Care Angel, the leader in AI and voice-enabled nurse assistant technology, announced that Mike Hahn has recently joined the company as the new vice president of business development. In this role he will be responsible for leading the company's strategy for aggressive revenue growth moving forward. The appointment follows the recent news that prominent healthcare executive Bud Flagstad, will now serve as the company's new CEO. Mr. Hahn, holds an MBA and is a 15 year healthcare veteran who brings to the senior business development role a commitment to both innovation and collaboration as well as deep experience with large payer and provider relationships. He previously led the Innovation team for UnitedHealth Group's OptumCare unit where he was responsible for the strategy and implementation of new business opportunities and technology-enabled resources to serve various health care stakeholders spanning consumers, health care providers and practices.

Care Angel's innovative patient engagement, monitoring and management platform, SmartCare 3.0, brings Angel to life through a simple phone call on any voice-driven device, like a landline, cell phone or smartphone allowing providers to actively engage and manage their patient population in real-time. Care Angel's Virtual Nurse Assistant, Angel, conversationally checks-in with at-risk patient populations leveraging AI technology to enable scalable engagement with a focus on condition-specific health communication. Recent studies of at-risk populations have demonstrated patient engagement rates of 83 percent, readmission reduction of 63 percent and a $41 per patient per month net savings, by leveraging the Care Angel solution. Care Angel closes gaps in care between visits for the highest risk, highest cost patients while reducing hospitalization and readmissions. Under the agreement, Care Angel will work with FLAACOs and its ACO members to take a proactive approach to implementing Care Angel's patient engagement, monitoring and management solution, to support FLAACOs members' patient care and financial goals.

Care Angel, which has been dubbed "Siri for Seniors, but with a brain like Watson," took the top prize at the MM&M Shark Tank held during Thursday's MM&M Transforming Healthcare conference in New York City. Jason Hendeles, co-founder of Care Angel, a virtual caregiving assistant, and executives from two other health startups presented their business models to seven pharma executives at the conference. "Judges liked the idea of an automated care call leading to a digitally assisted human one, and the potential to fill in those gaps in care for the elderly," said MM&M editor-in-chief Marc Iskowitz. The winning entrepreneur received the opportunity to pitch dRx Capital, the joint investment company of Novartis and Qualcomm, and discuss beyond-the-pill collaborations with the pharma and medical device judges on the panel. It also won a two-day immersion process with McCann Health's Think Tank, which will assist Care Angel in achieving its goals from a go-to-market perspective.