On Trend | Primary Record

Imagine a world where health information can be securely shared and empower families, caregivers, providers and individuals with easily accessible, secure and accurate health data. With our latest investment at Primary Record - that world is no longer in your imagination it is available today!

Primary Record is a mobile application that helps families organize, discuss, and easily share their health information with those who matter. It is a safe and secure way to connect the dots between your health information stored in multiple places. Primary Record is a necessity for individuals or caregivers of those living with complex medical conditions. It is also a valuable tool for families who want to be prepared for any medical event, planned or unplanned.

Some of the key features of Primary Record:

Collect and store health information from multiple sources: Primary Record can connect to your electronic health records (EHRs), pharmacies, and other healthcare providers to collect and store your health information in one place.
Organize and share your health information: Primary Record makes it easy to organize your health information by condition, date, or provider. You can also share your health information with your family, caregivers, and healthcare providers.
Get access to personalized insights: Primary Record can provide you with personalized insights into your health, such as trends in your medication use or risk factors for certain diseases.
Primary Record is a free app that is available for iOS and Android devices. You can learn more about Primary Record and sign up for an account here.

Founded by a Registered Nurse who has spent the last decade in the caregiving space and another dedicated prior to that in the ICU, along with an ER doctor, and the Senior Product Manager of Data Products that took ExactTarget through to their $2.4B exit to Salesforce - the founding team is a powerhouse of industry expertise and executors.

Often times when we evaluate new investments a common question we ask is “Why now”?

In the case of Primary Record (including the incredible backgrounds of the founding team) that answer is largely due to several colliding factors.

Today more than one in five Americans are caregivers defined as having provided care to an adult at some point in the past 12 months or to a child with special needs. According to the AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, in 2020 there were nearly 48 million unpaid caregivers in the United States, which swelled further during the pandemic.
Even though there has been a rise in EHRs (aka Electronic Health Records). More times than not healthcare users never know where their data is. In addition to gluing different and inefficient systems together, data does not follow you around. If you have a child, just gathering their records for school or sports is a challenge especially if you move, have more than one child, or you change doctors. Patients are constantly going back to previous physicians to gather data. This is true even in the largest and most complex healthcare systems I was personally a part of in the Army. We hand carried the “old school” physical version of Primary Record - we affectionately called the “I love me” binder which was carried (in my case to 10 different locations around the globe) on us so our medical records would be accessible

The rapid increase of our aging population and thereby our necessary caregiver population.

In 2020, 1 in 6 people are 65 or over
16.8 of the US population is over 65
41% of adults 60 and older are obese (2015)

All this said you might be thinking oh the boomer aging trend will pass but in fact, while the pace of individuals 65+ will slow down the accumulation of those individuals will dramatically increase.

I personally am at the tip of the spear here and openly one of the early adopters and early lifetime customers of Primary Record because of my aging parents all rapidly approaching their 80’s. As I’m writing this post I got a call that my father has a wrinkle in his retina (what even does that mean?!?!) Primary Record helps not only consolidate those records but also help me understand how and where to support adherence to medication protocols, physical therapy for my mom who broke her collar bone and what levels of activities I can help support (or encourage not to happen).

I am not the only one in this environment as noted above but it is further evidenced by the National Institute on Aging whose studies and data show that 95% of the older population will have one chronic condition, while 80% will have two. This leads to dramatic increases in doctor visits. According to the CDC, 83.4% of adults visited a healthcare professional in the last year. In addition, as human live longer, the costs of care become even more significant. The NCOA estimates the cost of Alzheimer’s treatment and lost wages is $49k per year with diabetes costing $20k. In the US, the population 55+ makes up 30% of the US population but account for 56% of the total health spending.

However, the US is facing an existential crisis. The US is aging but there is a dramatic staffing shortage in nurses, home healthcare, etc. The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) expects by 2032 there will be a 132k physician shortage. By 2025, health systems will be short 29k nurses. As the shortage increases, the cost of care increases with an increase in pay or the use of temporary nurses which can be 3x more than a permanent staff member.

The aging population does not want to be in a nursing home; they want to age in place. This has dramatic benefits for the elderly and can reduce the strain on hospital emergency rooms or long-term care. However, there is a 400k-person shortage of home healthcare workers.

Timing is right not only because of the personal pain point caregivers and aging families are feeling but the US Government has also stepped in knowing all of the above trends and concerns as our populace ages so much so that they passed the 21st Century Cures Act which broadly stated changes how medical data is shared and then also enable a “stick” of a $1M penalty for blocking information sharing from healthcare providers.

Sign up for Primary Record today and help reduce your own stress around making sure your family members are well taken care of in today’s fast-moving healthcare records and transparent information access rights! Find out more here!