ForaHealthyMe: Providing remote patient solutions with CEO Courtney Cole
Patients across Canada face significant challenges due to physiological impairments, mobility disabilities, and other health determinants. As our population continues to age, these issues resulting from long-term chronic illness and accidents will only increase.
While these challenges can be treated in hospital and through surgery, the largest portion of recovery is carried out remotely through rehabilitation, where healthcare professionals have difficulty ensuring patients remain committed to the treatment plan.
Beyond the obvious fit within the healthcare system, the solution can easily be applied to Canada’s health, accident and disability insurance sectors as well as to organizations like the Workplace Safety Insurance Board. Patients need tools and resources to overcome the trauma and challenges associated with rehab.
It’s a costly factor that leads to poor outcomes and readmissions. Non-compliance to rehab protocols for individuals with injuries from workplace, motor vehicle, slip and fall accidents or post-op acute care is estimated to be between 50-70%. Low adherence impacts the health and the insurance sectors with respect to a lack of outcome-based care plans, costs, and access to care.
Markham-based ForaHealthyMe Inc. and CEO Courtney Cole have created a platform to help solve this issue.
The Integrated AI Tele-Physical & Behavioral Health Solution, an open intuitive AI and cloud-based platform, offers all-in-one applications for virtual consultations, remote management and has proven efficacy in physical rehabilitation support. This platform helps ensure the patient is in their best physical state prior to entering the hospital and achieves the best results once discharged.
The multi-language cloud-based platform delivers all-in-one comprehensive care tools to address the complex needs of patients with chronic, acute, falls, and related musculoskeletal and cognitive health issues.
Patients can access a suite of applications including mental and physical health assessments, video calls, biometric data-gathering tools, along with educational and gamified virtual learning environments. The application is integrated with a greater series of web tools and mobile applications and EMRs. It uses gaming, computer vision and motion tracking technology to guide patients during their rehab and care.
Cloud technology enables video tutorials, data tracking from wearables, range of motion activities and other assessments which can be shared seamlessly and securely across devices.
While CEO Courtney Cole has created a business that solves a real need for both the healthcare industry and individual patients, there are challenges in operating a med tech company in our healthcare system. More from Courtney and being a life science entrepreneur below:
What do you think is the biggest challenge you are facing as a SME in Ontario’s healthcare sector?
First, I want to acknowledge the support the government of Ontario gives entrepreneurs. They provide grants, loans through the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI), BDC, SR&ED rebates, professional advisors, innovation centres, and more. All this helps us get towards a marketable product or service.
To get value from what our tax dollars have supported, we need a focused effort on accelerating the adoption of our own digital health technology solutions.
The inability of SMEs to access the market means multinationals will dominate and local oligopolies will flourish. On a practical level, this means competition and innovation are stifled.
What’s next for ForaHealthyMe?
We continue to look for new markets and customers for our solutions in the private and insurance market. We also continue to innovate with an eye on incorporating virtual reality solutions into our offering.
If you could give any advice to others looking to launch a company, especially for those looking to commercialize research, what would it be?
Look to commercialize and scale your solutions in overseas markets where the customer is accessible and ready to pay. Take for example PointClickCare. They are a great example of a Canadian health tech company that pivoted to its overseas markets. They are a dominant player in the EHR market in the US. They are a great success story.
Learn more about ForaHealthyMe: https://www.linkedin.com/company/forahealthymeinc./about/
Alicia Pereira,
Director, Communications & Strategy
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