The need for seamless connectivity—courtesy of the internet—has enabled millions of people across the world to acknowledge, leverage, and create countless possibilities.
An offspring of this need, social media, although at a nascent stage, encompasses profound potential to influence change – be it in individual behavior or even certain societal perceptions and prejudices.
However, with the good, also comes the bad. In the case of social media, as of today, the task of achieving solid privacy is almost similar to someone making you ride a bike without a helmet.
Imagine this problem being aggravated twofold when you’re seeking critical healthcare-related information on the internet or social media groups focused on a certain medical condition.
This problem, combined with a personal experience, is what drove Lynda Brown-Ganzert, to formulate an idea that would deliver private, personalized, health management and peer support in the palm of people’s hands.
For the past 10 years, Lynda has been deeply engrossed in private social networks, particularly on mobile platforms, seeking answers to questions like: What brings people together? How do affinity groups stay connected? What creates long-lasting relationships in these environments? How can one leverage networks to help people ‘show up’ for each other and build in social accountability?
However, it wasn’t until Lynda became a patient herself and walked along the lonely road of infertility, that she comprehended the need for these types of private groups in healthcare. She struggled to find curated information that she could trust, tools that would help her day to day tracking and most importantly, other people that were facing the same problem.
She wanted to find a private network, personalized to her experience, free of the misinformation and the negativity that she was finding online. She wondered if this was a need for anyone else, and it turned out to be a significant need. This was how the foundations of Curatio were laid.
A Benchmark of Innovation
No Patient Alone. That is Curatio’s vision. With users in 104 countries, and the platform being available in 20 languages, the company is making ceaseless progress towards that vision.
“We help any healthcare organization unlock the power of social,” says Lynda. “For so long, healthcare organizations haven’t been able to effectively leverage social platforms due to well-intentioned privacy and regulatory laws. And yet, that’s where patients are, with more than 3 Billion people this year using mobile social worldwide,” she adds.
This is what led the company to build a privacy and regulatory compliant platform that any healthcare organization can use to offer a private label social network to their patient populations.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers are using the Curatio platform to support their patients with everything from adherence, to tracking, to reducing stigma and isolation, while Specialty Pharma integrates Curatio as a social plugin into their existing ecosystem.
Care providers and Health Care Professionals (HCPs) are using Curatio to help their patients prepare for pre and post-operative procedures, manage a chronic condition and stay healthy at home.
Payers and employers are looking to this platform to help their clients navigate healthcare, participate in personalized programs, and get daily coaching support. “We’re a SaaS model and we make it easy for any healthcare organization to integrate social support at scale,” says the team at Curatio.
Tackling Adversities
Lynda believes that healthcare was undergoing significant transformation before COVID-19 and the pandemic accelerated much of the work that was already underway. She quotes the adage, “no one calls a meeting when the building is burning down.”
She opines that the entire ecosystem had to jump into action, make decisions that hadn’t been made before, and work together. “Certainly, one of the silver linings of the pandemic was the phenomenal collaboration between stakeholders and the true empowerment of patients,” she says.
She also believes that the pandemic highlighted the importance of viewing healthcare as a partnership – that when patients, providers, politicians, suppliers, and technology-enablers work in unison, it can impact massive change. “I don’t think we will revert to how we delivered and engaged with healthcare in the past,” she adds.
We asked Lynda on the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on Curatio and what efforts were taken to ensure safety of her team members and employees, to which she said, “Curatio has a deep tech stack and as we started growing the team, I quickly realized that we needed to look for the smartest people we could find, regardless of where they lived. With this in mind, we have a global team that has been working very effectively in a hybrid model for several years now.”
“This requires a bit more leadership work in keeping a regular cadence, meeting rhythm and connection points, but technology has enabled us to build a smart, global team deeply committed to our mission. The pandemic certainly highlighted the critical need for our platform, and it has been the busiest time in our history to date. As a leadership team, we’re extremely mindful of cultivating a compassionate, growth mindset team and making sure people have the flexibility, support, and connection they need to do their very best work,” she adds.
Opinions that matter
Sharing her opinion on the necessity for healthcare service providers to align their offerings with newer technological developments, Lynda says, “The move towards personalized medicine is manifesting in both how we’re collectively leveraging technology and what patients are increasingly demanding.”
“When you think of it, all diseases are becoming rare diseases. Each patient’s genetic makeup influences what therapies will work best for them, how they’ll respond to treatment and what lifestyle changes will have the biggest impact. This level of personalization is a great catalyst to empower patients as full partners in their personal healthcare journey. Technology, in my opinion, should always be an enabling force, working behind the scenes to create efficiencies, surface new data insights and help navigate personal pathways,” states Lynda.
When asked for her thoughts about the potential future of the healthcare services sector post COVID-19 pandemic, and how Curatio is strategizing to adapt to that future, Lynda expressed, “Curatio was built to scale and to be a type of social plugin that can be used with any offering. We did not want to build another ‘walled garden’ and saw, in our early days, the need to integrate within the ecosystem to be of greatest value to patients and customers. Core to our mission is utilizing technology to fill a gap for the entire ecosystem. In the months ahead, I see us continuing to grow our data insights area and increase the types of integrations we do with our customers and partners.”
To conclude, Lynda shares her advice to budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the healthcare services sector saying, “Patience and perseverance are mandatory for anyone innovating in the healthcare services sector. It’s a long term relationship and requires incredible resilience. You will learn new things every single day and be humbled by the intelligence, commitment, and passion of your colleagues. You’re joining an incredible sector where everyone is on the same journey to transform healthcare and make a true difference in the lives of others.”
