Latest news with #TrellisHealth
Forbes
5 days ago
- Health
- Forbes
The Second Coming Of Personal Health Records
Trellis Health Co-Founder and CEO Estelle Giraud Two decades ago, some of the biggest names in tech attempted to transform how individuals manage their health data. Microsoft's HealthVault and Google Health both launched with bold ambitions: to create centralized platforms where patients could control and curate their personal health records (PHRs). Yet, despite vast resources and early hype, both efforts fizzled. The world wasn't ready. But now the dream is back, resurrected by a new wave of startups and, surprisingly, by the very institutions that had arguably stood in its way. From consumer-focused companies like Trellis Health to institutional giants like Epic Systems, people seem to believe again in the promise of personalized, portable health data. And this time, they might be right. What Went Wrong the First Time When Microsoft HealthVault launched in 2007 and Google Health in 2008, the concept of a digital personal health hub was revolutionary. It would unite all of your health data in one place, under your full control. Unfortunately, the infrastructure of healthcare was simply not prepared to support it. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) were barely digitized. Meaningful Use, the government policy that nudged providers into the digital era, had only just begun. Consumer devices like wearables were rare, and systems to connect disparate data sources were nearly nonexistent. Even more critically, these platforms demanded far too much from users. 'They required so much work from the consumer,' explains Estelle Giraud, co-founder and CEO of Trellis Health. 'You had to upload your medical records manually, scan documents, log information constantly. The average healthy person just isn't going to do that.' And so, despite the vision, the user base never followed. Google Health shut down in 2012; HealthVault was sunsetted in 2019. The personal health record was consigned to the graveyard of overambitious tech dreams. Why Today May Be Different So what's changed? First, the digital plumbing of healthcare is finally in place. 'Everything is digitized today,' Giraud says. 'We have global interfaces for wearables, insurance claims, and health systems. Technologically, it's a completely different environment.' The transition from paper to pixels is no longer aspirational. Second, the rise of consumer health consciousness has created a more engaged public. Wearables like the Apple Watch and Oura Ring have made health data personal. We now expect visibility into our steps, sleep, and heart rate. Why not our labs, diagnoses, or prescriptions? Finally, AI offers a bridge between data and action. Where early PHRs were glorified filing cabinets, today's tools can interpret, surface, and contextualize insights. This shift from data collection to decision support makes the work people put into their PHRs worth the effort. Sharpening Focus Trellis Health is an example of this new era. Giraud's company is far more than a digital file cabinet. It's a consumer-focused, AI-native health platform designed specifically for women in the pregnancy and postpartum periods—an intentionally sharp wedge into the broader market. 'Pregnancy is often the first time a healthy woman engages deeply with the healthcare system,' she notes. 'It's a moment of heightened awareness and motivation.' Trellis aggregates up to a decade of a woman's health history from 50,000+ provider sites, re-architecting it around chronology rather than billing codes, then overlays intelligent support. By doing so, it strives to be not just a logbook but a personalized guide through a transformative life experience. A PHR opens a range of related service offerings, as in the case of Trellis Health The use case is timely and targeted. Trellis focuses on postpartum lab testing, for instance, which is often a glaring gap in care. Women with gestational diabetes or hypertension often receive little follow-up, despite significantly higher risks of future heart disease or Type 2 diabetes. By sending at-home test kits before a six-week checkup, Trellis empowers women with data they can take to their doctors. It doesn't provide diagnosis, focusing instead on information and empowerment. This consumer-first model sidesteps the bureaucracy of U.S. healthcare. At $96/year, paid out-of-pocket or via HSA/FSA, it's an impulse buy for a motivated consumer—'almost chemical,' as Giraud puts it. What the Incumbents Are Doing Interestingly, EHR vendors are trying to build what they once broadly de-prioritized. Epic's MyChart, for example, now includes interoperability features that allow patients to access records from various health systems. The 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 has played a role here, forcing providers to open interfaces and enable data portability. Yet these systems remain fragmented. 'Even as a patient, you're with Epic 60% of the time, and with Cerner or others the rest,' says Giraud. 'They still don't get everything that happens in between visits.' Factors like wearables, environment, diet, and social determinants of health fall through the cracks. MyChart is a useful tool, but it still fundamentally lives within the four walls of the health system. Why Health Plans and Providers Haven't Solved This Many wonder: why haven't health insurers or large providers solved this problem? The answer lies partly in healthcare's misaligned incentives. 