For more than a decade, the digital modernization of healthcare establishments has focused on the priority objective of circulating data between professionals, whether it involves computerized patient files, secure exchanges or interoperability between business software. Among the actors who tackled this structuring project for the healthcare system is Lifenstartup founded in 2015 by Franck Le Ouay, Alexander Huckert And Philippe Douste-Blazyspecialized in the intelligence and secure circulation of health data.
Lifen announces the acquisition of Curecalla platform specializing in communication between caregivers and patients, to complete its offering dedicated to healthcare establishments.
Communication, the last blind spot in hospital digital technology
Despite the increasing sophistication of hospital information systems, the patient relationship remains largely artisanal : repeated phone calls, SMS sent manually, paper instructions, reminders with little trace.
In a context of staff shortages, this informal communication has become a major point of friction. Especially since the ambulatory shift further accentuates this tension. Discharging a patient on the same day of an intervention requires fine coordination before and after the procedure: preparation, reminders, monitoring of complications, therapeutic compliance. The quality of the link directly determines patient safety and the overall effectiveness of the pathway.
Curecall, a user innovation that has become a strategic brick
Founded in 2020 by Mohammed El Bojaddaini and Laeticia Oremus, Curecall focused on universal channels (SMS and RCS) to automate and personalize communications between establishments and patients.
The platform makes it possible to orchestrate all the interactions that govern an episode of care: pre-operative instructions, reminders, follow-up questionnaires, collection of data reported by patients (PROMs and PREMs), alerts in the event of weak signals, in a bidirectional logic, traceable and integrated into care protocols.
Prior to its acquisition, Curecall was used in more than 30 health establishmentspublic and private, and followed more than a million patientswith response rates greater than 90%well above the standards observed in medical monitoring applications.
Financially, Curecall raised 2 million euros from private investors in order to structure its technology and its first deployments. In 2022, the startup mentioned an additional fundraising 5 to 7 million euros to accelerate its development and extend its offering to other specialties, a project that remained on hold in a context of shrinking funding. The acquisition by Lifen ultimately represents another path to scale.
Lifen, from technical interoperability to continuity of the journey
Founded in 2015, Lifen has established itself as a central player in secure circulation of health datawith a platform now deployed in more than 800 establishments and used by 20,000 liberal health professionals.
Lifen raised nearly 80 million euros in four roundsone of which Series C of 50 million euros in 2021led by Creadev And Lauxera Capital Partners. The startup is also supported by the program France 2030.
If Lifen has until now positioned itself as a cross layerindependent of HIS editors and capable of circulating data between heterogeneous systems, the integration of Curecall now extends this logic to the patient.
“For ten years, we have facilitated the circulation of health data between professionals. We wanted to extend this logic by developing communication with the patient. With Curecall, we complete the data path upstream and downstream of the care pathway,” explains Franck Le OuayCEO and co-founder of Lifen.
An operational lever more than a patient experience tool
Behind the discourse on patient engagement, the issue is above all organizational. Structured communication allows establishments to prioritize human interventionsby automating standard exchanges and identifying risky situations more quickly.
In a context where the traceability of care has become a regulatory requirement, particularly since the sixth certification cycle of the High Authority of Health, formalizing these exchanges is also becoming a medico-legal imperative. Patient data, often scattered, then becomes usable without burdening the teams’ daily lives.
Scaling up and market consolidation
For Curecall, the merger with Lifen provides the infrastructure, interoperability and distribution capacity necessary to generalize use validated in the field. The Curecall team will be integrated into Lifen Carewith the objective of continuing the development of the product in co-construction with healthcare professionals and accelerating its adoption thanks to the base already deployed by Lifen.
“By joining Lifen, we are equipping ourselves with the capacity to operate on a large scale to provide fluid, configurable and useful patient communication for caregivers,” underlines Mohammed El BojaddainiCEO of Curecall.
With this acquisition, Lifen sends a clear signal: tomorrow’s hospital efficiency will not only depend on the quality of data, but on the ability to transform this data into useful interactions, at the right time, with the patient.
On his core business of health data interoperabilityLifen operates in a tight competitive landscape. In France, the company faces historical players like Enovacomvery established in hospital information systems, or to integrated editors such as Dedaluswhose solutions cover both DPI and certain data exchange bricks. On a European scale, infrastructure platforms like InterSystems also address the issues of integration and circulation of health flows. In the United States, ORP is a benchmark for clinical interoperability. The specificity of Lifen, however, lies in its transversal positioning: rather than replacing core software, the company inserts itself between them to structure existing flows, a logic that the integration of Curecall now extends to the patient-caregiver relationship.
