This post has been updated from an earlier version to include comments from Joshua Liu
A digital health company that developed an app to make it easier for patients recovering from surgery to communicate vital information to physicians once they’re discharged has raised $1.1 million in a seed round to expand its surgery program library and continue to do clinical validation.
SeamlessMD is led by Joshua Liu, who founded the company a few years after he graduated from University of Toronto Medical School. Although re-admissions due to post-operative complications are common, the company is one of several that wants to help alert providers to these complications earlier and improve patient engagement to reduce the need for further hospitalization.
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The app can be personalized to the type of procedure and the hospital’s care plan. It is a mix of reminders, multimedia education content, progress tracking tools and feedback for self management. It also provides a way for providers and administrators to receive realtime analytics to do remote monitoring, collect insights about their patients’ experience and assess the institution’s performance.
UPDATE In response to emailed questions Liu said, “It’s more than just an app on smartphones or tablets. We provide an integrated, cross-platform solution on both the web and Apple/Android apps, which means patients can access the program from any computer, smartphone or tablet.”
He added some details about the program’s components. Some of the educational content includes illustrations and physiotherapy exercise videos. After surgery, patients track their recovery on a daily basis, including their symptoms, recovery milestones and questions they may have.
Depending on the patient’s progress, the program provides feedback, such as what exercises they should do that day, how to deal with issues at home, and when to get help from a provider.
On the provider side, the healthcare team can access a dashboard that gives a surgeon or nurse a window into how their patients are doing at home. They can check their patients’ recovery progress, symptoms of concern such as pain levels, temperature, constipation. Wound photos transmitted by patients allows them to catch complications such as infections earlier.
The investors behind the fundraise included BDC Capital, FundersClub and angel investors, including Dr. Ray Muzyka (BioWare co-founder and ThresholdImpact CEO), Dr. Daniel Schwartz (QxMD co-founder), and Anthony Lacavera (chairman, Globalive Capital and Founder, WIND Mobile).
Its current focus is high-risk, high-volume surgeries where the preparation and recovery can be long and complicated, Liu said. “These are also the same surgeries most affected by new changes in healthcare funding models, such as readmission penalties and bundled payments.” They include:
- Hip & knee replacement surgery;
- Bariatric (or stomach) surgery;
- Thoracic (or lung cancer) surgery;
- Colon surgery
- Cardiac surgery
Although he acknowledged that the company is most frequently compared to HealthLoop and Wellbe, he said its main competition isn’t so much other companies as health systems’ reliance on paper and verbal instructions. Still this is what Liu views as its platform’s key differentiating characteristics.
“The app can be personalized to the type of procedure and the hospital’s care plan. It is a mix of reminders, multimedia education content, progress tracking tools and feedback for self management. It also provides a way for providers and administrators to receive realtime analytics to do remote monitoring, collect insights about their patients’ experience and assess the institution’s performance.”
