Headquartered in Boston, MA, UbiCare is a prominent patient engagement company that impacts care cost and quality through its proven SAAS products. Effectively, UbiCare combines targeted, evidence-based, multimedia content with a dynamic software platform that allows complete customization and real-time usage data.
Founded in 2002, UbiCare is on the forefront of creating a completely digital patient engagement solution in the U.S. In its initial stages, the company used technology to overcome obstacles in successfully engaging and educating patients. Through weekly, relevant emails delivered throughout the whole episode of care, hospitals strengthen their patient connection and relationships, enjoy immediate patient access, and provide the means to make patients true in their care.
Magnificent Talent
The CEO, Betsy Weaver, has gathered a team of great talent, most of whom have been with the company for half a decade or more—including three team members who worked together in her last company. The Executive VP of Content/UI/Product started out in print, adapted quickly to the web and has since moved into mobile and interactive. The Executive VP of Corporate previously designed museum exhibits and applied her MBA at digital marketing companies, focusing on using content to gain audience attention, being hyper-relevant, and increase product use. The Executive VP of Finance and Operations keeps the team moving forward with grace and efficiency. Lastly, the CTO, who was previously a member of the team that created eINK used in the Amazon Kindle devices, continues to innovate for patients and the hospitals who care for them.
Teamwork, Unity Brings Strength
“Our evolutionary—or revolutionary!—content and platform would not have been possible without our talented team,” says Betsy, proudly. This team is enhanced through in-house continuing education with “UbiUniversity” sessions, as well as external learning opportunities. For example, the company’s product manager participated in a development course to increase productivity and efficiency with product engineers. Plus, each quarter, the whole company bonds together by volunteering for local community organizations.
UbiCare believes that “Patient Engagement is a ‘team-sport’! We all need the patients, but it’s the patient engagement provider who is the MVP,” Betsy says.
The organization’s core mission is to give healthcare providers the means to access and sustain the connection with the patients. “It’s not just about the means of connection—emails, text, apps, websites or patient portals—it’s about NO barriers to access. It’s about making it easy, relevant and delightful, with connections that are of use right now because they’re perfectly timed, arriving when and where they’re needed,” asserts Betsy.
Cutting-edge Services
UbiCare’s unique platform automatically delivers turnkey sourced, evidence-based content, providing the right message to the right patient at the right time throughout an entire episode of care. The cloud-based platform has been enhanced as technology has evolved and patient and provider needs have changed. It is now interoperable with other hospital IT systems and meets enterprise-wide needs for hospital systems. UbiCare’s flagship product, SmarteXp, was first developed for the Obstetrics/Pediatrics population.
One client appreciates UbiCare for its services and noted that expectant and new moms “are the frontend of our customer pipeline, as they make 80% of all care decisions for the whole family. When loyal and engaged, their value lasts for 20+ years. UbiCare enhances that for us. They created the digital category.”
Words about Ideal Leadership
As UbiCare’s leader, Betsy believes that “the ideal leader is an innovator, a change agent, and a disruptor. He/She is driven, comfortable with rapid change and able to harness that to positive ends for the company but also for the world. New talent and the best talent want more than money and equity. They want to believe, grow and change with the products and the company. The ideal leader guides and appreciates this. Plus, good leaders must feel comfortable moving and bringing their team along with them. This is impossible without careful selection of the right team and having that evolve as your innovations do. Talent evolves, as products and the marketplace do.”
Upcoming Plans
In 2018, UbiCare completed a study with a four-hospital system in the Midwest. It has given it and the healthcare industry new knowledge of this type of digital connection. When utilized from well before to well after an episode of care, it can provide statically significant and clinically impactful results. In this case, reduced the length of hospital stay and decreased emergency department visits within 30 days post-operation. It also showed positive direction for the other tracked outcome variables including the day of surgery cancellations, discharge destination, and hospital readmissions within 30 days post-op.
Today, the challenge ahead of the company is to share these findings more widely to stimulate more research and to have more patients and hospitals benefit from this research.
“Our goal is to stay armed with the findings that digitally connecting with patients throughout a care episode works to reduce costs and increase care quality. We want to help providers achieve the highest ROI while improving outcomes,” concludes Betsy.
