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Helpsy Health: Whole-Health and Virtual Nurse Platform for Critical Illness

by Sangeeta Agarawal

Helpsy is a virtual nurse that provides a patient-specific whole-health care plan and 24/7 engagement in order to reduce unmanaged side-effects and preventable adverse events.
Sunnyvale, CA United States COVID-19 Patient Education Equity Raise WarOnCOVID challenge

All Team Company Patients Physicians Hospital Partners Mission Innovation Details Investor Info Due Diligence Docs Supporters Comments Updates

About our project

The problem we solve: Helpsy Health is positioned to partner with governments, hospital systems, and other health organizations to assist populations deal with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) to manage care at home and to help high-risk population remain stable while their access to care may be impacted. In addition, patients with pre-existing complex and chronic conditions are facing delays in the treatments and are unable to get help from their providers who are being reallocated to help treat COVID-19 patients. These patients, many who are immuno-compromised, are at risk of significant health decline and are in need of more support. The artificial intelligence nurse enables to expand clinical team's capacity so they can focus on the clinical scenarios where they are needed most.

About our solution: Helpsy Health is a software platform that acts as an clinical care team by creating a personalized symptom management and navigation program that anticipates, engages and escalates the care for patients undergoing COVID-19 or any other complex/critical health condition. Helpsy supports 500 unique symptoms with over 20,000 self-guided recommendations and personalized community resource directories for COVID. Patients symptoms are monitored remotely through biometric devices, auto-triaged and connected to providers through telemedicine and secure messaging. Further family and multiple practices can be connected through the same platform and data insights can be provided to government agencies real time.

Progress to date:

Helpsy currently has 23k users and is live at 3 cancer centers. We have performed 3 clinical studies, have a signed MOU with United Health (50M lives), have a deal with Virgin Pulse (2.4M lives), and are in partnership/pilot discussion with several employee benefits companies (40+M lives) and Blues.

About Our Team

Creator: Sangeeta Agarawal

Location: California

Bio: Ms. Agarawal is passionate about empowering people to live life to the fullest by making integrative medicine accessible to people where they are. She started her career as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, working for companies including IBM, Motorola/Google. She then developed the world's first mobile video technology at a startup later acquired by Skype, this invention continues to change the world even today. She then changed her career into integrative medicine by studying, practicing and conducting research in both eastern and western medicine. She spent the next decade as a researcher, oncology nurse and integrative medicine practitioner at institutions including the Mayo Clinic, Stanford Cancer Center, and UCSF Cancer Center. Her groundbreaking research work on the development of algorithms for clinical impact of integrative medicine was recognized by UCSF and NSF, and she received support from them to start Helpsy, the world's first Artificial intelligence nurse for wholistic symptom management and navigation (San). San can automatically create a personalized care plans and provide dynamic support to patients through integrative technologies, empowering patients and clinicians alike. Helpsy has served tens of thousands of patients from all over the world and the data generated provides insights that have never been captured or understood before. She is passionate about empowering people in health care to understand and be at the forefront of the technology revolution. She is a nationally recognized speaker and author. She leads innovation initiatives at both SIO and ONS, and serves on the board of NCI PDQ for integrative medicine. She serves on the board of innovation centers and health care startups. She believes women deserve an equal place and is involved in several leadership initiatives to move the needle.

Title: Founder and CEO

Advanced Degree(s): RN, MS

About Team Members

Julia Chiappetta
Sales and Marketing, BA
Biography: Julia is a cancer patient advocate and has successfully lead marketing, sales, and branding efforts for over 20 years at companies including Louis Vuitton and AGFA.
Title: Sales and Marketing
Advanced Degree(s): BA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-chiappetta-29173942/

Ephrem Chemaly
Engineering, Ph.D
Biography: Ephrem brings over 30 years experience in delivering multi-billion dollar software and hardware solutions as Director of Engineering and CTO.
Title: Engineering
Advanced Degree(s): Ph.D
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chemaly/

Gregory Chin
QA and Operations, MS
Biography: Greg holds advanced degrees in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley. At Helpsy, he heads our Q/A effort as well as the coordination and execution of company operations.
Title: QA and Operations
Advanced Degree(s): MS
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregory-chin-9834357/

Gurgen Gharibyan
Engineering, BS
Biography: Gurgen has over 10 years experience in software development and engineering management at small to large companies.
Title: Engineering
Advanced Degree(s): BS
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurgen-gharibyan-49933174

Alex Salman
Business Development, MBA/MPH
Biography: Alex holds an MBA/MPH from Johns Hopkins University and has 2 years of experience as a clinical researcher from the National Institutes of Health.
Title: Business Development
Advanced Degree(s): MBA/MPH
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsalman/

About Our Company

Helpsy Inc.

