Bclose
Proactive Prevention through Daily Vigilance

Bclose Health (bhealth), a Portuguese telemedicine company specializing in real data medical devices, directs its efforts toward the development of preventive care solutions. Using its health app—BHealth, users can efficiently manage their health and family ecosystem within a single application. Bhealth is a solution born from experience.

BClose’ core offerings are developed through extensive multicultural experience gained from the HOCARE INTERREG PROGRAM. Selected to represent Portugal at the HoCare Interreg event—an esteemed European project concluded in 2020. Bhealth engaged with representatives from 12 countries on topics such as geriatric care and tele-assistance. The project, which involved over 100 European professionals, was budgeted at 8 million Euros. The integration of best practices derived from this initiative is now reflected in Bhealth's solutions and its app.

In addition, the BHealth app integrates seamlessly with BClose’s auto-measuring medical devices, allowing users to perform self-diagnostics effortlessly. The application offers a range of services, including online consultations with licensed healthcare professionals, medical prescriptions, laboratory tests and medical certificates. Adhering to medication schedules, it facilitates telemedicine consultations and provides timely updates to patients presenting information clearly and concisely.

Preventive Care Actions

Its mission is centered on enhancing accessibility to preventive health information. This allows users to learn about healthy habits, disease prevention, and specific measures for managing medical conditions. The company’s aims to create a reliable yet democratized source of information, aggregating accurate and current data on preventive health.

By leveraging digital platforms, BClose aims to educate users on health risks, specific risk factors, early disease indicators, and prevention strategies, raising awareness about various pathologies and fostering healthier habits.

The firm also incorporates screening and monitoring tools through digital devices and methodologies that synchronize alarm statistics, allowing users to detect potential issues without requiring expert knowledge.

In addition, BClose is developing a technological ecosystem to support communities by facilitating the sharing of experiences, mutual support, and exchange of healthy practices. This approach aims to enhance user motivation and engagement.

It is also advancing algorithms and machine learning techniques to deliver personalized preventive health recommendations tailored to individual user information and behavior. This customization ensures that the company’s guidelines are relevant and effective, addressing each user’s specific needs.

Professional Medical Services

Bhealth also ensures a strong digitalization component in professional healthcare units such as hospitals, clinics, laboratories and nursing homes, making the experience of measuring patients' biomedical parameters 100 percent digital and paperless.

New doctors with a strong digital component can use its solution to remotely monitor their patients, adding profitability through a monthly fee, standing out from their peers for the proactivity and responsiveness they can introduce to their clients everyday adding value to their service. “The new digital doctor is always digitally present.”

Non-Medical Healthcare Business Utilizing Bclose Health

Companies where their core is not a healthcare system, such as insurance companies, telecommunications, utilities or others, can use Bclose Health as a fantastic marketing tool with high differentiation, promoting customer retention, creating value for their own product. BClose Health also ensures a permanent and direct channel with their end customers without intermediaries, agents or partners, thus promoting 360º understanding of their customer in a non-intrusive and 100 percent digital way.

Furthermore, BClose ensures BHealth is user-friendly, catering to individuals unfamiliar with more than 52 data parameters such as oximeters or blood pressure monitors. The app simplifies health data through a colour-coded system—green for good health, yellow for caution and red for immediate medical attention. This intuitive interface ensures that users, irrespective of their medical knowledge, can understand and effectively act upon their health data.

“Our goal is to forecast the solution, attract as many users as possible and collaborate with partners who can benefit from it,” says Rui Carvalho, managing partner of BClose. For example, in Portugal, health and insurance companies use the app to engage with customers and conduct their own business. However, the company's vision extends beyond Portugal, aiming to showcase its solution and expand throughout Europe.

BClose’s solution is compatible with Android and iOS devices and a sophisticated back-office system tailored for healthcare professionals to efficiently access and manage patient data remotely. The back-office system seamlessly integrates with hospital data warehouses through APIs, providing a streamlined interface for doctors, nurses and other medical staff. The firm prioritises simplicity in the back-office features, emphasising a feedback dashboard to comprehensively present patient readings and understand medical professionals' time constraints. It facilitates video conferencing and incorporates a chat mode for non-urgent inquiries and real time biodata from devices online. For instance, patients can use the chat mode to send photos of skin issues, enabling doctors to respond at their convenience. This non-intrusive communication method aids in maintaining operational efficiency.

BClose is at the forefront of telemedicine innovation with its BHEALTH PRO system, a crucial component of the BHealth suite designed to simplify the interaction between healthcare professionals and patients. For example, if a user measures their temperature and registers a fever and simultaneously, their oximeter indicates a drop in oxygen levels, this could suggest a potential infection To this end, BHEALTH PRO analyses multiple device readings and leverages machine learning algorithms to alert doctors for cases requiring immediate care, indexed by criticality.

Our goal is to forecast the solution, attract as many users as possible and collaborate with partners who can benefit from it

In a landscape where European hospitals typically rely on multiple applications for managing diagnostics and medical examinations, BClose sets itself apart by centralising this information. The BHealth app consolidates medical reports from various sources, making them readily accessible. Users can share comprehensive health data with their medical providers in real-time using a QR code system, ensuring that doctors have all necessary documentation at their fingertips. This approach also acknowledges the importance of familial health history, integrating it into patient assessments to provide a holistic view.

Enhancing daily health management, the app includes features like medication reminders, health calendars, alarms and video conferencing capabilities. A standout feature is the app’s parenting tool, which allows users to monitor the health and medication adherence of their elderly family members, ensuring their well-being from afar.

The firm uses certified CE medical devices to ensure precise measurements and seamlessly integrate with smartwatches compatible with iOS and Google Feed. This approach expands BClose’s user base to include individuals who prefer using their smartwatches for health monitoring. The firm is also developing diagnostics for sleep disorders, depression and social isolation among the elderly, enhancing its capability to effectively identify and address situations.

In Portugal, BClose will initiate last trimester 2024 a project on Madeira Island to measure the health metrics of an estimated 20,000 individuals, around 10 percent of the population. Data from this initiative is transmitted to its backoffice system and data centre. Patient prioritisation is based on the severity of their conditions, flagged in red, ensuring that nurses in call centres attend to the most critical cases promptly.

To illustrate its capabilities further, BClose's elderly care facility has over 200 beds, all of which are currently reserved. The old age homes have implemented a hybrid solution using the firm’s solution to address this issue. While individuals wait for a bed, the facility offers services within a 10-kilometre radius of the elder care centre. This involves assisting elders in their own homes, facilitated by its platform. The services include monitoring through its system, with features such as a panic button for emergencies.

The facility's staffs also attends to tasks like making beds, meal delivery and other needs within the elder's home. This arrangement allows customers to stay connected to the facility while awaiting a bed, for which they pay a nominal fee. The initiative has successfully overcome the challenge of limited physical capacity, expanding its reach and customer base.

With its range of services, partnerships with healthcare providers and focus on patient privacy and security, BClose is positively impacting the healthcare industry in Portugal and beyond. Please consider this hot feature, which allows sons to remotely monitor their fathers' measurements and medication adherence, and track their health metrics remotely.

BClose is also seeking individuals and organizations interested in utilizing its services for its business needs. The company welcomes third-party product and service providers to integrate their solutions into Bclose Health and consider reselling them. The firm is looking for international partners who can deploy its solutions in their respective countries.