Finally, an EHR for the Clinically First, Primary Care Physician

In this episode of Friends of Project Healthcare…

Host Eric Thrailkill is joined by Kyna Fong, CEO and Co-Founder of Elation Health, to discuss her unique journey behind the founding of the innovative clinical-first platform, as well as how electronic health records can be used to improve rather than strain the physician patient relationship. Kyna’s expertise as a health economist and digital health leader has been featured in publications including Forbes and Fast Company and she is the recipient of several awards including Fierce Healthcare’s 2021 Most Influential Minority Executives in Healthcare and The Top 100 Harvard Alumni In Technology Of 2021.

Kyna Fong’s unique background in economics and entrepreneurship has helped shape Elation’s innovative approach to healthcare technology. But it was her father’s own embarrassing paper trail that led her and her brother, Conan, on their mission to build it.

“We looked at our Dad’s practice, which was full of paper,” Fong recalled. “We earnestly were just trying to find some sort of system to put into his practice.” Surprised and disappointed that their search for a solution only resulted in hiring additional staff or seeing fewer patients, Kyna set in motion the plan to develop something new. 

“That’s how we fell into building our first prototype, so to speak, of Elation,” she shared. “Build something that starts first and foremost from patient care.”

That patient care experience, or “clinical-first” approach as Fong refers to it, is a central pillar for how Elation’s technology is being used to provide physicians the freedom and time to focus on their patients, resulting in a more trusting relationship.

“At Elation we talk a lot about the physician patient relationship. We talk about trust,” Fong said. Patients put their health in the hands of healthcare providers and ask for guidance on how to preserve it. This relationship is built on trust, and it is at the heart of great care. “Trust and the personal nature of high quality care and care delivery were the other major takeaways and learnings from being on the front lines of care.”

To meet the demand of patients understanding and engaging with their own health in better ways, Elation is focused on the implementation of electronic health care records (EHRs).

“One of the big areas that we’ve been focusing on and thinking about is how do you surface the right information at the right time?” Fong shared. “And this gets to some of the work we’ve done recently in interoperability and really creating an actionable story that puts the physician and the patient on the same page about what’s happened, and what needs to happen so that the patient becomes part of the team and starts operating off the same set of information to get to shared goals and outcomes.”

Fong explained that while she wants as many clinicians using Elation as possible, they’ve invested heavily in open APIs to assist with the exchange of information, to connect with third party applications and to connect with other EHR. “Because from a practical perspective, that’s how we’re going to all reach our goals together,” Fong said. 

“That’s our job,” she concluded. “To make the technology work and make it not be something clinicians have to focus on, and let them focus on patients.”

This conversation was captured at the 2023 ViVE Conference in Nashville, TN. Stay tuned for more exciting interviews from the event.

About Kyna Fong: Kyna Fong is CEO and co-founder of Elation Health, the largest and most trusted platform for primary care. Featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Fast Company, Kyna’s work is recognized by several including Inc’s Female Founders 200 List, Fierce Healthcare’s Most Influential Minority Executives in Healthcare and The Top 100 Harvard Alumni in Technology.

After graduating Summa Cum Laude at 19 years old and earning her PhD in economics at 23, Kyna became a tenure-track economics professor at Stanford University, focusing on game theory and healthcare.

Kyna started in primary care as a teenager serving full-time as receptionist, billing, and office manager in her father’s medical practice. Today, approximately 30,000 clinicians care for millions of Americans using Elation’s clinical-first and collaborative approach.

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