Charleston medical practice first to incorporate Greenville health care app

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What do you get when a former Marine pilot, technologist and doctor team up? A patient-reported outcome app designed to increase communication between doctors and their patients with long-term diseases. 

GreenCape Health’s app is an electronic health record (EHR)-integrated patient reported outcome (PRO) solution. The current edition of the app allows the information patients record to be transmitted into Epic, the electronic health record which holds about 325 million global patient records, according to Epic’s website. 

The Greenville-based app allows patients to record their symptoms and disease activity between the face-to-face visits with their doctor, CEO Mark Elfers said. Doctors are able to see those updates and depending on the urgency, can push back the next visit or move it forward. 

The current version of the app specializes in sending messages to doctors that are more digestible and efficient, said Dr. Daniel Solomon, chair of the GreenCape scientific advisory board. 

“I think it has been eye-opening to me to understand how one thinks about commercializing science,” Solomon said.   

Solomon works at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, with the largest rheumatology department in the U.S. Accommodating nearly 4,000 rheumatoid arthritis patients at the hospital, he had the opportunity to perform studies with the software through his department. 

Solomon said after using the app at Brigham, the waiting time for patients went from 120 days to 80 days. 

“MGB Ventures said ‘We have this entrepreneur, and it looks like you have a cool product. Should you think about trying to commercialize this?’” Solomon said. “I am a scientist, and that is what I do primarily, but if I don’t put my money where my science is, what use is it?” 

GreenCape has been up and running since August 2024, but the research for the app has been underway for roughly six years, Solomon said. 

The first iteration of mPRO in 2018, and second in 2020, were exclusively available to patients in Solomon’s studies. The most recent was launched into commercial space in December 2024, said Jim Bickelhaupt, chief product and technology officer of GreenCape. In total, 40,000 PROs have been recorded in the app. 

The service exclusively tracks the disease trajectory of patients. It doesn’t connect with products like health apps or smartwatches, Bickelhaupt said. 

“We are taking something that worked well in the academic world and making sure it works commercially,” Bickelhaupt said. “We are doing that fine balance of getting feedback from potential clients and not just pivoting to every thought and will that somebody might have.” 

GreenCape has been implemented by two providers, Annapolis Rheumatology and Articularis Heathcare Group, Elfers said. Annapolis Rheumatology serves patients from seven practices in Maryland and Virginia. 

Articularis Heathcare Group is the largest rheumatology physician group in the United States and is headquartered in Summerville, Elfers said. The group serves 18 practices across 10 states. 

The GreenCape team is working with a potential third customer. The current practices are using the service on a commercial scale, and an additional practice is using the service as part of a study. 

“Very few digital health products have seven years of development and three clinical trials,” Elfers said. “Doctors want evidence-based solutions and data from someone who has thought about it.” 

Elfers said their main challenge coming into the commercialization of GreenCape was raising funds, but considering the time Elfers, Bickelhaupt and Solomon have spent in their fields, they were prepared for that.  

The trio won $240,000 from an innovation grant from Brigham and Women’s Hospital which it primarily used it to launch its mPRO app, Elfers said.

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Before bringing GreenCape to life, Elfers was a Harrier pilot in the Marine Corps and Bickelhaupt worked most of his career in technology with Coca-Cola and a brief stint at Tiffany & Co. Solomon has also been the editor-in-chief of the Arthritis & Rheumatology journal for the past five years while also being a professor at Harvard Medical School.  

“Focus is the friend of a young company and a digital health startup like we are,” Bickelhaupt said. “So, we’re really focused on making sure these customers just are super happy with us.”  

The team is looking into other areas of the medical field to expand, including pulmonary, palliative and hospice care, Bickelhaupt said. 

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