Hold Your Health in the Palm of Your Hand with Healthvana

By now, we pretty much all have a smartphone. And thanks to Obamacare, we all have health insurance. So wouldn't it be nice to be able to pull up your health records on your smartphone? Ramin Bastini, co-founder of the app Healthvana, thinks so. He's taking the first steps to connect healthcare organizations across the country to his app, so that people can find a place to be tested or get care, and then access their test results and other health records with the swipe of a screen.

"In the 21st century, healthcare should look like the other things you use on a daily basis rather than the Blue Cross," said Bastani. "That's how you engage patients in their health-in ways they're used to consuming it."

His for-profit, business-to-business company started as Hula, and in the beginning, Bastani's goal was to allow people to access their health records from anywhere. But when he discovered that health providers wouldn't release this information out of concerns over violating the HIPAA Security Rules regarding mobile devices, he switched from a consumer-based model to working directly with organizations like the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to connect patients with the most up-to-date information on HIV/STD testing locations, and to have their test results sent to them electronically.

He confided to EDGE that it was a failed hook-up of his own that spurred him to action. He had just gotten out of a long-term relationship when he met a girl and brought her back to his place. Things headed to the bedroom, but he hesitated, remembering that he'd been tested a week before for HIV/STDs, and hadn't yet gotten the results. The girl smacked him in the face and left. There had to be a better way, he thought.

Bastani started by going around to each clinic and getting tested. By the 50th test, he had a list of the best and worst. His first step was to create a testing locator, to share with users reliable clinic hours and locations, and where they wouldn't face stigma.

"Our locator is the best in the country, I think," said Bastani. "The CDC does a good job of putting together locations, but ours is more like Yelp!, with reviews, pictures, correct hours of operation, what they test for and treat, and time stamps to show when it was last updated."

Over the past three months, Bastani has run a pilot program with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, giving patients the option to get their test results electronically. After being notified via email that their rest results are ready, about 70 percent of patients opted to get those results electronically.

"No more waiting for news over the next three weeks, no more worrying or calling the clinic for results, which takes a lot of resources away from them testing other people," said Bastani. "As a patient, the idea that 'no news is good news' is horrifying when you're waiting for the results of an HIV test or PAP smear. Our goal is to eradicate that."

His work drew the attention of none other than President Barack Obama, who met with him to discuss his project, and the potential for expanding it to health care in general. Obamacare currently pays to transfer clients from paper to electronic records, but requires five percent of the clients to be online. Bastani has gotten more than 70 percent.

In the future, when you walk into an HIV testing place, you'll pull up the Healthvana app on your tablet or phone to register and do a risk assessment. You won't have to share intimate details about your health with intake officers, and when you go in to see the doctor, they will be able to spend more time listening to you, rather than typing your information into a computer.

Once you leave the clinic, Healthvana will send you a link to click and confirm your identity. Then you can access your profile, where your results are ready.

"It's a patient portal, but nothing like anyone's ever seen," said Bastani. "It looks like an everyday social app, speaking a language that people who need to be tested understand. Split-second information is ready for both your healthcare provider and you, the patient."

Don't fear: No HIV-positive results will be shared via phone. Healthvana works with clinics that do rapid-HIV testing, so your results will be ready in no less than 20 minutes. And if you test positive for chlamydia, syphilis or gonorrhea, the app will send you the message, "Don't worry, it's likely cureable. Here's what to do next."

The Healthvana software runs inside of the healthcare site, in a similar manner as Open Table lets you make real-time restaurant reservations. And it allows the clinic to find out which patients have visited their dashboard to find out their test results. If 100 people tested positive for an STD and 90 found their results via the app, the clinic can focus on calling those 10 who haven't opened their results. In the future, the app will even remind you when to come in and get retested.

"It is making a huge impact, with AHF seeing less phone calls from people wondering if they're negative, less paper results, and positives that you wouldn't otherwise find, as some people use Google voice or a blocked number that you can't call back," said Bastani.

And for those who are sexually active, the Healthvana app lets you hold your HIV and STD test results in the palm of your hand. You can show potential partners (or your doctor) your HIV status and even your viral load. And instead of a test result's cryptically jargon of "RPR non-reactive," it would just read "Syphilis: Negative."

The success of their Florida pilot program has paved the way for similar partnerships with health care providers in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago. They approach the tech aspects as if they were in Silicon Valley, but add empathy by spending hundreds of hours with healthcare providers, to build solutions and differentiate themselves.

"Our design sets us apart, because we begin with empathy," said Bastani. "We want transparency and actionable information so that people can get tested. You can even leave reviews so other people know how you fared; for example, people in Dallas have been vicious in their reviews of the county health department. All we care about is you having access to the information you need to help you make better decisions. And we want it to feel just like everything else you use on a daily basis."