CarePredict’s wearable will help you care for your elderly loved ones, even at a distance

The Plantation-based healthtech company has begun working with Medicare Advantage insurers to help keep their patients healthy and out of hospitals. 

By Riley Kaminer

Taking care of aging relatives can leave you feeling frustrated and out of the loop. That’s how Satish Movva felt caring for his then-octogenarian parents. When he would call them every day, they would say that everything was fine. But once he visited in person, he would be met with a different story. 

“I would end up having to take them to the hospital or to a specialist,” Movva told Refresh Miami. “This unpredictability was wreaking havoc on my life.”

Movva, a technologist and serial entrepreneur, began to look for a solution. “I was looking for additional data to try and figure out what’s going on with them without me showing up there and being blindsided.”

The underlying premise: prediction. For centuries, humans lived with their elderly relatives and could sense when something was wrong – and deal with it before it became an urgent issue. Nowadays, most people are like Movva, living in a separate household from their elders.

Satish Movva, Founder and CEO of CarePredict

Movva began to devise a solution in the form of a wearable through his company CarePredict, which he founded in 2013. Strapped to a patient’s dominant arm, it tracks all the senior’s actions. Think of it as a FitBit on steroids – and tailored to the needs of seniors, their family members, and their medical team. It can track things like how sedentary the user is, how much they’re socializing (or not), and even granular data such as how many times they lifted their fork from their plate to their mouth.

“All of the same things you would observe if you’re living with mom 24/7,” said Movva. No cameras or other intrusive systems required.

Diving into the data

The CarePredict journey just starts with this hardware. Where it really gets interesting – and impactful – is at the software level.

Every day, CarePredict’s device collects thousands of data points on each user. Leveraging deep learning algorithms, CarePredict has connected the dots between specific activities and health outcomes. For instance, the startup can predict a urinary tract infection three or four days in advance, based on bathroom frequency and duration.

“Aging is a black box,” noted Movva. “People have no idea how a person is truly aging, except when a nurse comes by. In the intervening period, nobody knows.”

According to a research report that studied 500 seniors over two years, the data collected through CarePredict’s wearable devices was able to reduce hospitalizations by 39% and reduce falls by 69%. Two thirds of the time, these insights enabled seniors to remain in the same care setting without escalation.

About 8,000 people are currently under observation from CarePredict – a figure that Movva expects to grow to 15,000 by the end of the year. Up to now, CarePredict has not monetized this data externally, keeping it internally for its deep learning algorithm. But in the long term, this anonymized data could be invaluable for researchers, providing insights on the habits of healthy seniors.

CarePredict integrates with the other devices that patients might already have on hand, such as weight scales and blood pressure meters. Their system provides healthcare professionals with the most important insights from all this data, saving them time from having to go through it all manually. And it also has a series of audio features, such as two-way calling and the playing of recorded reminders to take medications.

Medicare Advantage partnerships 

While consumers can purchase a CarePredict device and monthly subscription through their website, the lion’s share of the company’s business is B2B and B2B2C.

CarePredict has begun working with Medicare Advantage insurers to help keep their patients healthy and out of hospitals. 

“Medicare Advantage plans are very interested in what we’re doing,” said Movva. He explained that many patients end up in the emergency room with issues that could have been prevented. That costs the insurers significantly more than the preventative measures might have.

“With our data, [the insurers] are getting holistic information about this person,” said Movva. “Are they eating like they normally should, or are they suddenly becoming more sedentary? If that’s the case, they can have a behavioral therapist call them at home and try to get them to be more active.”

Looking toward the future, with South Florida in focus

“I think we’re on the cusp of something huge,” said Movva. Not only are people living longer than previously, but perceptions on how to take care of our elderly have also swung towards prediction and prevention. In Movva’s estimation, no other competitors in the market capture the data that CarePredict does – nor do they have the AI-powered tools to make sense of it all.

“We are extremely bullish on the company and where we’re going, especially as healthcare providers and Medicare Advantage plans begin to look for all the data we provide,” he said.

Eight of the Plantation-based company’s 20 full-time employees are based in South Florida. For Movva, who has lived in the region since the 90s, CarePredict stands to benefit from the growth of our regional tech ecosystem. 

“South Florida’s focus on innovation since the pandemic has proven that you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley in order to succeed,” he said, highlighting investors’ arrival to our region as a particular bright spot for our ecosystem.

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Riley Kaminer