Caremerge Nudges Long-Term Care Coordination Into the Mobile Health Era

Originally published on MedCityNews.com.

Originally published on MedCityNews.com.

Long-term care has been slow to adopt health information technology. With a $2.1 million infusion from investors, this startup hopes to change that.

Caremerge has created a suite of apps that run on PCs, tablets and smartphones to help long-term care providers, physicians and families coordinate care of seniors. With the $2.1 million they’ve just secured from angel investors, company execs say they’ll continue expanding and improving the platform.

“Most people believe that the long-term care industry is slow to adopting technology,” co-founder and CEO Asif Khan said in an announcement. “At Caremerge, we beg to differ and believe that until now technology hasn’t adopted to the unique challenges and workflows of long-term care.”

Caremerge’s investors aren’t who you might expect in a Series A for a Chicago-based mobile health company. Grazyna Kulczyk, an entrepreneur, real-estate developer and art collector in Poland, led the round, and a Switzerland-based investor also participated.

Since the Department of Health and Human Services said it expects the number of individuals using long-term care services to double between 2000 and 2050, companies like UnitedHealthcare and Philips have come out with digital solutions for coordinating long-term care. Caremerge’s seems to be one of the few that actually loops in long-term care facilities, physicians, family members and seniors without relying on the elderly population to use computers and smartphones.

One app, for example, lets facilities save and organize all communications with family members. Others enable the capture, tracking, organizing and sharing of clinical notes and observations. Another designed for activities directors automates reminder phone calls to seniors about activities they have signed up to attend, and sends summary notifications to family members about their loved one’s activities.

Khan founded Caremerge in 2010 after an 8-year career at GE Healthcare IT. Now he and his colleagues are getting some assistance from GE through a three-year entrepreneurship program run by StartUp Health and GE.

The company says it has also recently formed a commercial partnership with InnovateLTC, an accelerator for businesses focused on the senior market.