An official website of the United States government
Loneliness and social isolation — risk factors for poor health outcomes in older adults — can increase risk of dementia by 50%, hospitalization by 67%, emergency department visits by 57%, and premature mortality by more than 25%. There are significant barriers to engaging high-risk, high-need older adults and other vulnerable populations, including technological limitations, lack of trust, and safety concerns. Challenges exist in driving meaningful collaboration across health plans, health systems, and community-based organizations. Workforce challenges include engaging others — including those outside of the traditional health care team — in addressing social determinants of health and related care concerns.
The Determined Health platform effectively enables any organization to drive meaningful engagement, combat the loneliness epidemic, better address social determinants of health, and close key gaps in care. This enables a next-generation community care model to create value for their customers by:
- Curating a network of community organizations to operate as care team extenders
- Training a community workforce to build relationships with patients and identify unmet care needs — including those that health reimbursement arrangements and care management miss
- Driving engagement in existing resources to improve health outcomes and maximize return on investment
Determined Health’s value proposition is facilitating meaningful connection, demonstrated to reduce depression, anxiety, and loneliness; increase trust and patient satisfaction; and reduce costs.
Determined Health believes human-to-human relationship-based connections are the key to building trust and engagement with the hardest-to-reach people. Determined Health delivers technology to support and scale these connections in a way that prioritizes safety, privacy, and security. By empowering community organizations and networks rather than supplanting them, the company builds upon existing trust, extends the care workforce, and elevates the impact of available and accessible resources.
Company Milestones
2021
- Technology was incubated within the Motion Picture Television Fund (MPTF) supported by grants from the Eisner Foundation before spinning out into Determined Health
- Began a pilot with a managed Medicaid plan
- First health system client contract
2022
- Awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from NIA
- Began a partnership with Meals on Wheels America
- Joined StartUp Health
- Formal validation studies underway
- Net Promoter Score of 96%; helped health plans retain their members and connect members to needed services that otherwise went unnoticed
2023
- After less than 2 years in business, serving customers in 20 states representing payers, providers, government agencies, and community-based organizations
- Commercial contracts with a national Medicaid plan in two markets
- Recognized, partly as a winner or finalist in sponsored challenges, by organizations including Prime Health, the College of Health Information Management Executives, ScaleHealth, the California Health Care Foundation, and the American Society on Aging
2024 (expected)
- Submitting a Phase II SBIR grant application
- Beginning fundraising
- Publishing results from validation studies
Financial Overview
To date, Determined Health has raised $725,000 from MPTF, $20,000 from StartUp Health, and $816 in non-dilutive funding from NIH. For future funding, Determined Health is seeking a first round in 2024 of $2 million to $4 million to scale and enhance its Connection1st Technology Platform and pilot its Community Connections, Virtual Dementia Care, and Workforce Development products. The company is also seeking a second round of $10 million to $15 million to deploy, spread, and evaluate their products based on learnings from product testing.
Intellectual Property
Determined Health technology offers a fully connected and highly accessible experience tailored to support those most in need. The company provides tools to:
- Enable social call programs and other proven engagement tools to reduce social isolation and loneliness and address unmet needs
- Scale campaigns by facilitating Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant safe and secure ongoing connections and robust engagement networks
- Optimize meaningful engagement with broad accessibility, real-time analytics, and a suite of data collection and communications tools
- Coordinate information allowing organizations to share key insights across ecosystem stakeholders so the right person can take action when needed
Product Development and Regulatory Strategy
Determined Health will continue to build its product with broad stakeholder engagement and human-centered co-design. To build products and services that transform care — especially with regard to the better alignment of health care and social care — the company will depend upon the continued input of its core customers and end users to ensure that Determined Health is solving problems that matter to them, in a way that works for them. With this, Determined Health recognizes the central importance of maintaining security, privacy, safety, and trust as the highest priorities guiding its product development and is committed to providing seamless compliance with relevant regulatory frameworks for their customers.
Commercialization Strategy
Determined Health will continue to support organic growth in health systems, community-based organizations, and governmental platform subscriptions while leveraging existing customer success and expanding partnerships to drive growth in health plans and risk bearing provider full-service contracts priced on a per-member-per-month basis.
Company Details
Determined Health
Los Angeles, California
Industry: Digital Health
Management Team:
- CEO and Founder: Scott A. Kaiser, M.D.
- President & Co-founder: Katherine Steinberg , M.P.P., M.B.A.
- Chief Technology Officer & Co-founder: Charles Johnson II
Point of Contact:
Scott A. Kaiser, M.D.
info@determinedhealth.com
800-800-0211