Our First Partner: Petaluma Health Center
A few months ago I wrote about going live with our first partner, but couldn’t refer to them by name. Today, we’re proud to announce our partner is Petaluma Health Center (PHC). This past Friday, the Press Democrat ran a feature on our collaboration.
Because our mission at Carium is to help people with their health in a continuous, collaborative fashion, we began our efforts by asking PHC how we could best help them. Our focus was to improve patient outcomes by extending care both beyond the walls of the clinic and between visits. The PHC team identified two areas of opportunity for us to jointly explore:
Referral Coordination. When providers at PHC referred patients to see another provider, neither the patient nor the referring provider had clear visibility into the status of the process. One problem with the lack of coordination was that PHC had no idea whether patients could make their appointments or if there were factors (e.g. they didn’t have transportation) that might prevent patients from following through.
Remote Glucose Management. Patients with type 2 diabetes were struggling to manage their condition effectively between visits. PHC was looking to provide more on-going monitoring and coaching on everyday actions that impact glucose readings, such as diet and exercise, as well as more effective ways to access and share in patient-reported glucose readings.
In both of these scenarios, patients and PHC needed a way to communicate and collaborate outside the structure of an in-person visit to the clinic, and using tools that are convenient and simple.
With our solution, patients are tracking their referrals with Carium’s mobile app and the care team can similarly see the status of patient progress with their referrals. Additionally, a person managing type 2 diabetes can capture glucose readings within the same app. We use that information to offer guidance and encouragement to them. That same information is also available for the care team to review and discuss with that person.
We have been able to connect the clinic and patients beyond the confines of an in-person visit and set in motion a more continuous approach to both managing chronic disease and enabling better process transparency.
We were quite lucky to have PHC as our first partner both because they have a data-driven culture of innovation, and because they are highly respected in the industry and the community for providing excellent quality care. As part of our partnership, we took a co-creation approach to innovation. This approach yielded insights that led to rapid changes and additions to our solution, and helped us focus on solving real — not perceived — problems. This collaborative method is our preferred approach to innovation. It is our goal to be outstanding at collaboration so that our solutions are thoughtfully designed with user involvement.
Our mission at Carium is to help people live the best lives they can, and to help and support those that are trying to help them do that — whether as professional or informal caregivers. PHC has been a wonderful partner for us, and we are truly grateful for their innovative spirit and leadership.
Please see the Press Democrat article for more details on our collaboration.
