Our project was initially inspired by the lack of adequate medical information online. Physicians, medical students, and patients all turn to the internet to try and look up health information in hopes of finding an answer to their question, whether it be the cause of their back pain or what is the best oral antibiotic a patient should take when leaving the hospital for severe community acquired pneumonia. All of this information is driven by clinical experience as well as scientific data, giving certain physicians unique insight into how to employ scientific knowledge in the face of the patients unique situation. Currently physicians generally treat based on generalized guidelines, looking information up online, obtaining a consult, or informally asking physicians questions in person or via texting. This can often lead to suboptimal care and wasted physician time. We developed the EtherHealth platform to reduce medical error by offering physicians information in the form of actionable chunks that include patient specific characteristics to promote efficiency and effectiveness in the hospital and in clinics. This platform will connect physicians to harness their collective knowledge and push medicine forward through our outcomes engine. We believe that this solution will save physician time, improve patient satisfaction, improve patient outcomes, and reduce medical error.
Elevator Pitch:
EtherHealth is a mobile app for physicians to crowdsource informal consultations related to complex patient cases when the treating physician would often turn to a colleague or medical journals, which frequently lack the specificity needed to diagnose or treat the patient. We are building a collaborative platform for physicians to present anonymized questions and provide recommendations based on standard of care and specific patient issues, storing this information in a reference library in order to improve patient care and outcomes while reducing physician time.
Team:
Nicholas Kurtzman: A second year Sidney Kimmel Medical College student with 5 years of software development experience in both applications and bioinformatics as well as degrees in computer science and economics from Duke University.
Ryan Limor: MBA student at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 5 years of healthcare investment banking and private equity experience analyzing investment opportunities in healthcare services and IT.
Stephane Krumenacker: 5 years of graphic design experience and graduate of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) with a focus on UX and UI.
Nikolaos Mouchtouris: A second year Sidney Kimmel Medical College student with 4 years of clinical and basic science research work, current managing editor of Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience Journal, with experience in gamification for user engagement and education.
Samuel Goldstein: A second year Sidney Kimmel Medical College student with ongoing research on the surgical transplantation of the liver.
Business Description:
EtherHealth is built by harnessing the collective knowledge of the medical community to provide physicians with actionable information with the goals of reducing medical errors and unnecessary costs while improving patient outcomes. Today, a primary care doctor must stay abreast of approximately 10,000 diseases and syndromes, 3,000 medications, and 1,100 laboratory tests. However, while medical journals are the most frequented educational source, they infrequently relate specifically to the treating physician's patient because the studies are based on generalized populations.
Our product will enable physicians to engage with specialists to more efficiently and effectively treat their patients by obtaining crowdsourced recommendations. Our network will be a constantly evolving system with the latest standard of care and treatment information as provided by practicing physicians. By developing a tool designed around providing digestible information, EtherHealth enables physicians to quickly source the current best care practices to improve patient outcomes while reducing patient wait time and the likelihood of error.
Business Model:
Customers: Practicing physicians are the users of EtherHealth. Our customers are both physicians and health systems who want to set up departments on our platform.
Go to Market: We plan on rolling out EtherHealth to targeted physicians during a pilot in 2015 to generate feedback and build features that meet their needs. We will then launch a live beta of the product while sourcing departmental physician champions at new hospitals we enter.
Revenue: As we continue to scale and grow our library, we will begin to offer subscriptions for premium features and content, including deeper searchability and statistical analyses on the EtherHealth library. We will also offer services to hospital administrators regarding analytics on physicians' questions and the answers provided to help identify issues in education and recognition of current standard of care.
Enabling Technology:
The technology required to enable the minimal viable product is very similar to most mobile applications available on Apple and Google Android. The system was designed and optimized along with Thomas Jefferson University Health System physicians and the minimum viable product is currently in the process of being developed by Thomas Jefferson University Innovation department.
Jefferson Strategic Connection:
Our platform will further many of Jefferson’s strategic initiatives, primarily its Patients and Families First, One Jefferson, and Seamless Clinical Enterprise initiatives. EtherHealth will enable physicians to make more efficient and effective decisions to achieve the best patient outcomes. At our product's core is the dissemination of valuable medical knowledge and facilitating the coordination of medical practice among physicians, which is beneficial to hospitals like Jefferson who operate multiple locations. Ultimately, since physicians are the users of EtherHealth, our platform encourages enterprising physicians to share their expertise and earn recognition for their contributions.
Personal Interest/Passion:
EtherHealth's co-founders share a passion for providing patients greater access to quality care, and we hope to achieve this through a scalable technology solution. We strongly believe that healthcare technology products don't have to be archaic, but can look beautiful and be enjoyable for physicians to use.
