In my house, we have doctors, pharmacists and even therapists, but the person who makes sure everyone does what they need to do is me. And I have better tools for my daughter’s travel volleyball than I do to manage health for myself and my family. We have to do better – and we can.
PHILADELPHIA, Penn. (PRWEB)
February 07, 2023
Kith + Kin, a female-led healthtech startup that derives its name from an old-fashioned term for friends and family, is founded on the premise that healthcare needs to stop being done to people and start being done with people if we ever want to break the cycle in which people feel like second class citizens in their health and the health of those they care for and about. The company’s first-of-its-kind web-responsive app puts you completely in control of your health information, from how you organize it to how you share it.
Kith + Kin exists because tools for managing your own health miss the mark. Most of these tools are built to help those in the healthcare system, largely ignoring the fact that so much of health happens outside of any clinical or health setting. People are tracking symptoms, notes, questions, reactions, reminders – and they’re doing it in texts, emails, pictures, notes on their phone, and so many other fragmented and insecure ways. This makes it nearly impossible for them to be able to self-advocate or advocate for those within their circle of care.
Kith + Kin is a truly flexible solution – not focused on one condition or demographic – because people care about people and not just conditions. The app includes features that mirror the way people manage information in real life – things like making notes, taking pictures, storing documents, contacts and other information that helps them tell their side of the story. It’s a consumer-first solution that’s not tied to any one insurer, employer or provider; instead, the app goes with you and grows with you.
Additionally, the app is designed to help you “share the load” of caregiving, offering flexibility to share some information with some people and other information with other people, the way you do in real life. All of these features serve to empower consumers in their own healthcare and to help them be more effective advocates for those they care for and about. While others are building a better patient portal, Kith + Kin is building Slack-meets-Dropbox for health.
Kith + Kin is headed up by Jill Michal, a healthtech entrepreneur whose background is the rare combination of both health finance and insurance companies and in organizations deeply connected to the human at the center of the journey. During her 14 years at United Way, Jill was immersed in communities with limited access to resources and who struggled to find ways to raise their hand and raise their voice.Through that lens, she views the world of health as extending well beyond the traditional definition of healthcare. She is fueled by the belief that empowering people and their support circles is key to changing health outcomes for the better.
“I was at a healthcare conference in 2019 and spent days listening to presentations on dozens of new solutions to help people better manage their health, each of which was lamenting the inability to get people to do what they need to do to manage their conditions or even their overall wellness,” said Kith + Kin CEO and co-founder Jill Michal. “One morning, there was a keynote where the speaker put up a slide saying that ‘women control roughly 80% of all healthcare spend and utilization in the US’ and I thought – in my house, we have doctors, pharmacists and even therapists, but the person who makes sure everyone does what they need to do is me. And I have better tools for my daughter’s travel volleyball than I do to manage health for myself and my family. We have to do better – and we can.”
Kith + Kin, helps you manage what matters, so you can spend more time on the care part of healthcare.
Kith + Kin is a first-of-its-kind collaborative health app that allows people to simply and securely author, store, organize and flexibly share the right information with the right people at the right time, and finally manage health the way they manage life. Kith + Kin organizes information at your fingertips and empowers individuals to be more effective consumers of health and more impactful advocates for those they care for and about. More about Kith + Kin.
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