'Healthcare is a black hole,' Giraud argues. 'If you get too close, you get sucked in. The incentives, contracts, and bureaucracy are just too strong.' Payers struggle with member churn—why invest in long-term health when patients change plans annually? Providers, meanwhile, face tech stacks and billing structures optimized for volume, not value. Still, the tide is shifting. Companies like Flexpa are giving consumers access to insurance claims. A current legal standoff between Epic and Particle Health reflects the growing pressure for openness, as well as continuing concerns about data security and privacy. Lessons for Healthcare Entrepreneurs Building a business in healthcare is not for the faint of heart. Giraud, a former population genetics researcher and Illumina executive, is both optimistic and cautious. 'You can't just be a Silicon Valley entrepreneur in healthcare,' she warns. 'You have to understand the rules of the game, and which ones can be broken.' She urges founders to study history. 'So many companies failed not because their ideas were bad, but because they didn't understand the playing field.' At the same time, insiders often become too entrenched to innovate. The trick is to hold both perspectives: respect for the system and the courage to challenge it. Will It Work This Time? The promise of personal health records has returned. Companies like Trellis Health are betting that a targeted entry point, consumer-grade design, and modern infrastructure can finally realize the long-held dream of patient-centered data. This is not the same game as 20 years ago. The players are different. The tools are better. This time, it just might work.
Business Wire
20-05-2025
- Health
- Business Wire
Introducing Trellis Health: AI-Powered Pregnancy and Postpartum Health Platform Creates Decadent Healthcare Experience For Women
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Trellis Health, a digital health platform designed to empower women with personalized, proactive care, today launches its new platform on iOS. Trellis gives women and families the richest, most comprehensive picture of their health - an unprecedented foundation to build true preventive, proactive care. This platform launches Trellis Health's first steps in its mission to build generational health. 6.75 million people turn to Google with health questions. Meanwhile, ChatGPT fields health-related questions for a person about once every 10 days on average - and for pregnant women, that number spikes to 3 times a day. The burden of family health management only amplifies with caregiving for young children and the system is harder to navigate and access than ever. With many at-home consumer health tools, the lingering question is often 'what now?' or 'what does it mean?' and most digital telehealth solutions are lacking critical, nuanced context on the patients they see. Even amidst a wave of innovation in diagnostics, wearables, AI, and personalized medicine, one thing remains missing: a tool that makes health information usable, connected, actionable, private, and truly personalized, especially for women and families navigating critical life stages. Trellis Health is solving this gap by launching the first family-based, centralized, AI-powered health operating system that marries the human side of care with the richest personal health data for patient decision support and actionable insights where it's needed most. By combining your own health history with context-aware clinical care and tailored support for interactions with the healthcare system, or at home, Trellis makes care feel seamless, and lifetime health feel proactive. Unlike other platforms that treat health data as a commodity, Trellis keeps all data securely within its system and within individual family accounts, creating a private, personal AI-powered product designed to deliver the smartest, safest guidance for you and your family. What was once impossible, is now a table stakes requirement in the healthcare system today to create a system that's not just a little 'better' - but re-imagined: a complete story of your health journey, connected to family history and context, delivered securely on-device. Personalized Baselines and Benchmarks: Users can understand their own personalized, unique baselines based on their actual health history versus a standard range, empowering women to spot meaningful changes early, track whole body postpartum recovery back to their own baseline levels, and have deeply informed conversations with their doctors to create better outcomes through this, and every, stage of life. Collaborative Care Platform: Automated health summaries, personalized proactive questions for doctor's appointments, and effortless two-tap sharing of health snapshots ensure clearer, more effective communication with any provider, even in short 8 minute visits. 