Celo Health, an Auckland-based provider of a mobile messaging platform for healthcare organisations, has entered the United States market. It has set up headquarters in Seattle early in the year.

WHAT IT DOES

According to a press release, Celo Health offers a HIPAA-compliant messaging platform that enables seamless and secure collaboration among healthcare teams. It can also integrate with hospitals' existing electronic health records. 

Available on iOS, Android, and web devices, the app has the On-Call feature which allows teams to instantly reach the right on-call provider and a reporting dashboard where insights can be drawn for improvements, such as resource allocation and process enhancements. 

One competitive feature of the app is rostering optimisation which allows users to send role-based messages instead of looking up a name of a provider from a directory. Another feature is Broadcast which enables administrative users to send out mass messages, as well as see the reach of those messages. 

The press statement also went on to mention that the Celo Health platform optimises clinical workflows, helps increase worker productivity, and minimises risks of data breaches and fines by ensuring compliance. 

WHY IT MATTERS

In an interview with MobiHealth News, Jack Clough, chief growth officer at Celo Health who is now leading its US office, shared how the company will be able to set its platform apart from local competition. 

He noted how generic enterprise messaging products in the market mostly lack healthcare-specific features. "Those generic messaging products put patients’ data at risk which exposes healthcare providers to fines and legal risks," Clough emphasised.

Designed by a medical doctor, Celo Health's mobile app is specifically built for the healthcare industry. Clough claimed that they have proven success in countries with stricter security compliance requirements, such as the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, where they currently have around 800 partner healthcare organisations. In the UK, for instance, one client organisation reported about an 80% adoption rate of its messaging platform among staff. 

Celo Health is currently in advanced talks with a Tier 1 hospital in Seattle for potential signing; Clough also mentioned that they are eyeing half a dozen more prospects in the state.  

THE LARGER TREND

In October, Melbourne-based IT firm FiveP unveiled a role-based messaging app called Baret that offers EMR/PAS integration. It was initially developed to support internal communications at Austin Health and was further tweaked to demonstrate how role-based communications could be done on Microsoft Teams. 

Singaporean private healthcare group Thomson Medical tapped Chicago-based messaging solutions company NetSfere in 2020 to roll out the latter's enterprise-grade secure messaging platform for internal communication and collaboration.