Through the recent acquisition, Unite Us will build its technology to coordinate patient care between healthcare providers and social services. It recently acquired Carrot Health for an undisclosed price, which has a large amount of consumer and health data.
Dan Brillman, CEO and co-founder of Unite Us, said the deal will help Unite Us improve outcomes through proactive engagement with patients.
He told MedCity News: “If we know that someone may have food insecurity or housing insecurity, we can actively participate and contact them so that they can learn about the system they need earlier.”
Past insights are also important. For example, in order to help people with diabetes, it is important to know whether they are food insecure or do not have primary care doctors in recent months, he said.
Carrot Health was founded in 2014 by Kurt Waltenbaugh, who was previously the senior director of product strategy at Optum. The company uses its vast amounts of data to make predictive models of health behaviors and health outcomes, even though the methods behind them are proprietary.
Carrot employees will join the combined company, and its products will become part of Unite Us’s Insights department. But Breerman said that the acquisition will affect other parts of the company.
“This will have an impact on all aspects of our business,” he said.
As the pandemic continues, Breerman said he is paying attention to policies regarding housing insecurity, unemployment and welfare. He said that more and more community organizations and healthcare providers are seeking to use his company’s technology to connect people with services.
“This is a big driver of (people’s) health,” he said. “When the medical system is overloaded again in another wave, everyone is trying to avoid pushing up the cost of medical care or increasing the utilization of the medical care system.”
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