The company also announced partnerships with Brightside and Ruth Health.
The current maternal care model is broken, with arbitrary touch points at predefined intervals along the pregnancy and postpartum timeline, leaving significant health data gaps that don’t allow for data-driven precision care. In addition, many needed services during pregnancy also fall outside of a traditional doctor-driven model, even though they have proven benefits for improved patient outcomes, such as pelvic floor physical therapy, nutrition counseling, lactation support, birthing support, and mental health support.
“Patients suffer from access barriers, with mothers driving two to five hours to access an OB, while clinicians suffer diminishing revenues with increasing pressures to achieve improved outcomes, but lack the tools to effect meaningful improvements,” said Dr. Santosh Pandipati, Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of eLovu Health, a B2B digital wellness maternal health data platform which announced partnerships with Caduceus, Brightside, and Ruth Health on Wednesday.
“The result is worsening maternal and pregnancy outcomes with significant inequities between populations, as well as burnt out clinicians and severe clinical shortages.”
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The way eLovu solves for this is by providing is a continuously connected wellness platform that integrates patient care outside the four walls of clinics and hospitals to where patients live and work. The company partners with clinicians and delivery systems to augment patient touch in between visits with the OB; it calls this new care paradigm “Continuously Connected Wellness.”
“We accomplish our goals through our first-in-world digital marketplace for moms. As needs are identified patients are intelligently matched and navigated to relevant service and technology providers in the marketplace to accelerate care delivery on behalf of OBs,” said Pandipati.
For example, a mom who has a confirmed pregnancy will be enrolled by the clinician practice into the e-Lōvu platform and matched with a community and culturally competent navigator who will help to guide her during her pregnancy journey. The e-Lōvu platform then curates recommendations for services and technologies available in its Mom’s Marketplace. The platform also generates a personalized pregnancy report that dynamically updates on a weekly basis.
Additionally, e-Lōvu matches the mom to home based exercise designed for pregnant mothers and lactation services to help her feel confident about her ability to encourage her baby to nurse while helping her stave off the development of gestational diabetes. The mother is comforted daily as she can hear her baby’s heart rate with her fetal heart rate monitor and interact with her navigator as often as desired.
All of these services are coordinated on behalf of the clinician, who receives a weekly insight report, integrated into the clinician’s EMR, that informs the physician of the mother’s health status and vital signs, as well as findings and insights from e-Lōvu’s marketplace providers as to her nutrition, mental health, and overall wellness.
“Because the clinician can use the e-Lōvu platform to monitor mom from afar, half of in-office visits can now be done remotely. We’re a continuously connected life line for OBs and mothers located in maternal care deserts,” said Pandipati.
So far, 180 mothers have touched the platform, with 100 joining monthly, and e-Lōvu has shown a 43% reduction in below license calls to the office, as 50% of patient visits can now be done via telehealth versus in office. It also has 10x more data over the traditional care model, with anticipation of 1000x more data.
Of course, maternal care is a hot space, with a number of companies raising funding, including Maven and Kindbody. What separates e-Lōvu is that it is “the only digital wellness platform that integrates directly with the OB or midwife using a marketplace model that enables unprecedented access to services and technologies,” according to Pandipati.
“We see firms trying to hire and fire doulas, lactation consultants, psychotherapists and other services providers within one brick and mortar or digital footprint- these models are difficult to scale and are competitive with organizations that specialize in a particular services offering,” he said.
“We believe that a marketplace brings together the best of the femtech world, such as Nest, Rosy, Brightside, LunaJoy, Ruth Health, eDoula, while enabling e-Lōvu to focus on helping clinicians serve those who matter most- mom.”
The new strategic three year partnership with Caduceus Medical Group, the only physician owned and managed multi-specialty medical group in Orange County, California, that e-Lōvu announced means that the solution will be integrated into physician workflows, and clinicians will be given a weekly Precision Pregnancy Insight Report on each mother, where any out of the ordinary readings are immediately communicated to the clinician based upon an agreed upon care plan.
“Caduceus is a physician-led independent multi-specialty medical group that is a leader in innovative healthcare with a strong patient experience focus. CMG’s Chief Medical Officer is also the American College of Ob/Gyn Telehealth Chair, and is a national thought leader in technology applications for women’s health. CMG is a thought leader in value based care and innovator,” said Pandipati.
The company also announced partnerships with Brightside Health, a telemental health platform that delivers mental health care for mild-to-severe clinical depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders, and Ruth Health, which provides accessible virtual maternity care nationwide.
Through the partnership with Brightside, eLovu members can be referred to Brightside Health for critical mental health care. Considering that maternal suicide is a leading cause of death for pregnant women, this is especially important for those with more severe mental health needs. Ruth Health, meanwhile, will offer its Ask A Doula SMS service to the entire clinical population, extending the many evidence-based benefits of unlimited access to doulas via the eLovu platform.
“All of our marketplace partners have agreed to meaningful bidirectional data share with e-Lōvu. This allows for cross-pollination of meaningful insights across our partnerships. For example, a Brightsides therapist will now have access to mom’s most recent interactions with her lactation consultant to help the therapist solve for mom’s anxiety around latching and milk production, which is also related to sexual wellness,” said Pandipati.
Ultimately, e-Lōvu’s mission is to address maternal mortality and physician burnout, and its model is positioned to enhance revenue for physicians and stop costly spend associated with preventable disease and preterm delivery.
“The CDC shares that 80% of US maternal morbidity and mortality is preventable. All the while, 1 in 5 OBs share they intend to leave the profession with over half suffering burnout. The US maternal care model must be reinvented. We at e-Lōvu believe we’ve redesigned this care model through our Continuously Connected Wellness paradigm operationalized through the e-Lōvu platform,” Pandipati said.
“We have redefined the standard prenatal care model. We empower expectant mothers with unparalleled access to wellness and ancillary clinical services through our first in world mom’s marketplace- think of a digital wellness blanket wrapped tightly across mom throughout her pregnancy journey.”
