Medigram
A Catalyst for Change

When the leading cause of preventable death is still due to a delay in communication, secure and seamless communication[1] remains an “unsolved conundrum” across the healthcare industry. Often this leads to inefficiency in workflow and patient care. With an aim to modernize healthcare communication, in 2011, Dr. Michael Chiu was inspired to start Medigram and remains a company advisor. “Hospitals are often high-interference and low connectivity environment; even the ‘most wired’ hospitals have areas with no Wi-Fi and low connectivity,” points out Sherri Douville, CEO, Medigram.

As healthcare providers are today moving toward a new era of communication, Medigram’s next generation IoT platform enables secure communication to enhance clinical efficiency and curb compliance risk. Their scalable and flexible platform is designed to assist large physician groups, hospitals, and multi-site health systems in ingesting remote patient data, medical device monitoring, and provide flexible querying to deliver the right data at the right time to the right clinician. Medigram has been designed to connect care team members wherever they are to help provide context. This is so that the care team can quickly make decisions about appropriate protocols and care settings.

When asked why he’s excited about the Medigram platform, Board Chairman Wim Roelandts reports, “The Medigram application will provide cost savings for medical institutions by providing faster and secure communications for both care and administrative processes. Though most importantly, it will improve outcomes for patients by allowing medical teams to work faster and more efficiently.”

Built in the Erlang programming language, Medigram—the messaging engine—manages volume and the velocity of unstructured data spread throughout a range of servers, and is device-agnostic, connecting to any device—iOS, Android, and the web, and more interfaces in the future.

The open source database most often used in healthcare messaging was recently found to have a high number of compromised instances.

In contrast, the Medigram application is designed to be secure and complies with HIPAA,” says Sherri. On the whole, the Medigram application also addresses issues such as unnecessary delays in treatment, discharge, transition, and billing. Preventable length of stay means lost income for hospitals and unnecessary patient and family wait times. This is where Medigram steps-in providing actionable insights to each care team member, in a secure and quick fashion. “We’ve reduced discharge times from 12 hours to 20 minutes. We’re committed to making our application work for the clinician, no matter where they are in spite of phones not working and technical connectivity lacking,” explains Sherri.

Additionally, Medigram resolves problems with differential diagnoses. “If a patient is suspected of chronic heart failure and sepsis by the care team, we offer close follow ups for faster coordination, thereby reducing readmissions,” illustrates Sherri.

The Medigram team is excited for the impact that mobile, contextual information will have on improving quality, patient safety, and hospital revenues. Customers have been able to dramatically improve discharge planning with Medigram. They’ve been able to discharge a patient within 20 minutes as opposed to the 12 hours it would have normally taken.

In an era of smart technologies, pagers are fast moving to ‘extinction’. Moving ahead, “Our roadmap includes workflow-specific features and flexibility, allowing hospitals to store their data on premise, as per their requirements. Driving this kind of innovation requires great, steady leadership paired with mentorship in order for Startups to succeed in my view, which we have benefited from tremendously” remarks Sherri when speaking about the impact Wim’s chairmanship has had on the company’s continued development.

[1]The Joint Commission, the top healthcare accreditation agency.