PHL Inno's weekly "Startup Spotlight" feature highlights founders and new businesses cropping up in the region.
The startup: CareAlign is a HIPAA-compliant project management software for clinicians.
Founded: The Penn Medicine spinout was created in 2014 after the health system couldn’t find a software that specifically handled health care coordination, CareAlign Chief Operating Officer James Green said. It was spun out from the health system in 2019.
“It was so popular — I think Penn literally calls it the cornerstone of their practice there still — that we spun it out,” he said. “And we spun it out from Penn a couple of years ago, just in time for a pandemic.”
Home base: Remote, but the staff of about 10 is based in the Philadelphia area.
Founder: Dr. Subha Airan-Javia, a physician and former associate chief medical informatics officer at Penn Medicine.
The product: CareAlign is a collaborative task management platform integrated into the electronic health record, or EHR, for clinicians and their teams. Its features include shared task lists, care plans, patient documentation and notes. The platform can upload information into the EHR that can later be printed for a paper chart.
CareAlign was built to reduce communication errors by clinical teams and reduce time spent on repetitive administrative tasks for clinicians.
“Even giving a health care provider back an hour a day, especially in today's times, is incredibly meaningful,” Green said.
The startup launched in acute care facilities and hospitals and has since expanded to long-term care facilities.
Funding: CareAlign has raised about $2.2 million since its founding from investors, Green said, including Tech Council Ventures, Front Row Fund, Boston Millennia Partners and local investors Dreamit Health and Ben Franklin Technology Partners. It also received $25,000 from the Bucks Built Startup Fund.
The goal: The startup is seeking to close deals with large hospital systems. CareAlign works with clients that have about 20 physical locations in Greater Philadelphia, including Penn Medicine and Crozer Health, and Green hopes to sign a contract with a health system outside the region before the year ends.
“We want to take the company from being successful locally to being successful nationally,” Green said.
Green expects CareAlign’s staff to double to 20 through hiring sales, marketing and product development staff. CareAlign wants to hire locally, but the company won’t rule out hiring remote workers from outside the region, Green said.
