A Q&A with Aidin founder and CEO Russ Graney. The New York City–based company was founded in 2011 and raised $600K in Seed funding earlier this month. Investors include General Catalyst, HLM, Red Swan and Angels.
SUB: Please describe what Aidin is, and the value proposition you bring to healthcare.
Graney: Aidin is a web application used by hospitals to help them track hard data about how well post-acute providers, like nursing homes and home health agencies, perform. Aidin makes it easy to present that information to patients when they are choosing which post-acute provider to work with—helping patients choose better providers for better outcomes. By making the quality of care offered by available providers transparent, Aidin helps patients recover more quickly, rewards high performing post-acute providers with more business, and helps hospitals save money by reducing readmissions.
SUB: Who are your target users?
Graney: Aidin is used by hospital discharge planning staff to help them discharge patients to the best post-acute care available. We also interact directly with hospital patients post-discharge to collect their rating and review of the post-acute provider they worked with.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?
Graney: Legacy players in this space helped hospitals convert phone calls and faxes sent to post-acute providers into emails. Aidin is the first referral management system that not only streamlines communication among hospital staff and post-acute providers but also collects and presents quality of care information to help patients make better decisions.
SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?
Graney: Aidin was founded last year but its growth has really accelerated since our participation in Blueprint Health, a health-tech focused incubator in NYC. Even before we officially incorporated, the founding team spent months learning every detail about our users’ workflow and challenges. Aidin was truly built with our user in mind which has enabled us to build a product that is so intuitive to users that it requires no training to start using.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for Aidin? Was there an ‘aha’ moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?
Graney: I had been working in the post-acute care world prior to founding Aidin and had been exploring business opportunities actively. But it was the painful personal experience of helping my uncle find a home health aide after a visit to the hospital that pushed me to focus on developing Aidin to help hospital discharge planning staff and the families they support avoid the difficult experience I went through.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?
Graney: Building the right team to tackle healthcare has and will continue to be a focus for us. We have found amazing people with the perfect combination of passion for healthcare, an undying devotion to simplicity and user experience, and a deep personal and professional knowledge of post-acute care.
SUB: You recently raised $600K in Seed funding. What are your plans for the funds?
Graney: Our Seed round allows us to grow our technical team and funds pilot studies that will measure Aidin’s impact. We have grown quickly in the past year and this funding provides us with the fuel we need to maintain our momentum going forward.
SUB: What are your goals for Aidin over the next year or so?
Graney: Our immediate goals are to work with our existing hospital partners to further refine our offering and to grow our presence across the country. We have some exciting opportunities ahead of us and we look forward to announcing more details of our growth strategy in the coming months.
Aidin – www.myaidin.com
