A doctor wanted to build the Careful app after his mother nearly died from a simple communication failure in a UK hospital.

Amanda Pedersen

June 30, 2022

2 Min Read
Careful app for healthcare systems to track patient transfers etc.
Image courtesy of Careful

Digital healthcare startup Careful launched its platform designed to improve the safety of patient transfers from one clinician or team to another (also known as handovers) and to speed-up patient flow in hospitals by making discharges quicker.

According to Careful, most hospitals use a combination of inefficient, informal communication systems for handovers including paper, sticky notes, and WhatsApp messages.

The Careful platform was developed to enable visibility, accountability, and collaboration as patients move through different care settings and interact with different caregivers. The platform provides hospitals, clinicians, and multidisciplinary teams with a constantly updated, holistic view of every patient’s plan of care to ensure their safe and frictionless movement throughout their health journey, the company noted.

DJ Hamblin-Brown, MD, founder and CEO at Careful, said the app is simple to use, easy to implement, and helps hospitals communicate internally as well as with patients and their families. He said he was motivated to build Careful after his mother nearly died from a simple communication failure in a UK hospital.

"Handover is a time consuming and dangerous process, especially in critical care," said Johann Grunlingh, MD, an NHS emergency medicine consultant and intensive care specialist in London. He and his team at Newham Hospital helped to test the new app during development. "Careful fills a huge gap where electronic patient record systems perform poorly. Careful provides an action-focus that would benefit every care team in the NHS."

The Careful platform works on mobile, tablet, or desktop presenting critical information for each patient, along with task lists assigned to individuals, clarifying who needs to do what, and when. As staff change shift, and patients move through the hospital, tasks and status information move with them – even out into the community or home. As a result, patients and staff know at all times what is happening, and who is responsible.

Careful users can send, receive, and share responsibility for patient care during peer-to-peer handover, internal referrals, patient discharges, and transfers between organizations. Patient information is added, reviewed, and updated at every transition of care. Caregivers contribute to the story as the patient moves between community care, hospital, teams and home or back into community care. Patients are invited to access and contribute to their own record.

The company noted that the platform uses privacy-by-design principles and is regulatorily-compliant in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. The cloud-based application is fully encrypted and protected, Careful said. It is also fully interoperable using industry standard messaging – so that it can integrate with healthcare systems globally.

About the Author(s)

Amanda Pedersen

Amanda Pedersen is a veteran journalist and award-winning columnist with a passion for helping medical device professionals connect the dots between the medtech news of the day and the bigger picture. She has been covering the medtech industry since 2006.

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