Last year the National Association of School Nurses came out in favor of adopted the viewpoint that electronic health records are essential to provide efficient and effective care in the school and monitor the health of their students. It also makes it a lot easier to exchange records with other schools and hospitals with the potential to reduce errors and improve safety. CareDox is one of a handful of health IT vendors targeting this market.
Previously known as MotherKnows, it works with public and private schools districts in Arizona and Virginia and developed a care coordination platform for schools. In addition to medical histories, it has a portal for parents to update their children’s information. It also has an EHR for parents and nurses that can connect to state immunization registries. It is designed to eliminate the need for parents to fill these records out each year and reduce the amount of paperwork parents have to complete. It can be accessed from mobile devices as well as desktop computers.
The idea is to not only keep on file things like allergies and medications but also chronic conditions and sports injuries, such as concussions.
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A nurse and administrator facing dashboard provides a bird’s eye view of how many students need to provide proof of vaccines, are on medications, and have allergies, among other things.
“The problem of keeping track of paper is huge,” said Hesky Kutscher, the founder and CEO of CareDox. In a phone interview he said he started the company because it was clear that there needed to be a way to get parents to engage with this information. “Schools are well-positioned to do that.”
Kutscher founded the business in 2011. He previous founded and sold ShopLocal and HighGear Media. Last year, CareDox raised about $2.5 million after having raised $1.7 million a few years earlier. Its investors include First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, Band of Angels, and Giza Ventures. It is also part of StartUp Health’s three-year program to cultivate healthcare startups.
The interesting thing about these electronic health records that probably hasn’t escaped the companies that develop them is that they can follow them to college or at least serve as a useful reference tool when they get older and need to share this information with providers. Another health IT vendor focusing on schools is CareFlow, which has been around since 2008. It acquired GleeWorks, a provider of healthcare and online registration software to private schools, last year.
[Photo credit for featured image: Sean Gallup/Getty Images]
