A new company wants to help you determine if your medical problem requires a visit to a doctor's office, to the emergency room, or it can be managed through a telemedicine service, while giving you basic information about the problem and its severity. . Nurse-1-1, the last company of the former co-founder of RunKeeper, Michael Sheeley, is launched today to offer a quick and affordable way to get answers from medical assistants, nurse practitioners and registered nurses through chat.
Sheeley, a serial entrepreneur, sold her Kickscout shopping app to Mobee in 2014, and later worked in a food order service before starting with Nurse-1-1 about two years ago.
The idea for the beginning arose from an experience he had after birth. from her daughter.
"My daughter was born with a congenital heart defect," explains Sheeley, a health crisis that involved open-heart surgery, she tells us. "I was sitting next to her for a week while she was recuperating in the hospital … and she was searching on Google as much as she could to learn about her condition," she says.
But the more I read, the more confused, since it can be difficult to analyze the health information that is online.
He ended up connecting with a friend of his wife, a nurse practitioner, through SMS text messages, to ask some of the questions he did not have. he asked the hospital doctors.
"I was having these conversations with my friend, Kim, and I did not have to worry about it being a treatment, I did not have to worry about it being a recipe, and I did not have to worry about interrupting her busy day," says Sheeley.
Nurse Practitioner, Kim Liner, now works at Nurse-1-1 together with Meri Clare, RN; an emergency doctor at the Children's Hospital of Boston, Igor Shumskiy, MD; and a former marketing executive for TripAdvisor, Steve McAveeney, among others. The team is currently based at the Innovation Laboratory of Harvard University.
The team chose to send text messages instead of calls, after investigating a client. They found that most people preferred to communicate asynchronously, such as through text messages. When given the choice between phone calls, video chat or text messages through the Nurse-1-1 website, patients choose text messages at a much faster rate.
The onset also found that, often, what people first want to know when they have a health concern is the level of care they should receive.
Prior to today's launch, the text message service was tested with more than 1,200 patients and received the interest of 190 nurses, who have since joined its platform. It is free for end users if the patient's provider is registered in Nurse-1-1. (None have done it yet, but discussions are under way, says Sheeley). Otherwise, it costs $ 12.50 per chat.
This is much less than video visits with doctors, which usually cost $ 49 or have copayments of around $ 30 per visit.
"The classification industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. When you call your doctor late at night and they call you back, it's usually a third-party service that calls you. They charge $ 15 per call to these clinics and it is of very low quality, "explains Sheeley." Our business model is to charge clinics only $ 12.50 per call … if your provider is on the platform, that money is charged to them, not to [patients.]"he says.
When their provider is not available, the customers pay money, minus a processing fee of $ 2.50, they will go directly to the nurses.
In the future, Nurse-1-1 can generate referrals to telemedicine providers, which also allows you to earn referral fees.
Ya The company discovered that many of its clients are moms or moms-to-be, asking questions about pregnancy, diseases of children, colds, flu, etc. They are trying to find out if they should visit urgent care now or consult a doctor in the morning, for example.
The service works both through the web and through an iOS application It is compatible with HIPAA and the data is encrypted from end to end.
Nurse-1-1 is available immediately in the US UU Because in reality it is not prescribing or diagnosing. The company has not raised external funds, but could look for a round of seeds in the near future.
