Six Promising Startups Worth Watching

Finding transformative solutions is no simple task in health care these days, but as we saw at the recent AHA Leadership Summit, there is no shortage of innovative solutions being developed by AHA members and entrepreneurs.

At the Summit’s inaugural Startup Competition, attendees met and judged six finalist teams chosen for their practical and tactical solutions from applications submitted by more than 50 organizations. Members of each team discussed the problem they were trying to solve, how their solution worked and the results. After each presentation, they answered questions from an expert panel comprising health care leaders, including AHA Board Chairman Brian Gragnolati, president and CEO of Atlantic Health System; Alisahah Cole, M.D., chief community impact officer at Atrium Health; and Neil Gomes, executive vice president and chief digital officer, Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health.

Attendees voted Prescience Health and its predictive nurse-staffing solution for hospitals as the winner. The company leverages data science to help forecast patient demand and nurse staffing to avoid overtime and prevent nurse burnout. Here’s a closer look at the finalists:

• Banner Innovation Group: The Reimagining Emergency Care system from Banner Health’s innovation team covers the entire continuum, from the moment an individual contemplates going to the emergency department until he or she receives treatment and is discharged. It aims to reduce the number of unnecessary visits to the ED, and improve both the efficiency of care and the patient experience.
• EmOpti: Its resource-management system helps EDs address the challenge of planning for and managing staffing needs. The company aims to reduce the expenses caused by inefficient staffing, which is estimated to cost the health care field $3 billion annually.
• MegesHealth: In the U.S., roughly one in seven surgical procedures results in a readmission after discharge, which costs the field $60 billion per year. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, up to 50% of post-surgical readmissions are preventable. MegesHealth's solution, iPostOp, aims to reduce readmission after post-surgical discharge through an application that connects patients and care teams out of the hospital. The solution guides patients from pre-op to recovery to empower them to support their own care.
• ORLink: The ORLink solution is a user-friendly, digital version of a physician preference card. The result is a more accurate, rapid, visual communication with operating room personnel, which improves workflow and reduces waste.
• Pieces Technologies: By leveraging and interpreting data from multiple sources and incorporating factors like social determinants of care, Pieces software can improve clinical and financial outcomes throughout a patient’s journey. The result is a healthier population, which leads to a reduction in uncompensated care, reduced readmissions and a lower cost of care.
• Prescience Health: A 500-bed hospital on average spends $35 million annually on nursing overtime and loses more than $4 million annually due to nurse turnover. Prescience Health leverages data science to better forecast patient demand and nurse staffing needed to avoid nursing overtime and prevent nurse burnout.