How Kyruus is Using Big Data to Solve Supply and Demand Mismatches in Healthcare

Kyruus co-founders Julie Yoo and Graham Gardner met in graduate school while pursuing different areas of study. Yoo has a background in big data and software engineering, while Gardner was a cardiologist who practiced in the Boston area before going into venture capital. As a healthcare provider, Gardner had first-hand experience watching patients be sent to the wrong specialist for their needs and then having to be referred again, only to wait weeks to be seen by the right doctor. As Yoo describes it, “Not only does that lead to a bad patient experience and provider experience, but it obviously has a clinical impact, potentially worsening the patient’s condition and not allowing them to get the care that they needed.” Together, Yoo and Gardner set out to solve the problem by creating a provider search, scheduling, and data management solution for health systems.

Founded in 2010, Kyruus works to solve the “patient access paradox,” which is the notion that patients are often told there are long wait times for open appointments with providers, when in reality many health systems are operating well below their available capacities. Plus, as Yoo and Gardner discovered, physicians often make referrals based on familiarity; they refer patients to other physicians with whom they’ve worked or trained, or to physicians who occupy the same office spaces as they do. The health care industry needed a system to accurately and efficiently match patients with the correct providers for their needs. With Kyruus, health systems are able to leverage data to reduce barriers to access.

As Yoo points out, when it comes to the scheduling runaround, “there’s also the financial impact on the health system in the form of lost revenue opportunities.” She explains, “You’re spending tens of millions of dollars implementing these platforms that will allow you to capture data about patients and book appointments. But how are you acquiring new business, and how are you making sure that you’re retaining that business once you have those customers?” This angle, combined with Kyruus’s focus on increasing patient access to providers, got the attention of clients. Today, over four hundred hospitals and 30 large health systems are using Kyruus, representing about 120,000 providers.

So what’s next for Kyruus? Yoo sees a lot of opportunity for both consumers and health systems. Plenty of companies are doing new things with patient data and clinical cases using EHR data, but Kyruus is especially focused on the operational aspects of scheduling. Across scheduling platforms including Epic, Cerner, Athena, and GE, Yoo explains, “there are almost too many standards, and the adoption and implementation of those standards is highly heterogeneous and, ironically, not standard.” When health systems’ schedules are standardized, consumers benefit from increased openings in online scheduling, more self-service capabilities, and a consistent experience no matter the starting point.

Learn more about Kyruus by checking out its blog or watching the below video: