Renton, Washington-based Providence launched a new startup to modernize patients' digital experience with the traditional healthcare system.
The new company, called Praia Health, is a new platform-as-a-service technology built by and for health systems. It marks the fourth incubated technology from Providence Digital Innovation Group.
Adopting the proven digital flywheel concept for engaging and reengaging consumers algorithmically, Praia Health removes barriers to patient care by personalizing individuals' health journeys and seamlessly connecting them to the right services, products and resources, Providence executives said.
Startup veteran Justin Dearborn was tapped to serve as Praia Health's executive-in-residence. The organization is currently working with a set of health systems, ecosystem partners and system integrators for Praia Health.
The Praia Health Identity and Engagement Platform launched within Providence in January 2022. It currently supports more than 3 million user accounts, delivering over $20 million in measurable value back to the organization in the 2022 calendar year alone, the health system claims.
"Praia Health comes with its own 'customer zero' so we can directly project the value of the platform to our future health system customers," Dearborn said in a statement. "It's a rare opportunity to lead an organization that has such a measurable track record of success. I'm excited to support the transformation of health systems through the power of digital."
Praia Health's solution is anchored by patent-pending identity technology designed to seamlessly connect fragmented data sources and point solutions. This enables new types of omnichannel experiences that reflect a consumer's entire health ecosystem—beyond just their clinical record, executives said.
The company's platform was developed to streamline the delivery of personalized mobile and web experiences and provides integrations with other tech companies, even those outside of healthcare.
"Health systems are at an inflection point. The trusted connection between the health system and health consumers is at its most vulnerable in an increasingly competitive, distributed, and decentralized environment," said Sara Vaezy, chief strategy and digital officer at Providence, in a statement. "Technology is at the center of both the problem and the solution. Health systems must take a page from the book of other consumer-facing industries to enable a digital flywheel that fuels operational transformation and business model expansion. Digital transformation is now a health system imperative. That's why we built Praia Health."
Providence Digital Innovation Group is an innovation team within the 51-hospital health system tasked with building digital health tools. Other startups incubated within the group are Xealth, a solution that enables care teams to order digital health content, apps and services, which became its own company in 2017; Circle, a women's health application that was acquired by Wildflower Health in 2018; and DexCare, a health tech startup that uses data intelligence to handle the logistics of digital care delivery.
DexCare spun out as a separate company in 2021.