Before William Tatham turned his business skills to healthcare, he had already grown a successful financial customer relationship management (CRM) software company, Janna Systems, which he sold to Siebel Systems in 2000. Later, as he watched a family member navigate the healthcare system during a difficult battle with cancer, Tatham decided to try to apply some of the CRM principles he was familiar with to the healthcare setting. “I recognized the need for the kind of informatics support in healthcare that we had in financial services,” he says. Thus, NexJ Systems Inc.was born.

William Tatham

Although publicly traded NexJ (TSX: NXJ) also has financial and insurance solutions, its healthcare division focuses on connected wellness and personal health coaching. “We are bringing to healthcare the tools we created to make financial advisors more efficient and able to provide more personalized advice,” Tatham explains. “We are developing people-centered health solutions that encourage sustained behavior change in order to lower costs and improve patient outcomes.”

An example of its healthcare focus is its Transitional Care Management tool, which supports patients during transitions in care, such as post-discharge. Developed through a partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, it provides communications from providers to patients about the patient’s condition and treatment, a roadmap to health, what to do in case of adverse events, and notes for their next visit. If questions arise, patients can chat with their provider on the platform. “This type of longitudinal care can reduce unnecessary readmissions as well as extend the brand of healthcare providers,” Tatham says.

Three recent partnerships demonstrate the potential reach of NexJ’s cloud-based software:

• NexJ is working with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, to digitize the Passport to TRUST program. Available through NexJ’s Connected Wellness Platform as an online medical dashboard, the goal of the program is to create two-way communications between patients and physicians to empower the patient and their advocate to make informed decisions and implement a care plan that can be readily accessed and acted upon by patients and all of their providers.
• It reached an agreement with HIE vendor Orion Health that will enable Orion to use NexJ’s platform to deliver a more integrated patient-centric care model for hospitals, regional healthcare providers, community care centers as well as the more than 35 million patients whose information is currently on Orion Health’s networks.
•  NexJ’s cloud-based Connected Wellness Platform is at the center of Ontario’s Connected Health and Wellness Project. The goal is to make it possible for patients to keep health information from different hospitals or clinics in one place, and lets them decide who they trust to see that information. The system will offer tools to help people better manage their own health and wellness and more easily connect with health and wellness professionals.