In the fifth digital health acquisition this month, Hearst Health Network has acquired Santa Clara, California-based CareInSync for an undisclosed amount. CareInSync will become part of Zynx Health, an evidence- and experience-based clinical improvement company within the Heart Health Network, which is itself a recently formed division of the Hearst Corporation.

CareinSync's flagship product is Carebook, a real-time mobile care collaboration software for the emerging care transition market. The platform allows different care teams, including attending, consult, and bedside nurse, to communicate with each other and also allows direct, HIPAA-compliant messaging between specific users. Carebook tracks patients’ transitions from admission to discharge and then provides a report from the messaging data during care transitions. This way care teams can identify the gaps in care and design processes to improve care transitions.

"The CareInSync Carebook solution puts vital information into the hands of clinicians and caregivers to help them communicate across a person's care journey," Richard Malloch, President of Hearst Business Media, said in a statement. "We are excited to bring CareInSync into the Zynx solution suite and are pleased to expand our capacity to provide care guidance that helps improve coordination."

Hearst Health had an existing relationship with CareInSync: it was an investor in the company's $1.6 million funding round in 2012. Since then, Carebook has had a deployment at California's Marin General Hospital's cardiac specialty unit. Medical director Dr. Susan Cumming reported that the hospital turned to Carebook because the app incorporates principles from Project RED (Re-Engineered Discharge), a federally funded research group at Boston University Medical Center that seeks to cut the number of rehospitalizations by focusing on patient safety during the initial discharge process.

Later, Marin General Hospital and CareInSync built on their partnership when the companies formed the Mobile Care Transitions Network in Marin County, California. The service connects physicians, nurses, caseworkers, and home care managers across seven health care organizations. As patients transition out of Marin General Hospital, Carebook automatically risk-stratifies patients and applies risk-specific interventions to ensure efficient focusing of the right resources at the right time.

Carebook has also recently caught the attention of Samsung, from whom it secured an undisclosed investment last summer. Around the same time, the company made its software available for Android devices.

That Hearst Health purchased CareInSync, its first investment, might bode well for its second: Tonic Health, a company that designs digital surveys for patients. Hearst made an undisclosed investment in Tonic Health in February.