Carrum Health Wins HBS & HMS Health Acceleration Challenge

Photo:Evgenia Eliseeva

BOSTON—Carrum Health, a San Francisco-based company offering a comprehensive bundled payment solution for employers, has been named the winner of the 2017 Health Acceleration Challenge by the Forum on Health Care Innovation, a collaboration between Harvard Business School (HBS) and Harvard Medical School (HMS.) The accolade came with $50,000 in prize money.

“We are humbled and honored to receive this recognition from Harvard given the participation from so many leading players in the digital health space,” commented Sach Jain, founder and CEO of Carrum Health. “The evaluation process was the most rigorous that we have participated in. Recognition like this validates the impact and scalability of the Carrum solution, which is systematically shifting the health care payment model to bundled payments. We thank the HBS-HMS committee for this prestigious acknowledgement.”

The Health Acceleration Challenge is a “scale up” competition that focuses on compelling, already-implemented health care solutions and helps them to grow and increase their impact through powerful networking and funding opportunities. Since 2014, the Health Acceleration Challenge has received over 600 applications from 29 countries. Carrum Health’s solution connects self-insured employers to top-quality regional healthcare providers through bundled payment arrangements. Their goal is to radically improve the health care experience and outcomes of patients, while reducing cost burden for both employers and their employees.

“Carrum Health’s innovation addresses a critical problem in health care,” said Robert S. Huckman, the Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “We expect that Carrum Health’s approach to broadening and simplifying access to bundled payments will play a key role in managing costs and improving quality in health care.”

After a year-long selection process, a team of 24 judges comprising of clinicians, health care professionals, and academics specializing in health care and innovation, reviewed the applications and rated them based on the three Challenge criteria of impact, evidence, and dissemination, and narrowed the field down to four finalists. In addition to Carrum Health, other finalists were:

ADDICAID: An addiction wellness platform for patients, payers, and providers was founded by Sam Frons. Addicaid’s AI-driven ecosystem streamlines the needs of people looking to help themselves or looking to help others with a personalized recovery app paired with engagement solutions for any professional looking to enhance the delivery of care.

OCHSNER HEALTH SYSTEM: A technology-enabled and precision-based model of care to proactively manage hypertension was developed under the leadership of Dr. Richard Milani. Ochsner’s Hypertension Digital Medicine program engages both patients and providers as collaborators in gaining hypertension control, yielding superior clinical outcomes and greater patient satisfaction.

RADIAL ANALYTICS: An evidence-driven decision support platform to help hospitals and insurers reduce post-acute costs for shared-risk patients while improving outcomes. The Smart Placement™ solution developed by the company, which was co-founded by Thaddeus Fulford-Jones and Eric Weiss, is deployed for Medicare Accountable Care Organizations, Medicare Bundles, and Medicare Advantage patient populations.

Finalists shared in a $150,000 prize endowed by Howard E. Cox, Jr. (MBA 1969), now an advisory partner in the venture capital firm Greylock Partners and a member of both the HBS Health Care Initiative Advisory Board and the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows. In addition, each finalist had a case study written about them. Events were hosted in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York where more than 400 HBS and HMS alumni attended and participated in case sessions to share expertise and provide guidance to the finalists.

“We were extremely impressed with the caliber of the applicants we received,” said Huckman. “The innovations being developed by these applicants are evidence of the strong desire within the health care industry to improve quality, reduce costs, and, increase value in care delivery.”