PN Medical, an industry leader in pulmonary and speech rehabilitation technology, has chosen Orbita to advance its goals of improving lives and reducing health care costs among patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, hypertension and dysphagia. To learn more about that, we decided to interview Nathan Treloar, President and COO of Orbita.

Can you tell us more about Orbita, and what services it provides?

Orbita provides a software-as-a-service platform for creating and managing digital home healthcare applications. Orbita customers leverage this platform to power mobile, tablet, Web, and voice-powered applications that improve 1) engagement and education, 2) monitoring and intervention, and 3) care coordination for individuals with chronic and post-acute care needs at home.

Why did PN Medical, the industry leader in pulmonary and speech rehabilitation technology, choose Orbita?

PN Medical found Orbita to be the only technology company that could meet all their functional, technical, and business requirements for a white-labeled digital remote care and monitoring solution. In particular, PN Medical needed a ready-to-go application framework for rapid implementation, flexible and non-proprietary device connectivity, data-driven decision support tools, and a rich collaboration and messaging framework – all provided in a modern, scalable, robust, and secure (HIPAA-compliant) cloud-platform and supported by an experienced, professional team.

How can Orbita help in transforming healthcare at home?

Orbita is at the forefront of a revolution in home healthcare. This revolution is defined by an intersection of both economic and demographic forces driving more people to be cared for at home, and technology that can improve quality of care while also reducing risk and lowering costs. But there will never be one Uber home healthcare solution (pun intended). At Orbita, we recognize that the protocols of home care vary widely across patients, conditions, episodes, providers, regions, and even payment plans. A patient at home recovering from a hip replacement has very different needs than a Type I diabetic struggling with eye disease. We are completely focused on enabling practical home health applications that meet the needs of all the stakeholders in home healthcare. We accomplish this through a connected health platform.  This platform makes it much easier for our customers and partners to access the benefits of digital technology to streamline and automate both care delivery and communication, while doing so in a way that can be tuned to the varying needs of patients, their family members and their care providers.

Where do you see the industry of cloud-based platforms used for creating and managing digital home healthcare applications in the coming 5-years?

Generically, cloud-based home healthcare solutions are easier to deploy, faster to implement, less expensive, and more flexible and extensible. These benefits will continue to be realized and will expand to power more home healthcare applications. There will also be benefits reaped from the large healthcare datasets that cloud-based solutions can capture to improve medical diagnoses and decision making. In five years, we will see cloud-based solutions with always-on digital healthcare agents that automate how healthcare is delivered to patients at home, especially when they are most in need of specific types of care and support. Think, Siri for home healthcare, but highly personalized according to patient-specific wellness data and care protocols remotely monitored and managed by trained clinicians and informed by real-time patient data and powerful clinical decision support tools.

What recommendations would you like to give to those willing to enter this industry?

Entrepreneurs should fall more in love with the problems than with their solutions. As innovative as a solution might be, it is critical that it addresses a real and substantive problem that exists now or in the very near future — or you won’t find someone willing to pay for it. This is especially true in healthcare.