*COVID-19: We are committed to helping our community through this crisis. To that end, our incredible portfolio companies have many materials and products to assist in this time of need, and we will be promoting them in this series. We’ll get through this together - read on and stay tuned.
This post was written by Nell Meosky Luo, CEO of our portfolio company Folia Health.
The clinic isn’t what it used to be.
If you’re living with a chronic disease, you’re no longer going into the clinic to see your specialists - you’re staying home, and participating in a virtual visit.
The same goes if you’re experiencing coronavirus symptoms - you’re asked not to go into the clinic to be seen. Instead, your care team will give you a call or hold a virtual visit, before deciding whether you need to get tested. In fact, some organizations (like the Mass General-Brigham COVID-19 Task Force that we’re part of) are even looking at ways to provide coronavirus tests that you can conduct from the comfort of your living room.
For most people, this is a brand new model of care. It’s going to take some getting used to. One of the most important things that we can do to ensure high-quality care from home is to pair telemedicine with home-tracking - so clinicians can have a clear line of sight into how you’re doing, even from miles away.
This is where Folia Health comes in. Folia is a platform that helps you to capture health observations - including symptoms, treatment use, and even measurements from connected devices - and then communicate them to your provider. Folia works by prompting you with simple multiple-choice questions on a regular basis, curated based on your individual health situation and what you’re monitoring at home. Then, it generates in-app graphs of how you’re doing over time and creates PDF reports that you can send directly to your doctor.
To help patients and clinicians manage ever-changing information during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve developed a COVID-19 question flow. This flow enables patients and caregivers to collect daily observations that are relevant to COVID-19 diagnosis and monitoring, including temperature, coughing severity and characteristics, shortness of breath, and even sense of smell and taste.
We’re proud to be able to offer Folia, and the provider program (Bridge), free-of-charge to all patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers. Using the power of your at-home observations, we hope to ensure that every patient receives the best care possible, even in this incredibly difficult situation.
To get started using Folia for your own family, simply go to www.foliahealth.com/get-started, or search “Folia Health” on the App Store.
Additional Resources
Our website has a list of user-submitted questions ranging from the latest infection control measures, to communicating with your clinic, to keeping track of your health at home. We’ve sourced the most up-to-date and reliable answers for you and are continually updating each week - our weekly digest is available here.
About Nell Meosky Luo
Prior to joining the startup world, Nell worked as a management consultant for the healthcare, B2B software, and consumer goods sectors, among others. Nell attended Yale, where she focused on public health and biochemistry. Her thesis examined how health reimbursement systems and best-practice protocols affect treatment for childhood obesity in the US, UK, and Italy. She is involved in multiple COVID-19 crisis projects, including a leadership role with the Partners COVID-19 Task Force on Diagnostics and founding the Citizens' Ventilator Project.
About Folia Health
Folia Health helps to harness the power of patient and caregiver observations to empower you to live your healthiest life.