Providence launches Praia Health to help engage consumers

Former PatientBond and Merge Healthcare CEO Justin Dearborn was chosen as its executive-in-residence

Given all of the burst of technology designed to put care into the hands of the patient, the obvious conclusion would be that it would be easier than ever for those systems to maintain their relationships with those patients. After all, now that patients are monitoring themselves constantly with wearables and digital therapeutics, if they feel there's a problem they can go directly to a patient portal to connect with a doctor. It's easier than ever to get in touch with a healthcare professional. 

That's a double-edged sword, though: it also means care is fragmented, and so is the data, which can make it hard to give patients the care they need and difficult to maintain a relationship with them when they have so many places they can go. 

That's why Providence, a not-for-profit health system serving the Western U.S., announced Praia Health on Monday, a new platform-as-a-service technology that aims to create better experiences for patients by connecting fragmented data sources and point solutions.

The platform, which is anchored by patent-pending identity and profile technology, aims to create new types of omni-channel experiences, personalizing the patient' health journey and connecting them to the right services, products, and resources.

It has four core components, including identity-driven personalization ervices that create and manage consumer profiles, as well as consumer experience products that streamline the delivery of highly personalized mobile and web experiences. It also features ecosystem integrations and an analytics dashboard. 

Praia Health Identity and Engagement Platform launched within Providence in January 2022 and it currently supports more than three million user accounts. The company says it delivered over $20 million in measurable value back to the organization in 2022. 

The organization says it's currently working with what it called a "select set of health systems, ecosystem partners and system integrators" for Praia Health, though it did not name them. Interested parties can contact the team at www.praiahealth.com. 

It was also announced that Justin Dearborn, who has more than 25 years of experience leading technology-driven ventures, has been hired as Praia's executive-in-residence. Dearborn was previously the CEO of PatientBond, as well as the Tribune Publishing Company, and Merge Healthcare.

"Health Systems have been hampered in their ability to digitally connect with customers in a meaningful way because the technical environment they operate within is clinically-oriented, resource-intensive and change resistant," Dearborn said in a blog post in conjunction with the news.

"By decoupling consumer-identity from the EMR, Praia Health unlocks a whole new class of consumer connections through digital—and unleashes the ability for health systems to utilize digital experience strategically, rather than as a tactical cost center. I like to work on things that can truly have an impact and I believe Praia Health can drive real health care transformation."

Providence employs 120,000 caregivers, who serve in 52 hospitals and 1,085 across Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

Praia is the fourth company to come out of the Providence Digital Innovation Group (DIG), following digital prescribing platform Xealth, which became its own company in 2017 and has since raised $52.5 million; women's health application Circle, which was acquired by Wildflower Health in 2018; and DexCare, a healthcare access intelligence company that spun out as a separate in company in 2021, which has raised $145 million in funding, including a $75 million round in June. 

(Image source: praiahealth.com)