FeelBetter, a startup that launched six years ago, is expanding its AI-based medication management platform into long-term care through a partnership with Americare.
Founded in 2018 by a team of clinicians, clinical pharmacists and technologists, FeelBetter was developed to address the challenges of medication management for patients taking multiple drugs, or what's referred to as polypharmacy.
The startup is working with health systems like Atlantic Health System and Mass General Brigham and is now expanding into senior care with Americare, one of the largest long-term care and skilled nursing providers in the country. It operates more than 120 senior living communities in Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois and Mississippi, offering skilled nursing, assisted living, memory care and rehabilitation services.
The provider inked a commercial agreement with FeelBetter following a successful pilot of its technology. Americare now plans to expand its adoption of the FeelBetter platform across more of its facilities, integrating the technology into daily clinical workflows to enable real-time monitoring and decision support.
Patients in skilled nursing facilities and long-term care are mostly seniors that are often take multiple medications for multiple chronic conditions, opening up opportunities for proactive medication management, helping clinical teams identify risks early and act fast to protect residents, said Liat Primor, FeelBetter’s co-founder and CEO.
Americare will use FeelBetter's technology to help pinpoint residents at risk of adverse events due to complex medication regimens.
As part of the expansion, FeelBetter integrated with PointClickCare, a cloud-based healthcare platform for long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) providers and will be available to its customers via the PointClickCare Marketplace.
FeelBetter developed what it calls pharmaco-clinical intelligence that uses a machine-learning-driven approach to addressing medication risks in senior patients living with multiple comorbidities. Its platform identifies patients who are at high risk of near-term hospitalization related to polypharmacy issues, recommends immediate interventions, such as changes to medication regimens, to reduce risks and monitors progress at the individual and population health levels.
The company plans to present the results of the initial Americare pilot at the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists (ASCP) Annual Meeting. Conducted across eight Americare facilities and involving 370 residents, the pilot showed that FeelBetter’s AI-powered platform can be used to accurately flag individuals for heightened medication-related risks, enabling more proactive, data-informed care decisions, executives said.
“Polypharmacy is a complex challenge in senior care, and we’re committed to finding innovative ways to address it,” said James Dunham, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Americare. “The pilot results are promising, showing how AI-driven insights can help our teams proactively flag at-risk patients and take early action to prevent potential adverse events. Through this partnership with FeelBetter, our goal is to bring a new level of responsiveness and precision to medication management, with the potential to significantly improve outcomes and quality of life for our residents.”
Expanding into the long-term care and skilled nursing space with Americare marks a significant milestone for FeelBetter, Primor said.
“We’re committed to empowering clinical teams with the tools they need to proactively identify risks and respond quickly, particularly in environments where medication regimens can be complex. This partnership with Americare is an exciting opportunity to foster a proactive care culture that prioritizes the well-being of vulnerable populations," she said.
An industrial engineer by training, Primor spent 13 years in executive positions at Teva Pharmaceutical and observed the complexities that patients face with medication management.
Polypharmacy is a growing public health concern among older adults because the risk of adverse effects or even life-threatening symptoms increases as the number of medications multiples. Polypharmacy accounts for almost 30% of all hospital admissions and is the fifth leading cause of U.S. deaths, studies show. And, about a third of emergency hospital admissions among people 75 years or older might be in part due to medication-related problems.
"For me, it was a quest, how can we actually solve this on scale," Primor said.
She also experienced challenges with the healthcare system firsthand when she had to be on multiple medications during her pregnancy. She observed that physicians often don't have all the medical information about a patient in front of them and doctors also have limited time to review all the information for complex patients. Primor wanted to create solutions to ensure better patient outcomes and improved medication management and she teamed up with co-founder Yoram Hordan to start FeelBetter.
Coming from the pharmaceutical and high-tech sectors, Primor and Hordan noticed a significant gap in the use of automation, big data and artificial intelligence in healthcare compared to other industries. FeelBetter is designed to bridge this gap combining the clinical and pharmacology expertise of a clinical team with the advanced algorithms and AI developed by its technology team. FeelBetter uses advanced technology and AI to increase clinical pharmacist capacity while focusing their attention on patients with the greatest need. And the technology improves clinical decisions and patient outcomes at scale, according to the company.
Peer-reviewed research conducted at Brigham and Women's Hospital and published in The American Journal of Managed Care demonstrated that FeelBetter's platform can be used to accurately assess and manage medication risks in senior patients living with multiple comorbidities.
The AI-powered technology identified polypharmacy patients who are at risk of deterioration and preventable, near-term hospitalizations and improved resource allocation and prioritization for the most at-risk patients, the study showed.
The retrospective cohort study, which was focused on 108,817 patients, showed that FeelBetter's platform delivered correct medication warnings in 89.2% of cases, and that in 97.3% of cases, the warnings presented would be helpful to clinicians making decisions to optimize medication therapy. FeelBetter also effectively predicts hospitalizations 10x better than current methods used to risk stratify patients likely to be hospitalized within 30-90 days.
The platform also can reduce costs, generating $2,500 in potential savings per high-risk patient.
While medication management is a patient safety issue, particularly with potential drug-drug interactions or adverse events, effective management of patients' medication regime also provides a better patient experience and better treatment, Primor said.
"Patients need to be treated effectively. If patients are not able to control their conditions that leads to hospitalizations. And, while patients may be treated effectively, the long-term impacts for that medication for that specific patient may impact, for example, renal function or other things that would harm them for the long run," she said. "When we're talking about medication management, I think that the language needs to move from adherence and drug-rug interaction to what are the medications that really benefit the patients and optimize for them to their life."
The company raised $5.9 million in funding in 2023. The round was led by Firstime Ventures and Shoni Health Ventures with Random Forest VC, The Group Ventures, and existing FeelBetter investor Triventures also participating.