CharmHealth is a company that developed a suite of products for providers that were built to address the application of cloud and mobile technologies for managing healthcare practices. Pulse 2.0 interviewed CharmHealth founder and CEO Pramila Srinivasan to learn more about the company.
Pramila Srinivasan’s Background
What is Srinivasan’s background? Pramila Srinivasan, Ph.D., is an engineer, entrepreneur, philanthropist and a lifelong advocate for better outcomes in healthcare. Srinivasan explained:
“I graduated from Purdue University with a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering in 1997 and founded MedicalMine Inc. in 2007. Before this, I worked in research and development in multimedia signal processing algorithms and medical data neural network classification, security algorithms, and speech recognition in startup companies that developed technologies for leading consumer electronics products.
“I also founded and serve as president of The BRAIN Foundation, a California nonprofit with the mission to accelerate the development of FDA-approved therapeutics to benefit individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders.”
Formation of CharmHealth
How did the idea for CharmHealth come together? Srinivasan shared:
“CharmHealth was inspired by a prior initiative, CharmTracker, to connect patient communities on a new cloud-based platform. In 2008, this site provided tools and visualizations to help patients manage their healthcare and consolidate reports to share with their physicians. Several physicians were interested in similar tools for their practice and a robust patient portal (before the days of ubiquitous patient health records).
“Motivated by a desire to enable medical establishments, large and small, to access cutting-edge technologies to assist in clinical care and documentation, CharmHealth was founded to provide superior cloud-based solutions for practice management, clinical care, and patient engagement. My goal has always been to help patients access the best care possible and help providers access the best technology to deliver that care.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Srinivasan explained:
“CharmHealth’s purpose is to bring technological innovation to the point of care — to enable quality healthcare for all. At the backbone of CharmHealth are our electronic health records and the tools for patient engagement, practice management, and revenue cycle management. We partner with healthcare providers to make it simple to onboard; to remove all obstacles that get in the way of care; to provide them and their patients with the exact information, analytics, and tools they need; and to get paid for the care they deliver.”
Product Roadmap
After asking Srinivasan about the company’s product roadmap, she replied:
“Our roadmap is driven by our commitment to democratize access to cutting-edge technology. We are regularly rolling out features built upon the latest AI innovations to enable all our customers to benefit from increased productivity and scalability. Our growing revamped marketplace, our ‘Innovation Hub,’ is also the focus of our roadmap this calendar year. Through our live marketplace, we bring together innovators and mass-market health-tech products such as new tests and devices to physicians and patients in the CharmHealth ecosystem.”
Customer Success Story
After asking Srinivasan about a company success story, she highlighted:
“We are proud to share that many of our customers come to us because we support novel business models through customizations and a robust API program to facilitate seamless integrations. As a result, our platform is host to a number of physician entrepreneurs who are finding new ways to leverage technology to deliver better care to all.
“We established an annual Innovation Challenge to provide a platform for digital health thought leaders to share groundbreaking ideas with investors and developers. As a result, we have partnered with and funded organizations like My Diabetes Tutor, which facilitates diabetes education for patients in underserved areas across America. We also have partnered with CCVNA to help set up mobile vaccination clinics in remote areas, and we work with several telepsychiatry facilities, such as Telemynd, that make mental health readily accessible to patients from the comfort of their homes.”
Innovation Challenge
Tell me a little about the Innovation Challenge and how you came up with the idea. Srinivasan responded:
“The Innovation Challenge is our flagship annual event where the innovation arm of CharmHealth comes to life. We invite thought leaders and entrepreneurs in health tech to use our API to integrate their technology solutions into the CharmHealth ecosystem. From the submissions, selected candidates showcase their products or solutions to a large audience of health IT professionals, physicians, mentors, funding entities, and investors. We announce the Challenge winners and offer comprehensive support to awardees, including access to funding with our partner investors. Innovation Challenge 2024 is underway, and winners will be announced at our annual conference, Charmalot, being held Aug. 23-25 in Washington, D.C. Digital health innovators can register here: Charmhealthchallenge.com.”
Differentiation From the Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Srinivasan affirmed:
“Although our customers sign into CharmHealth to use our EHR/PM system every working day, CharmHealth is much more. We are an ecosystem of providers, patients and innovators. We believe in democratizing access to health care, and our products are conceived, marketed and promoted with that goal in mind. Our pricing model is designed so that we succeed when our customers succeed.
“No matter how good we are at innovating, we recognize that some of the best solutions might come from others. In order to provide the finest tools possible at the point of care, we leverage innovation from both within and outside of our organization. Our platform makes it easy for entrepreneurs to develop innovative solutions that they can put directly at our providers’ and patients’ fingertips. Our platform allows developers from client organizations to innovate by making it easy to customize, integrate and improve third-party tools and applications. We are committed to our ultimate goal of enabling the best care possible.
“That’s why in everything we do, we never lose sight of the fact that we are here to serve the needs of providers, their IT teams and their patients.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Srinivasan concluded:
“CharmHealth Cares is an integral part of the company’s culture. We donate to charities that work toward better healthcare, and we sponsor events that benefit patients with limited healthcare resources. We host a hackathon to encourage students and young professionals in the health-tech space. This year, we brought in a cohort of minority and low-income students from local community colleges to be mentored by our team. We hope that they will participate in our hackathon and go on to showcase their inventions at our Innovation Challenge.”
