17,000 health care providers. The company this year snagged a strategic partnership with New York-based Healthix Inc., the nation's biggest public health information exchange. The Garage will organize and manage the data of more than 20 million patients, and an additional 2,000 health care organizations will use the platform as a result.
“By working with The Garage, we’ve realized there is so much more we can do with our data for community care management, and with [The Garage's Municipal platform], we are offering a much-needed tool for making the clinical information in Healthix more useful and actionable," Healthix Senior Vice President Tom Moore said in a prepared statement.
The growth in users is in part due to The Garage's results: Accountable care organizations using Bridge report to The Garage that they save on average $236 per patient, or $164 million in gross savings. Also, the spike in the use of health care IT was evident in a record quarter for venture capital investment in companies in the space in first-quarter 2021.
Health IT companies reeled in more than $2 billion that quarter, which dropped to a still-hefty $1.4 billion in the second quarter, New York-based business analytics firm CB Insights reported. While The Garage is not funded by venture capital, high levels of investor attention to the space is a sign of its growth.
Meanwhile, Ben and leadership at The Garage are not just focused on expanding the company's reach. They also plan to expand the platform, as well. Development is ongoing to create new platform features that provide a "360-degree view" of heath, Ben said. This includes support for mental health patients as well as analyzing social and lifestyle factors that affect health, including food insecurity.
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