18/7 Midwife Support: Members can connect directly with a Certified Nurse Midwife for those 'what if?' or 'is this normal?' moments throughout pregnancy, postpartum and infant care, receiving trusted, compassionate support tailored to their health needs late at night, or between appointments. Whole-Health Postpartum Recovery: Postpartum care is one of the most undersupported areas of women's health and can have profound and compounding affects on lifetime health and longevity. The first 40 days postpartum impacts health and wellbeing for the next 40 years of life. Trellis is redefining the standard of care to add decades of healthy life with the only complete health platform for postpartum recovery, including personalized in-app telehealth support, education, and the first-ever of its kind, comprehensive women's health at-home postpartum lab testing that integrates into current standard of care visit schedules, designed to power a 'Bounce Forward,' not a bounce back. 'At Trellis, we're not just reimagining healthcare for women, we're creating a new standard of how health data and AI technology should be used,' says Dr Estelle Giraud, PhD CEO and Co-Founder of Trellis Health. 'In order to build healthier generations, we must champion the right to access, understand, and act on your health without compromise. Trellis is raising the bar on healthcare —with trust, ethics, and humanity at our core.' Where most pregnancy and postpartum platforms focus on the fetus or the best products or gear, Trellis simplifies managing health across generations. With infant accounts, parents can also seamlessly organize their children's immunization records, pediatric summaries, allergy information, and more. Not only does this lighten the mental load for parents, but it also builds a complete health blueprint that their children can carry for a lifetime, setting the foundation for generational health. Trellis launches its platform with partnerships around key pillars of women's postpartum health and recovery that are often overlooked and underserved in the current system. Beginning with nationwide lactation support through Milkwise, to provide digital, on-demand, lactation consulting and education pre and post birth, and digital, on-demand mental health support with Mavida, a specialized care provider for maternal mental health. Trellis will continue to expand select partnerships around core pillars of health in future. Built to HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA standards, and with privacy-by-design architecture, Trellis utilizes patent-pending, privacy-preserving algorithms, advanced identity verification, and banking-grade encryption to ensure that every member's health data is safeguarded throughout every interaction. Trellis is available on iOS across all 50 states in the U.S. and is just $8 per month (billed annually at $96 per year). This launch comes on the heels of the company's extensive medical advisory board appointments, $1.8M pre-seed funding announcement, and 24 months in private alpha and beta developing health IT software and architecture to address the complexity of this problem space. To learn more or sign up for membership, visit About Trellis Health Trellis Health is pioneering personalized, proactive care for individuals and families, starting with pregnancy and postpartum. Designed by scientists, technologists, and parents in collaboration with leading clinicians, Trellis bridges critical gaps in women's healthcare with intuitive tools that simplify health management over time. Through personalized recommendations, tailored insights, and seamless tracking, Trellis enables women to make informed decisions about their health - without carrying the mental load of connecting the dots.
Geek Wire
20-05-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Seattle startup Trellis Health launches to help women navigate pregnancy and postpartum care
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . (Trellis Health Image) Trellis Health released its iOS app on Tuesday as the Seattle-based health tech startup aims to use AI and personalized data to improve healthcare for women. Founded in 2022, Trellis' software provides recommendations, insights, and tracking based on personal medical records and guidance from doctors and maternity specialists. It is focusing on pregnancy and postpartum care. Trellis CEO and co-founder Estelle Giraud is a scientist and a former senior manager at biotech giant Illumina. She co-founded Trellis with Ryan Nabat, a former engineer at BlueOwl, Spect, and Virta Health. The company is aiming to address what it describes as 'glaring gaps in women's health' and replace late-night Google searches. 'We're building the foundation for generational, proactive consumer health with a private and secure digital health platform that uses AI to translate years of your health context into actionable, intelligent insights paired with innovative care solutions,' Giraud said in a statement last month. The company does not take insurance and charges an annual subscription fee of $96. It is partnering with Milkwise to provide digital lactation consulting, and Mavida for mental health support. Trellis was recently featured in GeekWire's startup radar series and announced a $1.8 million seed round last month. It participated in the Techstars Seattle accelerator in 2023. Investors include Palette Ventures, NEXTBLUE, Suncoast Ventures, Sundial Foundation, and Swizzle Ventures, which has Seattle-area roots. Earlier this month the company added six medical professionals to an advisory board.
