Startup Spotlight: Robert Herzog of eCaring

Robert Herzog, CEO of newcomer eCaring, demonstrates his new software platform to us at the Aging2.0 offices.

The powerful thing about eCaring is that it’s a simple easy to use tool that is targeted at the professional caregiver. It does two important things. First, generates a new layer of data about what exactly has gone on in the interaction between the caregiver (generally a professional caregiver, but not necessarily) and the patient. This creates a structured data set that has immediate business value (much easier to track the behavior of the patient) and potentially positions eCaring to be in the valuable position of a de facto provider of data standards about an important and as yet unexplored economic area. By generating a ton of data it opens up new options for analysis, either through simple visual tracking of sleep and eating patterns, or using more complex data mining tools. None of this is available using limited verbal and written reports.

And second, it provides the potential for job satisfaction and training opportunities for the caregiver who becomes a computer operative. This is the flip side to the ‘Hawthorne’ effect – users are more likely to be efficient since they are delivering a data stream of what they’re doing. In the way it was presented it did avoid the oppressive ‘Big Brother’ feel of quite a few of the data-intensive enterprise resource tracking tools, but that clearly will be a marketing and operational challenge for the company to overcome; to get the people who are the target users of this technology excited about the opportunity it gives them, rather than resenting its intrusion. Transparency is your friend, if you’ve nothing to hide, right? (That was somewhat ironic).

Robert comes at this from the most credible perspective – somebody with a background in business who faced real challenges when coping with caring with his own relative, and is clearly passionate about the space that is both large and untapped. Apparently business following the launch a few weeks ago has been brisk, so we’ll be checking back with them before long.

Tags: Caregiver, Computing platform, ecaring, new york, robert herzog, United States