For many people, the journey to receiving health care can be long and drawn-out task. First, you have to determine a method of transportation, then you have to make sure you have everything you need such as medications, health card and identification, then there’s the actual travel itself, signing in at the front desk, and then waiting for your appointment. It’s enough to make you tired before even seeing your care provider.

Hospital visits and re-admissions can be time-consuming and arduous, especially for chronically ill patients who require frequent care. Toronto-based AlayaCare, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) start-up that develops cloud-based home healthcare software, aims to provide a solution.

Through the AdvancingHealth program, AlayaCare, in collaboration with Southlake Regional Health Centre and CBI Health Group, uses its technology platform to enable patients to monitor vital signs and remotely complete a clinician-designed daily self-monitoring workflow. This helps patients with one or more chronic conditions to better manage their own care at home and reduce hospital visits and costs.

“Our technology provides a highly user-friendly interface for patients and clinicians, incorporates video conferencing, and uses machine learning algorithms to provide risk scoring for patients on the basis of demographic, diagnostic, and biometric data,” says Adrian Schauer, CEO of AlayaCare. “This allows clinicians to intervene on a timely basis to reduce preventable hospital visits.”

The project has already started garnering positive results for everyone involved. In addition to the 30 jobs being created as a result of the project, with a potential 120 more anticipated to be created in the next two years, the solution has been beneficial to patients and care providers alike.

“Through this project, we were able to demonstrate the effectiveness of our technology in reducing hospital utilization for chronically ill patients, substantiated by academic papers,” Schauer says. “This has helped us acquire more customers for our software.”

As of 2018, AlayaCare has received $14 million in follow-on investment from venture capital firms like iNovia and Fonds InnovExport. Early this year, the company announced its latest financing round of $11.5 million, as well as the acquisition of Canesto Systems Inc., a leading contact and resource management software provider for home and community care organizations.

Return on Innovation

• Created /retained 60 jobs
• 20 new Canadian customers
• Incremental sales in Canada: $1,000,000
• Incremental international sales: $1,500,000
• $14,000,000 in follow-on investment