Startup Bjond Inc. is in the business of developing care management software for providers and payors. But the company isn’t necessarily looking to replace legacy care management systems that don’t adequately support collaborative and preventive-focused population health management.
“We’re trying to produce something that sits on top and supercharges old care management systems that have mostly just captured structured data,” said Eric Rosemann, the company’s chief creative officer.
Bjond just closed a $3.25 million Series A from Draper Triangle Ventures, TriStar Technoogy Ventures and Hopen Life Science Ventures as it moves toward commercialization of BjondHealth, its first offering.
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The software is aimed at drawing data from various sources to identify at-risk patients within a population, and then building and delivering hyper-personalized care plans to help those patients reach their health goals.
You’ve heard the population health management pitch before from all kinds of healthcare IT vendors – from big companies like Siemens and McKesson to startups like Evolent Health. Rosemann said his team feels their approach is different because it addresses the problems posed by traditional systems from a few different angles, starting with behavior change.
Within the software are a number of technologies designed to help both patients and care managers comply with their tasks. For example, there’s a feature that estimates a payor or provider’s ROI for getting an end-user to complete a specific task, or an entire care plan.
The care plans created by Bjond are thorough, tailored and dynamic, and can update themselves in real-time, Rosemann said. The software can pull data from legacy care management systems, electronic health records, lab codes and even biometric devices like glucose meters and FitBits.
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“As opposed to just creating a care plan and giving people a series of tasks to perform, whenever someone is given a task, we give them all the resources that they need right then and there,” he said.
How that care plan is delivered is also personalized. Patients take an interactive assessment to determine whether they’d best be reached by phone calls, text messages, home visits or logging into a web portal.
For now, the company is starting with two small clients, one an insurer and the other an ACO, to get the implementation process down and the kinks worked out.
Bjond is the third software startup for co-founder and CEO David Blauer. His last company, Click4Care, developed care management automation software for payors and was acquired by health IT firm HealthEdge in 2012. Bjond has seven employees in Columbus, Boston and New York.
