By Riley Kaminer
Yes, it’s 2022. And yes, there are still some industries where pen and paper are the default.
We’re scratching our heads as well. But one team of enterprising Cuban-born Miamians are working to innovate in the healthcare space, where much remains to be digitized.
Meet CedrusMed, a startup founded by Eikel Inda and Manuel Cassola, that has developed an electronic health record SaaS platform for mental health providers. Since officially launching in August 2020, the company has onboarded more than 4,300 mental health specialists working upwards of 160 agencies.
“When we started doing research, talking to mental health centers and agencies, we realized that everything related to the industry was being done on paper,” Inda told Refresh Miami. That gave Inda the validation he needed to start building the solution that would eventually blossom into CedrusMed.
Inda and Cassola bring bootstrapping to another level. To get CedrusMed off the ground, Inda put in 18-hour days programming the original MVP, which ended up with over a million lines of code. He soon partnered with Cassola, a seasoned entrepreneur, to help commercialize the software. This approach has been fruitful: Inda reports that the platform has been profitable since its first month of operations.
“Our platform receives millions of transactions each month,” Inda said. This comes in the form of documents such as intake forms, progress notes, and billing-related paperwork.
Mental health agencies are the main client for CedrusMed, but the end users are the mental health practitioners themselves. CedrusMed’s platform helps digitize a variety of these workers’ tasks, from targeted case management (e.g., help finding affordable housing) to individual therapy and psychological evaluations.
Inda explained that one of CedrusMed’s main innovations is what they call their ‘standard documentation package.’ “Unstandardized documentation is one of the biggest challenges facing the mental health industry,” Inda explained, referring to the documentation landscape as the “wild west.”
CedrusMed’s standardization solution saves practitioners time by creating a set of template documents that they can start using immediately. That stands in stark contrast to other platforms, where users might spend months getting their baseline documentation set up.
“There is no extra cost, and you don’t have to invest any extra time,” asserted Inda. “The documentation is provided, so you don’t have to think about it – you can just start using our platform.”
Looking forward, the CedrusMed team hopes to launch their platform across all 50 states. It is currently available in Florida, with imminent plans to expand to the eastern seaboard.
The startup also hopes to further develop their platform and continue to amass fans in the mental health space. “We want to continue our mission of simplifying the life of every single specialist through our extremely user-friendly, easy-to-use software,” said Cassola.
Based on current profitability, Cassola believes that CedrusMed has the potential to bring in hundreds of millions in annual revenue – all while having a positive social impact. “We want to continue changing the lives of our specialists, agency owners, and their clients.”
READ MORE ON REFRESH MIAMI:
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- Brave Health is expanding access to behavioral health services, with a focus on Medicaid patients
- Education saved these Cuban founders’ lives. Now they’re building an EdTech startup to give back
