Washington, DC-based Babyscripts has entered into a partnership with Inova Health System. The agreement includes a $500,000 investment from Inova, which will be tacked onto the $6 million round led by Philips in January.
Inova will deploy Babyscripts’ platform, which offers providers a digital patient management dashboard for pregnancy with data collected through connected devices such as scales, blood pressure cuffs, glucometers and a patient-facing mobile app. From these, the platform delivers insights identifying which patients may require a follow up or intervention.
The platform will be rolled out in stages, starting with Inova's own employee populations and eventually extending to the whole patient population.
What's the impact
Inova isn't Babyscript's first provider partner, but it is a significant one because of the its prominence and the breadth of its offerings, Babyscripts President and Cofounder Juan Pablo Segura told MobiHealthNews.
"[Inova has] the largest birthing hospital in Northern Virginia, their women’s hospital in Fairfax," he said. "They have a very large sort of in-patient presence, they have their own OBGYN practices, they have an incredible clinically integrated network, and they partnered with Aetna to offer a [health plan]. So you really have every part of the healthcare consumer stakeholder equation at the table in Northern Virginia at Inova. So when you think about the power that they can bring, the ability to really think about things like population health, risk-based care, remote patient monitoring, eventually pushing bundled payments, at risk, this is really a perfect sandbox to really innovate."
Babyscripts will be rolling out additional provider partnerships over the next few weeks, Segura said.
"We think the real opportunity is to partner really closely with our partners, with the health systems," Segura said. "Transforming pregnancy care is not easy. Changing care models, getting providers to think differently. We want our customers to put skin in the game. Obviously they’re paying us for a service where we’re adding value, but the more that we can align all incentives to truly transforming maternity care, so we can solve these core issues like Medicaid access to care, morbidity and mortality, the more that people really buy into it, through equity dollars, I think the more successful we all will be."
What's the trend
Babyscripts has been having a busy year. After raising $6 million in a strategic funding round led by Royal Philips in January, the company announced a partnership with Penn Medicine in February focused on postpartum hypertension.
"We’re constantly adding more and more modules to the program," Seguro said. "And [the hypertension module is] just an example of the newest latest and greatest. The next module is what we’re calling the fourth trimester, which is a completely new way of managing postpartum care."
On the record
“Babyscripts offers the opportunity to further the impact of our wellness programs on the lives of expecting families in the region,” Seema Wadhwa, assistant vice president for sustainability and wellness at Inova, said in a statement. “We currently see over 11,000 people through our childbirth and parenting education, and we are pleased to expand our holistic care offerings for pregnant moms and their families with this additional tool.”