Location: 671 Lakewood Drive
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Founded: 2015

Website: https://helpsyhealth.com/

Twitter: @helpsyhealth

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helpsyhealth/

Product Stage: In the Market

Employees: 5-10

How We Help Patients

For patients, we bring them evidence-based therapy options for their health condition and connect them to trusted and verified practitioners.

How We Help Physicians

For providers, we enable them to increase visibility and referrals (revenue generation), save time through value add services such as automated recommendations, booking, and payment, and increase customer retention and satisfaction.

How We Help Hospitals

For hospitals, centers, and clinics, we help implement Value-based care and improve STAR ratings with improved outcomes and reduced cost by leveraging technology and automation. In addition, the solution helps to significantly reduce the rate of appointment cancellations, saves time for care delivery, frees up oncology experts, increases patient satisfaction, and helps patients stay up-to-date with their follow-up visits.

How We Help Partners

For insurance companies and self-insured employers, Helpsy is offered as a companion solution. This allows members to have ongoing continuity of support, allowing members and their families to feel a lot more prepared with unexpected health issues related to critical illness. As a result, the members’ patient journeys are smoother with much less disruption, leading to improved outcomes and cost savings. In addition for members and their caregivers, a smoother patient journey reduces the number of preventable adverse events and allows for quicker member recovery, thereby allowing members and their caregivers to return to work quicker.

Challenge Mission

COVID Problem We Address

COVID-19 presents a series of challenges. Firstly, there is no treatment available at present, which results in overburden for the healthcare system as there is an increased volume of patients who are seeking medical attention. As an artificial intelligence nurse and telehealth solution, Helpsy Health can alleviate this burden through being a supportive tool for patients to self-manage their care at home. Furthermore, both private and government health plans face the challenge of improving outcomes and reducing costs, while managing tens of thousands of people at scale, while also trying to improve outcomes and reduce costs.

Patients can use Helpsy to identify and monitor symptoms through our remote patient monitoring, auto-triaging through our AI chatbot nurse, and escalating care via telemedicine consult. Moreover, the self-isolation period can provide challenges as there is a lack of emotional support and validated information, which might result in frustration and helplessness. Helpsy can provide education and navigation resources (i.e., emotional, psychological, wellness, financial, etc.) to support patients. At a time of social distancing, Helpsy provides a caregiver portal where users can track their loved ones’ health.

In addition, patients with pre-existing complex and chronic conditions are facing delays in the treatments and are unable to get help from their providers who are being reallocated to help treat COVID-19 patients. These patients, many who are immuno-compromised, are at risk of significant health decline and are in need of more support. They might be having multiple issues which results in high care costs.and a delicate balance. Helpsy can provide support and manage their care so they can remain stable and reduce adverse events, which are both critical to prevent overtaxing the hospital system and even higher medical expenses or higher number of people who need medical expenses.

Lastly, currently there is a need to collect real-time data related to COVID-19 for disease mapping and risk-stratification to better target their patient engagement efforts and improve healthcare delivery to those in greatest need. Helpsy can encourage potential patients to report their conditions to the government by providing the state’s contact information. Helpsy can collect data, de-identify them, and send them to the appropriate authorities per regulation.

Our COVID Solution

Helpsy’s virtual nurse creates a custom whole-health care plan (physical, emotional, social and support services) and engages the patient 24/7 by monitoring symptoms, answering questions and escalating care as needed. Many patients and caregivers are lacking guidance and long-term monitoring of symptoms during the patient’s journey to recovery due to high clinician demand during this period. Helpsy’s platform anticipates their patients’ needs and creates a personalized treatment plan for each patient based on patient data collected in real-time. This will enable organizations to provide support and guidance to a large number of people and their families in a personalized manner while quickly identifying situations where a person needs more medical support.

We empower quarantined patients with our personalized recommendations for symptom management, navigation and educational resources, self-care programs, and community resources. Our AI engine acts as an independent supportive care clinical team and can automatically create personalized care plans, anticipate patient needs in real-time, and conduct symptom management for over 500 symptoms in real-time, including all COVID-19 symptoms. By addressing member needs, we predict issues before they escalate and connect patients with providers for consults through telemedicine. Our solution’s early intervention capabilities aims to reduce hospital admissions and the number of patients who require ventilators. Furthermore, family members, who are added to the caregiver portal are able to monitor the patient’s progress and assist in managing the patient’s treatment through reminders for medication adherence, screenings and appointments.

Finally, finding reliable resources to effectively prevent contraction, identify symptoms and behavioral changes within patients can be challenging. Our app can work with the CDC to provide 24/7 support to handle and monitor the COVID-19 outbreak by providing evidence-based information and community resources to educate and guide members on the disease process. In addition, updates and mandates by the federal and state governments can be provided through the Helpsy app. Our goal is to provide patients, caregivers, and providers with the appropriate guidance, support, and bandwidth to get through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Innovation Details

Intellectual Property Summary

We have filed a 300-page provisional patent. Upon funding, we will immediately convert our provisional patient into 6-12 full patients.

