Healthtech company Akira has announced the launch of Union Health, a tech-enabled, in-person clinic in Toronto. Akira’s healthcare app and cross-Canada primary care providers can now be used as a part of the primary care experience.
“We see tremendous opportunity to build on Canadians’ access to timely and personalized healthcare.”
Through Union Health, patients can use the Akira app to book appointments, message the clinic, view medical results, and access mental health and nutritional support. Akira’s app users can currently use secure text and video chats directly on a mobile phone or computer to resolve more than 50 percent of issues that would usually take them to a doctor’s office. The company said Union Health can now address the other half of those concerns.
“We are excited to bring virtual and face-to-face care together at Union Health in a way that will benefit patients and our health system as a whole,” said John Mozas, CEO and co-founder of Akira. “We see tremendous opportunity to build on Canadians’ access to timely and personalized healthcare.”
Akira, which launched in 2015, said technology has been vastly underutilized at the patient level. The company’s objective is eventually to use the app to help patients determine if they actually need an in-person visit, and to provide specialist consultations using its platform.
In October 2016, Akira launched Akira for Families, allowing parents to video chat and text medical experts, as well as track their family’s health records. In 2017, Akira was acquired by Right Health, launched in 2016 with the mission of combining face-to-face and virtual healthcare.
Akira, which will be managing Union Health’s operations, aims to ensure stability in care and proactive communication to patients by digitally integrating patient medical records using Telus Health’s electronic medical record platform.
The company said this launch is an effort to enhance Canada’s healthcare system, by providing a tool for physicians to improve patient care. Users of the Akira app can still access care 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in French and English, and can now also directly connect to Union Health using the same platform.
Image courtesy Akira via Facebook.