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With more patients being treated at home, ICmed looks to help them stay connected to healthcare

The Baltimore company has new features to help patients, caregivers and family stay connected. It's also expanding a presence beyond the city, including entering Johnson and Johnson's incubator in Boston.

ICmed's platform. (Courtesy image; image has been cropped)

In healthcare, according to Anil Kshepakaran, it’s increasingly true that a patient’s care doesn’t stop when they leave the hospital. In fact, lots of that care is now being delivered at home. That means doctors and other providers still need to stay in touch.

“They’re looking at patients beyond the discharge point,” said Kshepakaran, the CEO of ICmed, which is headquartered inside the Haven Street building that houses ETC and several other tech companies. “When people end up going home, they’re looking to stay connected, communicate and get realtime feedback from them.”

The trend also more closely affects other parties like family members and other providers. In healthcare circles, bringing those parties together is known as coordination of care.

So, ICmed developed technology to facilitate the connection. The goal is to allow the patient, the family and the caregivers to stay in communication. Kshepakaran gives the example of a 70-year-old patient in Baltimore, who has a son in Philadelphia: With tools like messaging and video, they could both connect with same team of providers.

Building on a free, consumer-facing mobile app released in 2016 that has continued to develop as a smartphone-accessible health record, the company also built an enterprise offering that can be licensed by healthcare providers like hospitals, care facilities and wellness organizations.

“Patients will receive the mobile app and connect to providers through the mobile app. The app is freely available to seamlessly deposit data and monitor trends,” Kshepakaran said. “When they connect to the enterprise [platform], now what they’re doing is sharing data and communicating at a higher level with provider teams.”

Over the last six months, ICmed has been working on a new features, gotten feedback from doctors, and worked on security and record keeping. Among the upgrades, it added video conferencing, as well as a tool to help make an accurate list of medications, which is known as medical reconciliation. A third feature allows medical pros outside of the primary care provider, such as physical therapists or nutritionists, to communicate — which in healthcare is typically still achieved by sending a fax.

“We’ve created a feature within our product that if you’re a primary care physician, and you want to loop in other providers that are outside your enterprise, you can do that by inviting them to view a patient’s profile,” Kshepakaran said.

As the team decides to develop a new feature, Kshepakaran said it comes back to a few key considerations: Is it providing critical information, and is it a “lightweight” feature that keeps things simple? Kshepakaran calls the idea “nimble telemedicine.”

Digital health is an area that’s been getting an uptick in local community interest lately. But along with the enterprise platform updates, the 10-person team is looking to grow its presence outside of Baltimore, as well. It recently joined Johnson and Johnson’s JLABS incubator program in Boston, taking up residence in a noted healthcare hub. After attending events in India and traveling about 18 months ago to Dubai and Abu Dhabi through the Maryland Department of Commerce’s ExportMD program, the company is also looking to build outside the U.S. and has made an international sales hire.

“We’re pressing forward on globalizing the product,” Kshepakaran said.

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