Particle Health’s API makes COVID-19 screenings faster and smarter, and now it’s free to use
By opening up access to EMR data, this health startup is empowering telemedicine providers to spot COVID-19 risk factors in a scaleable way.
At my last routine health check-up, I sat awkwardly on the papered exam table while my doctor pecked away at a list of compulsory questions. Do you smoke? Have you ever had a major surgery? Family history of heart disease? As she went down the list, my eyes narrowed. I informed her that I had filled out a form with these precise questions the evening prior on the hospital’s online portal. I described the exact questionnaire, to which she responded, “Oh, THAT form. Yeah that doesn’t make its way into our system.”
That visit took place a few weeks before COVID-19 began shutting down cities in the United States and Europe. At the time, this lack of health record visibility — even within the same health system — was a problem. But now, everything has changed. We live in a post-pandemic reality and the ability to quickly screen a patient’s past medical history has taken on new importance. In some cases it can even mean the difference between life and death.
It goes something like this. As quarantines tighten, people are turning to telemedicine services in record numbers to see if they can avoid an unnecessary trip to the hospital, leaving resources and beds open for the most vulnerable. But in the typical remote visit, a virtual doctor is limited to the knowledge that the patient can verbally recall. They use valuable time to rehash a medical history, and then rely on patient-reported data to diagnose and treat. If they miss something in the patient’s medical history, they could miss an important risk factor for COVID-19.
Troy Bannister built Particle Health to solve this very problem, and a hundred more like it. Now he joins a cadre of health entrepreneurs who are fighting the COVID-19 pandemic by making their products available for free.
With his team in New York, Bannister built an API that only requires patient demographics (like name and DoB) to instantly pull a patient’s medical records into formats that can be used quickly and securely by third parties. The company currently has access to records for more than 250 million lives, including records on Epic, Cerner, Intersystems and athenahealth. The company is often compared to Plaid, the startup that made it possible for apps like Venmo and Robinhood to quickly and securely access personal financial data. Like Plaid before it, Particle Health did the laborious integrations necessary to securely pull data and deliver it in the most useful format possible.
“There’s a lot of value in having a patient’s medical history right in front of you,” says Bannister. “The people who are most susceptible to COVID-19 are typically older, have other disease states like diabetes, lung disease, heart disease and cancer. If we’re able to screen for these people faster and easier, especially when numbers go up, it should help telemedicine groups and care management groups triage the high-risk folks from the low risk, giving them the care they need faster and in a scalable way.”
One of the first companies to take Bannister up on his offer was Boston-based SimplyVital Health, helmed by Kat Kuzmeskas, MPH. SimplyVital Health is a care coordination platform that comes alongside healthcare providers and empowers them to practice — and bill for — remote care.
“If we can make screening for high risk individuals with COVID-19 faster more accurate and more efficient, it could mean a lot of lives saved.”
–Troy Bannister, CEO of Particle Health
Many of the patients on the SimplyVital platform are at high risk for COVID-19, says Kuzmeskas, yet up until now, getting a comprehensive set of medical records on a patient took 6–8 weeks, and hours of redundant HIPAA training. After a one-day integration with Particle Health, doctors on the SimplyVital Health platform can now dial in a patient’s name and date of birth and in a matter of minutes, access the vast majority of the patient’s past medical history.
“Better access to data means the healthcare workers can provide better care,” says Kuzmeskas. “Any digital health company that wants to access patient records would benefit from Particle Health’s API.”
For Bannister, who worked in EMS before entering the health startup world, offering up his product for free — when contracts can run into the millions of dollars — was an easy decision.
“If the numbers about how many people are going to be screened for COVID-19 are true, there has to be a better way than 1-to-1 verbal questioning,” he says. “Using data to access complete patient records and ascertain risk and make this a more efficient process seemed like the best way to do that. The most impact Particle Health can have is to make data-informed decisions scalable. If we can make screening for high risk individuals with COVID-19 faster, more accurate and more efficient, it could mean a lot of lives saved.”
While Bannister is focusing his efforts on using Particle Health to make health screenings smarter and more efficient, he’s also quick to note the broader implications of an API that can instantly access the records of 250 million lives.
“Any digital health company that wants to access patient records would benefit from Particle Health’s API.” –Kat Kuzmeskas, MPH, CEO of SimplyVital Health
“I would love to give this API to the CDC and say ‘go for it,’” says Bannister, “but the EMRs won’t allow it.” Electronic health record companies like Epic currently don’t allow Particle Health to pull records for non-treatment purposes, which as of today, includes the tracking of COVID-19 cases for public health reasons.
Thanks to a new federal ruling announced on March 9, data blocking like this will soon come to an end, not only enabling epidemiologists to track outbreaks, but allowing people to use consumer apps to retrieve their medical information directly from their doctors. The new law re-opened the issue of patient privacy, with the AMA issuing stern warnings about the potential abuses of open health data. But while that debate rages on, Bannister and his team will keep pushing to put comprehensive — and HIPAA authorized — health data back in the hands of patients and their doctors.
More on Troy Bannister and Particle Health
Message Troy via email at particlehealth@startuphealth.com. View his company’s profile here.
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