Early Intervention Systems

80% of all agitated episodes caused by patients can be prevented. These agitated episodes lead to higher healthcare worker turnover, financial stress, and a lower quality of care. EIS uses existing smartwatch technology along with software that will allow for live monitoring of patients while also providing relevant predictions regarding the likelihood of an agitation outbreak. In the future, our solution will create interventions for agitated outbreaks by utilizing non-pharmaceutical approaches such as automated messages from family and music therapy in order to reduce agitation without immediate caregiver involvement. According to the World Health Organization, over 15% of medical expenses can be attributed to poor safety measures taken by healthcare staff. Healthcare workers are some of the most critical workforces in our society, yet they are also the most abused physically and emotionally. EIS aims to raise the standard of safety by leveraging technology and creating proactive solutions. 

EIS solves the problem of patient agitation, a public health issue. A 2018 JAMDA study found that agitation symptoms increase informal care costs by 17% per month in healthcare settings, creating a substantial impact on costs in the community care setting. This is a $50 billion dollar problem in long-term care alone, according to the BMJ Open 2015. Apart from financial burdens, this issue contributes to healthcare provider burnout/turnover and diminished healthcare outcomes for patients. Bullying and other forms of verbal abuse are particularly prone to underreporting, but many healthcare workers accept it as "part of the job."  These figures do not include potential markets such as hospitals, rehabilitation centers, or prisons. Agitated patients are often overlooked despite posing greater risk of spreading the virus to other patients and staff. In fact, up to 69% of Covid-19 ICU patients exhibited agitated behaviors. Thus, Covid-19 will create an even greater burden for healthcare sites. However, there are no estimates that provide a true insight into the financial and emotional toll patient agitation takes on patients, caregivers, and families.

We are a B-B healthcare startup that has devised a system that can predict when a patient/resident living in an assisted-living facility will become agitated, by using wearable technology such as an Apple Watch. We use existing smartwatch technology along with software that will allow for live monitoring of patients while also providing relevant predictions regarding the likelihood of an agitation outbreak. The early detection of these potential outbreaks enables caregivers to take a proactive approach. By identifying early stage agitation, we can also improve the overall experience for residents and maximize the safety and working conditions for nurses and caregivers. We are initially targeting private high end assisted living facilities and plan on expanding to other healthcare facilities in the near future.

Our primary customers (the buyer) are initially private memory care facilities and assisted living centers focused on serving patients with Alzheimers, dementia and other memory-loss disorders. Our solution offers caregivers advanced warnings of patients in crisis, so they can act to intervene before the issue escalates. This improves patient outcomes and reduces staff turnover, which has a positive impact on the facility’s bottom line.

There are two primary beneficiaries for the EIS solution. First, and foremost, EIS is focused on patient outcomes and patient care. So patients and caregivers (the users) are the primary beneficiary. Early notification helps keep patients and caregivers safer and focused on providing high-quality care. 

Secondary beneficiaries are facility administrators and caregivers who can reduce costs for security, injuries and high turnover.

An additional beneficiary is the families of loved ones, because EIS and the Administrators can share certain data, such as physical activity levels, sleep quality and overall in a HIPPA compliant way. This gives families more insight into the health, and safety of their loved ones.

Our service, which includes a wristband, deep learning algorithm, and companion software, provides a proactive approach that can facilitate public health preparation. There have been continuing studies showing that initial observable symptoms of Covid-19 in Alzheimer’s patients are only agitation. The integration of our healthcare tools will lead to quicker and more accurate detection, while providing patient monitoring systems for timelier responses and improved care in these facilities. On top of this, the security of healthcare workers has been neglected for decades and a proactive approach has yet to be successfully implemented.

We are working on our last beta with Artis Senior Living, and our software is commercially ready. We have over 15 months of biometric data collected via the Apple watches we have been using. This information includes sleep patterns, daily activity, HR, and other features included in Apple’s health records. This information has been used to study the baseline information of each of our subjects that help us decipher moments of elevated agitation. Our sample includes individuals with and without pre-existing cognitive conditions. This sample has been quintessential for our deployment in the memory care facility.

