PatientPoint, a patient and physician engagement business, and MeU Care, which provides communication solutions, have partnered to release a mobile engagement platform that seeks to reach consumers beyond the four walls of the hospital.
Called PatientPoint Connect, it allows patients, providers and caregivers to interact.
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In a phone interview, MeU Care founder Kendall Lockhart stressed that the tool facilitates two-way communication. Instead of only enabling information to go from the physician to the patient, PatientPoint Connect lets stakeholders talk to each other.
“When you look at the real world, we know that it’s not just a doctor communicating with a patient,” he said. “There are other folks involved in that situation. Equally important is that there’s a family caregiver. That’s the concept of PatientPoint Connect: what an actual healthcare family situation looks like.”
In addition to being multidirectional, the platform gives providers the opportunity to send patients educational information and conduct e-visits with patients.
Chris Martini, PatientPoint’s chief provider officer and president, noted that PatientPoint Connect, which is powered by MeU Care, is HIPAA compliant as well.
He added that by this spring, the platform will be fully integrated within PatientPoint and its other solutions.
Though PatientPoint focuses on physician-patient engagement, Martini said it wanted to expand its footprint.
“We at PatientPoint saw the need to extend the visit with the physician,” he said. “They need to get to the patient on a more consistent basis beyond just the visit.”
That’s what led it to join forces with MeU Care, a California-based company that enables patients, families and providers to liaise using photos, text, videos and voice.
“The smart approach is to partner,” Lockhart said. “We started looking last year to who was already committed to patient care. PatientPoint stood out from an ethics point of view.”
Last summer, Cincinnati-based PatientPoint raised $140 million as part of an effort to support strategic acquisitions. Searchlight Capital Partners and Silver Point Capital led the round.
Photo: Pixtum, Getty Images
