Inside CareMessage: The Emerging Technologies Team
CareMessage’s Emerging Technologies Team explores the latest discoveries and advances in technology that have the potential to enhance our platform in order to ensure that we are offering the most innovative solutions to our users’ health needs. The Team, comprised of a Senior Product Manager, a User Interface Designer, and a Software Engineer, is committed to providing the highest quality service and products to our partners and patients in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.
Why Emerging Technology?
Our partners provide healthcare to underserved communities that struggle with a vast array of health issues and, as a result, patient needs are frequently changing. The Team researches how emerging technologies, like gaming, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence, can add value to the CareMessage experience and enable providers to best support their patients.
The Emerging Technologies Team was created with the support of the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation. We remain truly grateful to the Foundation for their generosity and commitment to this important work.
How Does the Process Work?
Each quarter, the Emerging Technologies Team engages in multiple two-week long “sprints.” Sprints are highly focused sessions where new technological opportunities are examined in a low risk, high reward environment before the Team decides whether or not to commit funds and pursue the project. In the past, the Team has performed sprints on many areas, including leveraging artificial intelligence, the potential of expanding into oral health services, and exploring the needs of the elderly population.
By performing comprehensive reviews of each new opportunity, the Team can move forward confidently with select tested ideas, and in some cases, discard rejected ventures, helping to ensure that CareMessage is utilizing funds in the most efficient way possible.
In addition to evaluating new technologies, the Emerging Technologies Team is also responsible for developing prototypes that can further demonstrate an idea’s effectiveness. The Emerging Technologies team works with the other CareMessage product lines to bring the better prototypes into development, ultimately creating a product that can reach the underserved populations that we seek to support.
CareMessage Mobile
We are very excited to share that a recently successful sprint is resulting in the creation of CareMessage’s first mobile application, released this fall. CareMessage Mobile is a smartphone application that enables providers to text patients from their phones, receive notifications when they have incoming messages, and allows them to customize a Do Not Disturb mode.
We believe that the combined offerings of our traditional CareMessage platform along with CareMessage Mobile will continue to promote increased communication between providers and patients, making it even easier for users to communicate one-on-one, anytime and anywhere. CareMessage Mobile is a prime example of the Emerging Technologies Team’s ultimate goal: innovation in order to streamline and improve services for our partners and their patients.
Looking to the Future
Over the next two years, CareMessage aims to expand our reach to engage 3 million patients across the country. We understand that, as our patient population continues to grow, their health-related needs will continue to change. By harnessing new and developing technologies, the Emerging Technologies Team will continue to innovate and improve upon the CareMessage experience, enabling us to reach our significant goals. Indeed, the Emerging Technologies Team plays an incredibly important role in the development of our organization, and we remain truly grateful to all of our partners who have helped to support this valuable resource. Thanks to our philanthropic partners, we can continue to to help the country’s most vulnerable populations lead healthier lives.