We believe our venture will finally provide healthcare workers with a proactive solution to the systemic problem of patient agitation. The majority of healthcare systems have implemented ineffective violence prevention programs and antipsychotics. Our company aims to improve the well-being of elders and the safety of their caregivers. Long term care facilities currently operate on the bare minimum needed to maintain each patient’s health record, which negatively affects their overall care. This sector of the healthcare market has long been overlooked and lacks any of the technology needed to deliver the best care possible. We will bring these facilities to the forefront of healthcare by incorporating wellbeing tech and predictive analytics to elevate the standard of care. Our solution will empower nurses and caregivers by taking the first proactive step to ending patient agitation and improving safety. In the end, we envision a future where healthcare workers around the world no longer say getting hurt is part of the job.

We expect to roll-out our commercially available product this summer. We have one final test at Artis Senior Living over these next 2 months. We expect about 4 full installations in 2021. In 5 years we wanted to be in over 250 facilities and working with over 5,000 medical workers and 16,000 patients/residents in Memory-Care, Assisted Living, and Nursing Homes. Our licensing option should be available for hospitals and home health-care settings can reach millions of patients and medical staff. 

We measure our social impact through measuring the overall increase in well-being after our product is installed. For caregivers, we can measure nursing turnover and workflow improvement/satisfaction. For the residents/patients, we can measure agitation, sleep quality, hydration, and physical activity. For the families of each resident, we can see how they feel about how their loved ones are being cared for before and after installation of our platform. We will also be looking at a high true positive rate on our prediction model for an overall reduction in agitation in medical facilities. One of our key performance indicators is also the turnover rate for caregivers. Currently, we are seeing turnover rates over 10 caregivers per month in these facilities and reducing that number even by 10-15% is significant in these facilities. 

4 Full-time, 4 Part-time, 2 Contractors, 5 Advisors 

Our core team consists of 3 GWU students/recent graduates. Krishan Shah, a recent graduate, has interned for Financial AI companies in the past and will oversee our finances during the course of our operation. CTO and Co-Founder, Rohan Patil, had spent many hours shadowing physicians in the Emergency Department at a large hospital institution in Washington, D.C. While shadowing, he witnessed a patient physically attack a member of the healthcare staff. The injuries this staff member sustained rendered her immobile and required further medical attention. After asking several members in the hospital how often physically outbreaks like this occurred, all of them stated this was quite commonplace. Our CEO, Nathalya Ramirez,  lost her grandmother who was agitated very frequently due to cognitive decline, but lacked the proper monitoring and tech to notify caregivers.

Frank Hogan will serve as a crucial part of our sales and implementation team as we begin to enter these new markets. Frank has worked in sales for two companies that have been acquired. Frank worked at Accuson before getting acquired by Siemens. Frank was also one of the first employees at Lightforce Therapy Lasers which got acquired by DJO.  

Our Advisors have extensive experience in medicine, deep learning, and finance. With a combined 40+ successful exits, 150 years work experience, and 50+ publications we have expertise and support to help us achieve our goals in reducing patient agitation. 

As a company owned by diverse co-founders, EIS strives to set an example to promote diversity in the workplace. We are not only women owned and LatinX owned, but some of our advisors bring a unique background that only strengthens our overall goal. For example, Jeff Borghoff is our patient advisor due to his diagnosis of Younger Onset / Early-Stage Alzheimer’s Disease at the age of 51. Since his diagnosis in 2016, Mr. Borghoff has been a fervent advocate of Alzheimer’s awareness by serving on the board of directors for the Greater NJ Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association and as an Alzheimer's Congressional Team member for his N.J. District. Mr. Borghoff also serves on the NIH/ NIA Genetic and Biomarker Disclosure Working Group - Patient/ Participant Committee, where he works with geneticists, genetic counselors, researchers, professional organizations, and advocacy groups to outline best practices of genetic disclosure in clinical and research settings. 

