Healthcare is becoming increasingly complex, and healthcare institutions are faced with major challenges to keep up, further exacerbated by COVID-19. Hospitals commonly experience a growing gap between institutional knowledge and bedside practice, lack of effective team training and communication, and overwhelmed, underprepared, and stressed staff. The results are medical errors (the #3 cause of death), waste, and staff turnover from burnout, with 33% of new nurses leaving their job after only 2 years. The pandemic shone a spotlight on these shortcomings and highlighted the value of frontline staff, the need for simple, rapid team training and communication, and the need for asynchronous, distanced, and collaborative solutions.
UCSF spin-off Elemeno Health, an Oakland, CA, based cloud solution with a human touch, successfully addresses all of these challenges through real-time support and training for frontline professionals—in essence putting an expert in their pockets. Designed by doctors and nurses, Elemeno empowers healthcare teams with a custom point-of-care microlearning solution, delivered when and where it’s needed most.
Historically, institutions have relied upon traditional modalities of training and communication like binders, fliers, email, and in-person staff meetings. Unfortunately, these methods do not work in complex 21st century medical practice, or in a post-COVID new normal where both payers and patients are demanding more decentralized models of care. Instead, Elemeno transforms cumbersome learnings and constantly changing workflows into “just-in-time” team training and communication, equipping frontline nurses and doctors with bite-sized interactive guidelines, smart checklists, and concise how-to videos, on demand, 24/7. Complex practices become actionable at the point of care, so that staff can consistently deliver them the right way at the right time.
Teamwork has crucial importance in hospital settings, and the Elemeno sharing network democratizes access to best practices, accelerating knowledge spread across institutions and the industry as a whole. Each department’s content is shared with all others within the same institution, providing greater value to each new department who joins the network. Hospitals are also able to share their best practices with peer institutions, de-siloing best practice knowledge and accelerating adoption of sustained, effective standards of care. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when we can leverage the collective knowledge of the community,” said Dr. Arup Roy-Burman, CEO and Co-Founder of Elemeno Health.
As we learn standards from one another, healthcare delivery is ultimately local. Elemeno’s easy customization supports an institution’s specific devices, equipment, supplies, and protocols, which supports staff to succeed in their own unique environment. Feedback loops give frontline nurses and doctors a voice so that management can address frontline needs before they manifest as patient harm. And Elemeno’s analytics give team leaders deep insight into caregiver behavior and practice effectiveness.
Elemeno has seen strong growth since product launch and is currently being used in hospital networks across the US, including UCSF Health, Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, and RWJBarnabas Health. The pandemic has highlighted both the critical and ongoing need for Elemeno, and institutions have responded by implementing and expanding Elemeno’s solution throughout departments and healthcare systems. Despite the COVID crush, Elemeno’s revenue doubled, and now emerging from it, healthcare institutions are ramping up to buy where they see value. The Elemeno solution has been shown to have a deep and lasting impact by curtailing practice variation and burnout, reducing waste, turnover, and cutting medical errors by 50% in client hospitals. Measured client ROI is 10-30x.
Elemeno Health believes in equipping nurses, doctors, and other frontline medical staff for success. “We’ve seen our easy-to-use bite-sized guides reduce errors, increase efficiency, and reduce staff burnout,” said Dr. Roy-Burman. “Integrating our on-demand support directly into the average workday supports frontline caregivers to deliver the best care possible to every life they touch.” With an aging population where nursing growth is stymied and demand is skyrocketing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a critical deficit of 1,000,000 nurses by 2024. Coupled with the need to manage increasingly complex care, recruitment, retention, and cross-training of staff is more important than ever before. Elemeno is helping healthcare institutions thrive, by doing more, with less.
Elemeno has been recognized for its innovative approach to solving challenges in healthcare and technology by Fierce Healthcare, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation Healthcare Safety Challenge, the MedTech Breakthrough Awards, and the East Bay Innovation Awards, among others. The company is backed by Y Combinator, Launchpad Digital Health, Dreamit Ventures, and the Global Health Impact Fund.