UPMC Enterprise Redesign Health Launches New Startups for Chronic Pain Patients
UPMC Enterprises and Redesign Health launched a new startup Monday aimed at improving chronic pain management. The startup, called Glimmer Health, is working with primary care providers to help them treat ongoing pain in a more personalized and holistic way.
The announcement marks the second redesign (creating a healthcare startup) to jointly develop a new enterprise by UPMC Enterprises, the innovation and commercialization division of UPMC. The first time was in 2022, when the partner launched PIP Care, a surgical application and healthcare coaching platform.
Their latest startups are designed to solve a huge common problem. Alissa Meade, founder and CEO of Glimmer, noted that one in four Americans suffer from chronic pain.
“Given that patients with chronic pain are everywhere, it’s no surprise that this leads to an estimated economic impact of over $600 billion on the U.S., which is a huge impact, and it’s a huge problem,” she explained. “Nevertheless, there are only so many specialists who specialize in helping people with pain. In particular, there are only one of the experts at present about 20,000 people with chronic pain. To give you a comparison, every cardiologist has 350 people with heart disease.”
Mead noted that due to this difficulty, chronic pain management has become a responsibility of primary care physicians.
Glimmer aims to expand these primary care providers to help these burdensome clinicians provide comprehensive and multimodal care, she said.
Once the primary care physician transfers the patient to the flickering platform, the patient undergoes a comprehensive pain assessment and then informs their personalized care plan. Dr. Ajay Wasan, Vice Chairman of Pain Medicine and Glimmer Medical Director, added that the startup’s model is designed to mirror UPMC’s pain management clinic.
“15-20% of the visits of primary care physicians per day involve some pain management, so we developed a system where we train nurse practitioners who are pain experts who can embed primary care and operate independently. They will get recommendations from primary care physicians who will see these patients from that patient and then work with primary care physics in that primary care to improve pain and improve his pain.
Glimmer aims to extend this approach to primary healthcare practices across the country.
The company’s holistic approach to pain management involves providing professional telehealth care, educational resources and behavioral health support. Mead notes that the platform also provides care coordination services by helping patients browse any external care they may need and feeding data back to their primary care providers.
The startup employs a team of nurses, nursing managers and social workers, all trained in pain management.
In Mead’s eyes, “Sword Health and Hinge Health” is a keen main competitor.
“They do build models on employers and then expand the payer’s aperture. Some people go directly to consumers, too. The fact that we are doing this is that we are having a physician-led sales campaign, especially the difference from the biggest players,” she said.
Ryan Schneiter, managing director of Redesign Health, said he was excited about the launch of Glimmer because it represents a unique approach that combines UPMC’s clinical expertise with innovative technologies to enhance the competence of primary care physicians.
“This partnership demonstrates how combining clinical excellence with thoughtful design can create solutions that benefit patients and providers while addressing the huge gaps in our healthcare system,” he said.
Photo: Noipho, Getty Images