Clinical Information

We have performed three studies which help to support clinical efficacy of the Helpsy solution. 

During a three-year clinical study performed in conjunction with UCSF and the NIH, we observed a 14% improvement in Quality of Life, a 30 to 80% improvement across various symptoms, and improved medication and surveillance adherence. 

During a two-month study performed in conjunction with the EMC Super Specialty Hospital in Amritsar India, we observed a 78% improvement in Quality of Life, a 75 to 90% improvement across various symptoms, reduced cancer treatment disruption, and improved medication and surveillance adherence.

Lastly during a four-month study performed at an unnamed major cancer treatment center in the US, we observed a $5,000 per patient savings during active cancer treatment and reduced cancer treatment disruption.

Citations:

UCSF Study: Qualitative Analyses from a Prospective Clinical Study of a Whole Sys. Ayurvedic Intervention for Breast Cancer Survivorship, Lapedis et al., J Altern Complement Med, 2014. Link: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2014.5196.abstract

EMC Study: Manuscript available upon request.

Third US Cancer Center Study: Data is unpublished.

 

Regulatory Status

Since Helpsy is a patient education tool and not a medical diagnosis tool, Helpsy does not require FDA compliance.

How we will use the funds raised

With the proceeds from this program, we will help fund our existing pilot opportunities with a large insurance company and three large employee benefits companies, fund company operations (including sales and marketing, legal services, and tech costs), fund one-time costs needed to get our pilots operational (preparation of legal documents, conversion of our provisional patents, upfront marketing costs, and software verification testing), fund conversion of our provisional patents, and create a small buffer for any urgent expenses.

Thank You

As a nurse, I saw my brave patients endure so many physical, emotional, financial, and social scars during their fight against so many diseases. These scars continue to haunt them and impact many aspects of their lives. At Helpsy, we map out the treatment journey and prepare patients with critical illness for the challenges ahead. We provide access to the best treatments and best providers from all reliable health care fields. We save clinicians time and money by automating this care planning process so that clinicians can focus their time on what is most important, caring for patients. Join us in providing better care to patients and better tools to clinicians!

Investor Info

Market Size

Patients with pre-existing complex and chronic conditions are facing delays in the treatments and are unable to get help from their providers who are being reallocated to help treat COVID-19 patients. There are over 2 million active cancer patients and over 18 million cancer survivors in the US (https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics), resulting in a $150 billion market in adverse events in oncology. Half of these events are preventable (https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-018-3335-z). After assuming a 5% potential savings capture which we have vetted with several insurance companies, the total addressable market is $3.75 billion. 

These patients, many who are immuno-compromised, are at risk of significant health decline and are in need of more support. They might be having multiple issues which results in high care costs and a delicate balance. Helpsy can provide support and manage their care so they can remain stable and reduce adverse events, which are both critical to prevent overtaxing the hospital system and even higher medical expenses or higher number of people who need medical expenses.

Projected 3 Year Growth

By the end of 2021, we project $20M in revenue from just our current partnerships with payers. This revenue will allow us to expand into other critical illness areas and to operationalize opportunities with other stakeholders including self-insured employers, cancer centers, and pharma.

Revenue Model

Our platform is designed with patients in mind. It’s primary aim is to improve patient outcomes by reducing adverse events and treatment interruptions. While geared towards patients, we believe that our solution will also benefit providers, hospitals, payers, and self-insured employers in the form of reduced costs and increased treatment adherence. The Helpsy platform comes packaged with the ability for patients to self-report treatment specific health data, which will prove very valuable for our partners who want to learn more about the effectiveness and shortcomings of certain treatments. We will charge our enterprise customers per patient per month via performance-based revenue sharing and by directly billing Medicare or commercial insurance.

Competitors

The symptom management space is relatively new and we are a step ahead of our competitors. Helpsy’s competitors fall into the following categories: data collection and providing a static disease-only care plan. 

Helpsy’s key differentiators are the following: 1) Whole-health approach to care along with providing full 24/7 continuity of care through a virtual nurse bot. 2) Addressing the key social determinant need for access to care and resources such as transportation, financial assistance, return to work, and others. 3) A culturally sensitive solution that utilizes supportive care components that most people use. 4) First mover’s advantage. Helpsy is fully-built and is deployed to over 20,000 patients. 5) Automated, on-demand care process allows faster scale than virtual human coaching, providing care to every person that needs it which wasn’t possible before. 6) Providing many more touch-points compared to virtual human coaching at a fraction of the cost. 7) The ability to save our customers money on their healthcare costs, something our competitors can’t provide.

Traction

We have completed 3 clinical studies at cancer centers with significant results. Helpsy is in use by hundreds of experts and 23,000 patients. We have deals signed with a large health insurance company (50M lives) and an employee benefits company (2.4M lives). Deals with 3 other employee benefits companies and Blues are in progress. We also have obtained a paid contract with govt. hospitals in India.

Due Diligence Docs

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