Tag: praia

The ink is officially dry on Providence-spinout Praia Health’s $20M Series A fundraise, and we couldn’t have asked for a better frame up of the startup’s potential impact than SignalFire’s investment memo on why it co-led the round.

Praia Health is helping hospitals avoid the commoditized care caravan by enabling the creation of consumer profiles that extend beyond the medical record, allowing them to recreate the “digital flywheels” enjoyed by other industries.

• These flywheels have been hindered by healthcare’s reliance on the legacy architectures and closed-system constraints of the EHR, which fails to incorporate the behaviors happening outside of medical encounters that drive a lion’s share of health outcomes. 

Here’s how Praia enters the picture:

• The first step is a “lift and shift” to Praia’s Secure Patient Identity Service that enables a single sign-on for all of a system’s digital experiences (branded apps, portals, etc.).

• Praia’s PersonStore then marries those patient profiles with consumer data, synchronizing the EHR to connect-the-dots between outside data and outcomes. 

• The SPI and PersonStore capabilities lay the groundwork to link Praia’s growing partner ecosystem into ecommerce-like experiences that emphasize patient satisfaction and loyalty – critical priorities for C-suites grappling with margin pressure and patient attrition.

SignalFire’s history on the patient engagement evolution highlights the leap in Praia’s approach:

• Gen 1: Unidirectional patient notifications primarily focused on scheduling marked the first step in delivering healthcare info through more accessible channels like SMS.

• Gen 2: Bidirectional communication transformed medical interactions by giving patients the ability to respond to provider messages.

• Gen 3: Omnichannel engagement with tech-enabled interactions and seamless integrations let patients perform tasks like rescheduling appointments with options pulled from the provider’s practice management software.

• Gen 4: Praia Health’s breakthrough – an AI-powered patient engagement suite and automated actions driven by deep EHR integration to connect all data sources and orchestrate the end-to-end patient experience.

The Takeaway

The healthcare industry is at a well-traveled crossroads, facing the same challenges as the banking sector encountered with the rise of online services. Just as fintech companies disrupted banking with fine tuned experiences and lower costs, digital health startups are going after health systems’ lowest hanging service lines with the same promises. Praia gives providers a way to fight back with the tried-and-true digital flywheels that have so-far been out of reach.

The rockstar team over at Providence’s Digital Innovation Group officially spun out its fourth digital health startup: Praia Health.

Praia Health is making its grand debut armed with $20M in Series A funding to help hospitals avoid the commoditized care caravan by building deeper relationships with their patients.

To accomplish that, Praia enables the creation of robust consumer profiles that extend beyond the medical record, which might finally give providers a way to build the “digital flywheels” enjoyed in other consumer industries.

Here’s how it works (perfectly explained in these short videos):

• The first step is a “lift and shift” to Praia’s Secure Patient Identity Service (SPI). Once transitioned, SPI seamlessly supports all of the system’s signed-in digital experiences (branded mobile and web apps, patient portals, etc.).

• Praia Health’s PersonStore then enables health system’s to marry consumer identity with consumer data, securely synchronizing the EMR with outside data sources to connect-the-dots between consumer data and outcomes. 

• Those SPI and PersonStore capabilities lay the groundwork for a new class of digital experiences that reflect the health system’s unique brand and offerings, assisted by a full suite of development tools to integrate Praia into existing solutions.

• Once those consumer experiences are available, the flywheel is fueled by adding more solutions to Praia’s partner ecosystem. The platform delivers all of these solutions through a single scalable experience.

Although Praia has some lofty goals, Providence’s incubation model carries some massive advantages that might make them possible.

• Praia has been in use at the 51 hospital system since January 2022, and already supports over 3.5 million user accounts.

• Indiana-based Community Health Network is already lined up as Praia’s first post-launch implementation.

• The aforementioned partner ecosystem is debuting with a whopping 17 startups on-board, including Omada, Wellthy, Kyruus, and Season.

The Takeaway

Although there’s no doubt that Praia’s mission is ambitious, it’s equally apparent that Providence brings plenty of advantages that other founders can only dream of. Providence has a solid track record with its incubator (see: Xealth, DexCare, Circle), and all signs are pointing to Praia keeping that streak alive.