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Babson Research Featured At Partners Healthcare Connected Health Symposium

Adjunct faculty member Ken Accardi MBA’05 describes himself as being transformed by his Babson education.  His early career was at GE Healthcare where he led global software development for their X-Ray product line.  He then became Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the service division that doubled in size to $4B during his tenure.

Since Babson, he’s gotten the entrepreneurial bug and is now running his own tech company, Ankota, that focuses on care for the elderly and avoiding preventable hospitalizations. He’s also passionate about teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs and is teaching in Babson’s Technology Operations and Information Management (TOIM) division.

Connected Health

Connected Health

The primary use of his products (at Ankota) is to manage the delivery of healthcare services outside the hospital.  His customer’s are various forms of home care agencies.  His “moonshot vision,” however, is to transform healthcare by empowering home care agencies to prevent avoidable hospitalizations. “The emergency room is the last place we want our aging loved ones to be,” explained Accardi. “Avoiding hospitalizations is a win/win, because it increases quality of life for patients while reducing healthcare costs.”

One of the innovations his has worked on is a way to help home care patients (average age 83 years old) avoid hospitalizations using the only technology they’re comfortable with, the telephone. His product, Foresight Care ™ uses automated phone calls to check in with patient’s in between their scheduled appointments and gives health professionals early warning signs when something starts to go wrong.

The product’s ability to address multiple patient health concerns and other risk factors affordably across large populations caught the attention of Partners Health Care and the Journal of Medical Internet Research, who invited him to present an academic poster at the Connected Health Symposium in Boston from October 20th-22nd.

The poster, shared here, explains the research and describes how the technology can be used in various healthcare contexts. We love to see our Babson alumni succeed as entrepreneurs and also love when they come back to teach the next generation.