We are very excited to announce our continued growth and expansion in the USA with a host of new wins and transformational partnerships.
We are now partnered with Nor-Lea Hospital District in New Mexico, marking our first contract with a rural healthcare provider. We’re also deployed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system and teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. If that wasn’t enough, we’re also partnered with Texas Medical Center Innovation, Scale Health, and MassChallenge, to bring more accessibility to patients and relief to healthcare workers in America.
This is a huge step for us, helping us to achieve our mission of reducing health inequality and improving patient safety all around the world. America, we’re ready for you!
Factors contributing to communication barriers in healthcare
Research shows that language barriers can cause a variety of challenges in a healthcare setting, including poor health outcomes, mistrust between patients and providers, and lower patient satisfaction. CardMedic provides a new, innovative, and instantly-accessible solution to address any language barrier – whether caused by a visual, hearing, or cognitive impairment, a difference in language spoken, or miscommunication caused by Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
The CardMedic app, which is accessible for healthcare staff and patients via a smartphone, tablet, or desktop, uses digital flashcards to replicate conversations on a wide range of healthcare topics, including symptom description, end-of-life care, and emergency situations – all written by clinical experts. Healthcare staff can choose from over 40 language options, including sign language. The content can be utilized through a variety of modalities including video, EasyRead (with pictures), read-aloud, or the integrated speech-to-text translation tool.
“The response to our solution has been incredible and we couldn’t be more excited to expand further across the U.S. to help patients with their overall care experience and healthcare staff do their jobs better,” said Dr. Rachael Grimaldi, our CEO and Co-Founder. “As a clinician myself, I have seen first-hand the impact that language barriers can have in healthcare. We founded CardMedic to address these massive health inequities faced by so many patients around the world.”
Solving communication barriers with CardMedic
Rachael came up with the idea for CardMedic while on maternity leave after reading an article about someone who could not understand their clinician through PPE, leaving them terrified and unsure about the procedure that was about to take place. Communication barriers in healthcare have always existed and were exacerbated by the pandemic – and she knew that something needed to be done immediately.
Validating our momentum in the U.S. are five new relationships…
- Nor-Lea Hospital District, a critical access hospital in Lovington, New Mexico, is the first rural healthcare organization to deploy our solution. The health system, which has a 24/7 level four trauma center, is using the app across its 25-inpatient-bed hospital site. Through the use of CardMedic, Nor-Lea hopes to aid communication with emergency and post-surgical patients speaking a diverse range of languages.
- Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system and teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, has deployed the CardMedic solution to help its patients and hospital staff.
- The Texas Medical Center Innovation (TMCi) HealthTech Accelerator Program, which is shaping the future of healthcare by uniting promising innovators with the best minds in science and medicine, has named CardMedic as one of its newest startups to its accelerator program.
- ScaleHealth, a health innovation ecosystem that accelerates the impact of health innovation on a global scale, is partnering with CardMedic to support our growth.
- MassChallenge, an organization dedicated to supporting innovation and entrepreneurship through collaboration and development, has invited us to the HealthTech Accelerator, which supports high-impact digital health startups by forming partnerships with industry-leading partners. Last year, MassChallenge named CardMedic a Platinum winner of the U.S. Early Stage Accelerator in 2021 from a pool of over 3,000 applicants.
How CardMedic is improving access to care in the US
“Our mission is to give everyone an exceptional experience and to enhance lives, and a big part of that is communication,” said Jordan Benard, Director of Business Development and Community Relations at Nor-Lea Hospital District. “We serve a bilingual and Spanish-speaking population, and CardMedic will support us during those urgent or immediate communication moments with patients where translators and interpreters are unavailable. Our aim is for our employees to use CardMedic to improve that patient’s experience, reduce their anxiety and maximize the confidence they feel about the care they receive.”
Reducing health inequality is at the heart of what we do, so we’re thrilled by the progress we’ve been able to make in the UK and now the US. If you’d like to learn more about what we’re doing and how you can reduce health inequality at your organisation, get in touch.
