Quil - Most Innovative Woman of the Year - Healthcare

Company: Quil, Philadelphia, PA
Entry Submitted By: Sloane & Company
Company Description: Quil, the joint venture between Independence Health Group and Comcast NCBUniversal, is a digital health platform that offers personalized and interactive health journeys to consumers and their caregivers, and believes that an educated and engaged consumer leads to better outcomes at a lower cost. Quil serves consumers and their caregivers and partners with healthcare providers nationally.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Innovative Woman of the Year - Healthcare

Nomination Title: Carina Edwards

For over 24 years, Carina has made it her mission to help transform the patient experience by making healthcare technology more personal. Prior to joining Quil as CEO in March of 2019, she held executive leadership positions at Imprivata, Nuance, Zynx, and Phillips Healthcare.

At Phillips Healthcare, Carina was a key player in legislative conversations about interoperability standards between medical devices and EHRs. At Imprivata Carina and her team worked to champion national health IT causes such as unique patient identification strategy and the Electronic Prescription Controlled Substances technology to combat the opioid crisis. She has assessed healthcare technology markets around the world, visiting and sharing experiences between CIOs in order to bring effective solutions to their markets and has led the UK National Health Service roundtable. Her work and influence have positively impacted over 2,500 healthcare organizations in 21 countries.

Now at Quil, Carina is constantly seeking forward-looking trends to better shape patient care and improve patients’ experiences through their own healthcare journeys. Like many of us, she too is both a patient AND a caregiver. She uses that perspective to bring trusted information to people as they navigate their own health journey or a loved one's.

Carina’s – and Quil’s – approach to healthcare is different. The popularity and adoption of digital tools in healthcare has been an increasing trend for years. Carina has been a staunch advocate for this trend, but understands that to truly improve health outcomes, digital healthcare must integrate into the patient’s every-day life. This is why Quil’s digital tools are designed to create seamless connection between all stakeholders in an individual’s health – physicians, clinical staff, family caregiver, payor, and of course, the patient themselves.
It is through this approach that Quil has helped provider partners well surpass their expected goals and see incredible improvements in health outcomes and care efficiency, such as 15% reduction in length-of-stay, 19% improved discharge-to-home rates, 92% patient-reported-outcome completion. Beyond reducing burdens on clinical staff and doctors, patients themselves report 93% improved feelings of preparedness when going through a health event or surgery when using Quil.

From the fast-tracked development of the COVID-19 Preparedness Tool to give people critical resources to manage caring for a loved one with the virus, to her strides in improving care in the home for aging patients and caregiver coordination, Carina leads her team to face challenges head-on and adapt their tools quickly to help address health needs.

Thanks to Carina’s stewardship of a partnership with Penn Medicine, physicians and patients saw impressive results empowering better health outcomes throughout 2020 utilizing Quil’s digital health tools. Musculoskeletal patients stayed in the hospital after their procedures for 14% less time than the department goal. The rate of discharge to home instead of physical rehabilitation facilities was 22% better than the department’s goal.

At the onset of COVID-19, Carina saw the need for worried patients and caregivers to make sense of an overwhelming amount of information. She led her team to quickly create the Quil COVID-19 Preparedness Tool, bringing the tool to market in a matter of weeks and making it available to Independence Blue Cross’s 1.3 million users.

This year, Carina has maintained focus on developing and bringing to market digital health tools to revolutionize the caregiver experience and bring freedom and flexibility to aging populations. In November of 2020, Quil partnered with AmeriHealth Caritas to launch a first-of-its-kind program to support caregivers of Medicaid members with disabilities and long-term needs. In March of 2021, she led her team to bring Caregiving Circle to market, to allow patients and caregivers to stay connected and informed. She is leading Quil to bring their direct-to-consumer offering for caregivers and patients, Quil Assure, this fall.

Carina also proudly advocates for women in the workplace, and under her leadership Quil was named a Parity.org 2021 Best Company for Women to Advance.

Reference any attachments of supporting materials

The attached Penn Medicine Customer Success story shows the impact Quil's platform has in action to increase operational efficiencies and cut costs for providers, while improving health literacy and engagement for patients to drive improved health outcomes.

The linked STAT news article,The Covid-19 pandemic forces a new way of thinking for Quil, Comcast’s health tech startup, speaks to the rapid development of Quil's COVID-10 Preparedness Tool in March 2020.

The linked Business Insider article and linked videos from This Week in Health IT and The Healthcare Blog speak to Quil's current development of tools that assist caregivers and care recipients, as well as touch on several other Quil accomplishments.