Meet cliexa, Turning Patient-Reported Data Into Actionable Insights

At cliexa, Founder/CEO Mehmet Kazgan is unleashing the power of patient-reported data to improve care and streamline clinical workflows.

The Challenge

Around the world, healthcare is undergoing a historic shift towards electronic records and integrated digital systems. While this has helped reduce errors and speeds up care in some cases, it’s also created new problems of fragmentation and administrative burden. Physicians spend hundreds of hours per year reporting quality measures to Medicare and Medicaid and over $39 billion on regulatory compliance, not to mention that 86% of mistakes in healthcare are administrative in nature. As much as healthcare information systems seek to put the patient first, they often create cumbersome roadblocks and siloes that force doctors and nurses to spend more time looking at screens than at the patient in front of them.

The digitization of health encounters isn’t the problem; it’s how we use and connect that data that can either improve or degrade the overall doctor-patient relationship. Mehmet Kazgan, CEO and founder of cliexa, uses the example of a patient who arrives at their doctor’s office. During intake at the front desk, they’re asked to fill out a form about how they’re feeling on a tablet. Later, upon entering the exam room and greeting the doctor, the patient is asked once again, “how are you feeling?” The information was captured during intake, yet it did not become actionable intelligence for the provider, which leads to wasted time, money, and lost opportunities for deeper understanding. For Kazgan, this is just one of the myriad of problems created by fragmented and poorly designed electronic health data systems.

Origin Story

When Mehmet Kazgan immigrated to the United States from Turkey in 2001, his passion for programming and mathematics led him to the world of artificial intelligence. His ability to speak seven languages and code in everything from Python to C++ set him up to work with an A-list of clients including Adobe, Google, Microsoft, eBay, Paypal, Mckesson, and Roche.

Having built unique and enviable tech skills across a range of industries, from oil and gas to streaming video, in 2015, Kazgan turned his passion for analyzing and interpreting data to the challenge of healthcare, becoming the VP of Technology at Aetna. While in that role, Kazgan had a chance meeting with two doctors who wanted a solution to the problem of rising treatment costs for patients. In their seed of a problem, Kazgan saw a novel application for his skillset. He recognized not only the vast amount of patient-reported data that was available but also the lack of organization and utilization of that information. From that point forward, Kazgan reframed the quality-of-care problem into a data problem. His thesis was that as long as we know the metrics to collect and how to quantify them, there is great value in leveraging the power of AI to transform data into actionable insights in health.

Under the Hood

cliexa, which stands for Clinical Excellence Algorithms, was designed to improve system interoperability by connecting three key stakeholders in healthcare: patients, payors, and providers. To do so, they’ve built three primary modalities: digital screening for clinics, EMR integration in real-time, and remote monitoring away from the clinic by utilizing artificial intelligence (AI).

Put one way, cliexa converts patient wellbeing into quantitative data.

“No matter what you do with healthcare, at the end of the day, regardless of technology, AI, or hardware, there’s one thing I’m going to end up asking you,” says Kazgan. “How are you feeling?” The answer to that seemingly simple question — for example, “I’m OK” — means something in the clinical world. cliexa converts that “I’m OK” response and converts it into a clinical assessment that makes the doctor-patient encounter more efficient and successful.

“No matter what you do with healthcare, at the end of the day, regardless of technology, AI, or hardware, there’s one thing I’m going to end up asking you: How are you feeling?” –Mehmet Kazgan, CEO & Founder of cliexa

cliexa’s digital screening tool for clinics allows for seamless recording of medical history, custom screeners, clinical assessments, and payor claims data. The EMR integration records discrete assessment data, coding and billing outputs, customized risk reports, and clinician alerts. The monitoring aspect of cliexa features a symptom and medication tracker, connected device data, and customized alerts.

Combining the analysis of data and training AI to use, store, and predict information provided by the patients saves time for healthcare providers and increases the efficacy of the triangular relationship between patients, payors, and providers.

Why We’re Proud to Invest

Healthcare is in the middle of a big data revolution. Still, to move electronic health information from administrative burden to a true value-add for patients, providers, and payors, it’s going to take founders with a deep understanding of artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as healthcare experience. Kazgan and his team are uniquely situated to take this challenge on and see it through to completion. They have the skills necessary to bring wisdom to their data analysis, and with early pilot partners like Kaiser, they’re already building the network required to scale.

cliexa has shown promising results and achieved several milestones since its launch in 2018. Their growth has increased over eight times since debut, with 10,000 unique patient data points per month and 10% increased revenue for customers. Their PROSPECT Predictive Risk Model has shown an astonishing 97% accuracy in risk prediction using learned data from 1,200 patient-reported and calculated risk data points.

We’re also backing Kazgan and his team because they’re tackling the Access to Care health moonshot in a novel way. Screener tools, EMR integrations, and at-home monitoring are truly only the tip of the iceberg as we see how the smarter application of big data can improve every aspect of health.

Message Mehmet Kazgan via email at cliexa@startuphealth.com.

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