CedarBridge Group LLC
Connecting Patients and Hospitals Digitally

When Carol Robinson, CEO of CedarBridge Group, asserts that her company has a keen advantage over other pure-play healthcare technology vendors, she makes a strong point. With rich consulting experience on their side, the leadership at CedarBridge brings to the table the industry knowledge that drives the health IT purchasing decisions of government, health systems and hospitals, health plans, and health information exchanges across the U.S. Possessing extensive first-hand insight into major gaps in the connected healthcare environment, CedarBridge is bringing its rich expertise to bear with its software development initiatives.

Some examples of projects where the CedarBridge team brings both strategy and on-the-ground tactical support to clients include a multi-year project with Intel Corporation— where CedarBridge helped the tech giant implement care coordination workflows within their value-based employee healthcare offering in four regions—and their contracts with state and local health agencies across the country where CedarBridge facilitates multi-stakeholder groups to create community or statewide roadmaps to lower healthcare costs while improving population health outcomes. From these engagements, CedarBridge Group has developed a deep appreciation of the challenges healthcare providers face in engaging patients in their own healthcare. Carol explains that frequently, the core issue comes down to the workflows within delivery systems or clinics, because software used by clinicians has largely been developed to solve for administrative functions, rather than to improve care coordination or increase positive interactions with patients. With the goal of streamlining patient engagement in a way that seamlessly integrates with healthcare organizations’ current workflows, CedarBridge has built PatientBridge™—a mobile health solution that puts patients in the driver’s seat, allowing them to centrally control the sharing and access of their health data with providers, researchers, or through a health information exchange.

We believe in the power of patients to break down business and cultural barriers limiting the availability and accessibility of critical health information. They just need better tools to become more engaged

PatientBridge has the power to drive patient engagement while enhancing cross-organizational care coordination.

The PatientBridge mobile app facilitates bi-directional communication between patients, providers, and researchers and potentially anyone else on a patient’s care team. It has the power to streamline cross-organizational care coordination, support patient-reported outcome measures, and create mutual value for patients, their providers, research organizations, and clinical registries, by putting patients in control of their health data. Furthermore, PatientBridge enables existing healthcare IT solutions to enhance their value propositions through direct patient interfacing. For example, PatientBridge can help an oncologist manage multiple types of patient consents and conduct additional screenings for patients who are eligible and interested in participating in clinical trials. Moreover, PatientBridge can be integrated with scheduling systems and other patient education apps.

Carol goes on to talk about an early iteration that was the genesis for what is now called PatientBridge, CareApprove™, which was a Phase III finalist in the federal government-sponsored Move Health Data Forward Challenge. CareApprove was a proof of concept that enabled the sharing of specially protected healthcare information (per federal regulations 42 CFR Part 2) between a client’s behavioral health provider and her primary care provider. Carol and the CedarBridge team have leveraged their learning from this pilot to continue development of a robust patient engagement and consent management solution that provides mutual value to patients, providers, and researchers.