Hawkeye MedTech: Fine-tuning the patient-doctor connection

By Karen-Janine Cohen

Hawkeye MedTech‘s TotalCare is not the largest player in the telehealth field. Yet, as its name implies, the company provides an interactive portal connecting doctors and patients, with aspects that make it stand out.

Hawkeye, which recently settled into the Boca Raton-based Research Park at Florida Atlantic University, has two interconnected TotalCare apps for patients and doctors. In one, the patient can find a provider, request a virtual visit, enter symptoms or complaints, add medical history and upload blood pressure, blood glucose levels and other data.

Meanwhile, a phone alert lets the doctor know about the appointment. On their app he or she can see the uploaded data presented in a meaningful way. After a review, the physician will determine if a telehealth visit is appropriate, and if so, take the appointment.

While its function may seem similar to other telehealth programs, Ashok Kapur, CEO and founder of the firm said there are aspects of TotalCare that give doctors more useful data, and provide patients with consequential options. One of the most important, he said, is that patients are allowed to include another person on the platform. “They can add a family member or a caregiver on the call for seniors and kids,” he said. “That is very important.”

The system has always been compliant with federal privacy regulations, which are part of HIPPA – the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Interestingly, some HIPPA regulations were relaxed during Covid so that home-bound people could reach health care professionals during lockdowns, or when in-person visits could be dangerous. Of even more note: insurance companies began paying for telehealth visits, which has continued. The pandemic was the catalyst for many companies to jump into telehealth. “When Covid happened, everyone scrambled to put something together,” Kapur said.

Statistics tell the tale. According to a June story in TechReport, telemedicine encounters grew from a fraction of a percent pre-Covid to nearly a quarter of all encounters early on in the pandemic, and the trend continues.

Still, telehealth was an opportunity Kapur saw early on. Kapur holds bachelor’s degrees in math and in computer science and a master’s in computer science, all from the University of Maryland. Kapur immigrated to the United States from New Delhi in 1982 and worked for 22 years in the corporate world, but a desire for more family time lead him to start his own medical equipment and supply company, Hawkeye Medical, which sells a wide variety of products. It was there that he began learning more about telehealth.

“People would come to my store, saying ‘my knee is hurting,’ and I’d say ‘go to the doctor.'” But he was shocked to find that access to primary care or specialists was limited – this in the center of a middle-class Maryland neighborhood. He began researching the chronic diseases many of his customers struggled with. “I started learning about rural America where the doctor is not available at all,” he said. And he didn’t have to look far from his supply company’s Lanham Md., headquarters. “That is what happens one hour south of DC.,” he said. “That is when I started thinking I have the technical knowledge to come up with a solution. So I designed and created that platform.”

He’s been working on versions of TotalCare since 2013. By 2017 he had launched the company and it went live in 2019. It now has six employees.

The program has some patient-friendly features that he believes make his product stand out. For example, the patient has an option to enter days and weeks’ worth of data, such as blood pressure or glucose level. The program puts that data into a graph form, visible to both doctors and patients. 

TotalCare also encourages continuity of care, by easily allowing patients to stay with the same provider. On the doctor’s end, federal rule changes means that providers can now bill for chronic diseases tracked by remote monitoring – giving them an incentive to join telehealth initiatives.

Meanwhile, Kapur began thinking about the needs of seniors and those in assisted living facilities – some of the patients who most benefit from telehealth. He conceived a machine, called the Portable Telehealth Station, that would make integration and communication even easier. He wanted a device that would be light enough to put on a table or medical cart, but stable and substantial. He connected with a company in Federick, Md., that makes kiosks and it was able to fabricate the station.

The portable station can take blood pressure and oxygen readings that are then instantaneously uploaded to an integrated smart phone or tablet. And he has plans for adding more components, such as a glucose meter and thermometer. As of now, there are 15-to-20 in use.

About 200 physicians, mainly in Maryland, are currently using the TotalCare system and, now that Kapur has moved his company to Florida (and soon will relocate here as well) he is reaching out to local health care facilities and practitioners, both academic and patient-care centered.

Ultimately, he wants to use the data collected by the system to further expand precision medicine – the idea that collecting enough information about individuals, subgroups and populations can lead to better diagnosis and treatment. Part of his drive relates to the death of a close family member who, he believes may have received more effective treatment if such individualized information had been available. “We can do better with the right amount of data,” he said.

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Karen-Janine Cohen