This program gives us access to peers and mentors have extensive experience working with startups in highly regulated industries. We hope that this program can assist us in connecting with more mentors and peers, while also helping us on business operations and strategy as well. As first time founders, none of us have scaled a patient monitoring company before. Any mentors in the space of patient monitoring would be extremely helpful for us as we continue to scale. As EIS continues to scale we are also going to be raising money. We hope to get introductions to potential investors through our experience with this program. In addition, we would also like to have introductions to any type of strategic partners that might benefit from EIS services. For example, we would want to start licensing our analytics and algorithms to other EHR and monitoring systems in the next few years. 

Legal and Regulatory advice is always something we need as we continue to advance our solution. Being in the medical and patient monitoring space, regulation continues to change with COVID monitoring. In addition, we are looking for more expertise and experience with software development. Software has been an imperative step to increase the accuracy of our algorithms. 

MIT provides many different types of programs for minority and tech entrepreneurs. The first organization would be the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. Some of the advisors for that program such as Aarabi Balasubramanian, Mike Cavaretta, Aagya Mathur, and Jennifer Jordan, are just some extremely valuable people that can help us in our mission. All of these advisors have experience in helping women entrepreneurs succeed and have valuable insight in healthcare technology. The MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab has some extremely helpful faculty members that can help us with machine learning and healthcare analytics. There are too many people to list on this application, but John Guttag would be one of the Professors that could potentially help us in predicting early stage agitation. We also are interest in the MIT Enterprise Forum at Cambridge. This program focuses on using technology for social change. The program thinks of the small things that entrepreneurs need such as stipends and resources for grant writing which are very tough to find for student entrepreneurs. We would also like to work with Any MIT initiative/project in Patient Monitoring, Well-being, and Alzheimer’s Dementia in the future if possible. 

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and EIS have common synergies in improving healthcare quality, healthcare environment/housing, and nursing practice. Our solution involves a well-being platform directed towards individuals who have been largely neglected by the advent of new healthcare technologies. We aim to reduce these disparities with the help of our solution that focuses on tracking key well-being metrics for residents in nursing homes. This information can be tracked for not only the resident’s immediate care but also be shared with the families of the loved ones. Given the separation between a resident and their families, our platform enables families to stay connected through each resident’s monthly well-being report. We do not only track biometric information but also vital signs of a resident’s social life in their nursing home. We are able to identify which activities they are a part of and ensure they are interacting with others. We recognize isolation is a significant issue especially in aging populations that can negatively affect one’s health. We aim to reduce this sense of isolation through our nursing home event tracker along with our meal tracker, which tracks how many community meals the resident took part in. Ultimately, our goal is to quantify the well being of each resident but also introduce our solution to a population that has been long forgotten in the realm of healthcare technologies.

The frontline workers who are mainly affected are nurses (90% are women) and caregivers (66% are women). Our solution will not only improve the quality of life for patients and residents, but also improve workplace security for some of the most essential workers in our society. Most of the frontline healthcare workers are women. With healthcare workers being assaulted by more than 4x of any other industry, we believe our innovative solution can drastically reduce these incidents. We want to advance that the needs of our women healthcare workers around the world. 

Our solution is meant to reduce the amount of agitated events in healthcare facilities. These agitated events are mainly unintended societal harm in the healthcare industry. However, we believe that our analytics and algorithms can solve this societal problem. Our intent is to protect healthcare workers so that they are able to do their job, and to also improve patient care. The way we build our algorithms and software was through complete transparency with the facilities and the families who have their loved ones living in memory-care. Listening to feedback from all of our users is a top priority for us when developing this technology to help healthcare workers and patients. 

Moreover, patient agitation is often managed by giving patients high dose antipsychotics that can dramatically impact their well being. Our early predictions allow healthcare providers to de-escalate a patient before an agitated outbreak, thereby eliminating the use of these toxic antipsychotics. We give the healthcare workers in these facilities to take a holistic approach to the patient’s welfare instead of having medication alone solve the underlying problems.The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and EIS have common synergies in using AI and Data Science to innovate in digital health, brain research, and workforce security.