An apple a day is not always enough to keep the doctor away. More often than not, people and their family’s visit health institutions often throughout the year, and sometimes even more frequently when the family has older relatives or younger children. The planning of these visits and the subsequent planning to ensure you and your family stay healthy can be an extensive task. In an effort to streamline the planning process on the patient end, healthIT startup, Health Ninja, is working towards simplifying care planning for caregivers through a single platform.
Founded in 2014 by Andre Thenot, Health Ninja helps families care for one another’s health with their website and mobile app that keeps track of care plans and allows patients to keep an up-to-date journal of their health.
“We help you keep track of all that needs to happen, based on what your doctors order—handy when Grandma forgets to take her meds—and keep a journal of all the events affecting your family’s health, so that next time you visit your pediatrician, you’ll have a accurate history of your child’s health since she last saw the doctor,” explains Thenot.
The idea for the startup came from the large push in the healthcare industry for electronic patient records, mostly for the benefit of healthcare providers. With the increased digitalization of health records, however, no real change was seen on the consumer end.
“For us patients—or as I prefer say, Health Consumers—the power of electronic records has not yet materialized,” says Thenot. “Sure, we have tiny windows into which we can peek into (some) of our health information, but no tool that fits how we handle health on a day-to-day basis.”
To address the needs of this underserved space—a segment that Thenot says is estimated by the US census to be around 39 million people—Health Ninja was born.
Currently, the startup, which has been bootstrapped up to this point, will offer its platform free to consumers with the choice to pay for add-on services. Although they currently compete with other healthIT companies like CareSync and CareTree, they are working to give themselves a leg up with plans to integrate with Apple HealthKit and other hardware vendors.
Another thing working in their favor, according to Thenot, is their location. With tech talent in town and a cheaper cost of living, Thenot feels having Health Ninja based out of Atlanta works highly in their favor.
