Elemeno Health is a personal assistant for hospital staff

Elemeno Health started building something akin to a personal assistant for hospital staff while in Y Combinator last summer.

It helps hospitals gather best practices, checklists and videos doctors and nurses need to reference in a snap, all in one place. Often these materials are locked in binders and papers that staff must find and then make copies of if they want to share with colleagues. That can make it hard to send across teams who are trying for consistent best practices. It also sows the seeds for burnout or mistakes if reference materials aren’t readily available and properly adhered to.

The startup wasn’t ready then to go public with this project while in Y Combinator but now has launched its app and is working with teams at UCSF to get them to have fun in finding and implementing reference materials.

Elemeno Health makes that information easily available at the point of care and adds gamification to promote engagement and learning.

Founders Arup Roy Burman and Ed Nanale started the company after Arup’s many years handling teams as UCSF’s intensive care unit director. Burman noticed staff sharing binders and asking for copies of certain papers but thought there was a better way to share the information. Nanale, who comes from 20 years in the gaming industry and helped build Sim City, had an idea to make referencing materials more fun to access.

Staff use Elemeno’s app (which does not use patient data and therefore does not need to meet HIPAA-compliance) to read messages to the team, find reference material and congratulate co-workers for meeting compliance standards.

It’s not exactly as exciting as Pokemon Go, but the app does seem to have some merit. It helped UCSF cut central line infections in half, saving over $1.1 million for the hospital, according to Burman.

Burman and Nanale are working on expanding use of the app to other hospitals and think it could possibly create some healthy competition between staff in the future.