EChart Healthcare of Fredericton has set a lofty three-year goal for its Software-as-a-Service product for seniors’ homes, but CEO Amanda Betts is undaunted by the task once she considers her first-year projections.

Surveying the young company’s current pipeline of new business, she believes eChart will hit its 2018 targets in July rather than at year-end due to strong customer response.

The company’s product is now being used by seven or eight seniors’ homes in New Brunswick, up from three in August. And Betts is optimistic about its sales given that she knows of no other product that helps both facilities and the families of their patients in the way eChart does.

“Our goal is to cover 10,000 beds by Year 3 and we don’t see that as being a real stretch,” said Betts in an interview Tuesday. “We’re already on target to meet our 2018 goals way ahead of schedule.”

Betts created eChart to solve a problem she experienced at Autumn Lee, the retirement home she runs with her family. The problem was that patients’ records were all kept on paper – reams of paper that filled row upon row of binders in the facility’s offices. Staff had to fill out endless forms, file and retrieve the records, and the residents’ family members couldn’t easily access them.

So Betts developed eChart, a cloud-based solution that simplifies the process of recording and sharing patients’ charts. Staff can enter all the data they need on to a tablet as they make their rounds of the home. And the information is available to family members, recognizing their right to be kept apprised of all developments in the patient's care.

“I really think we’re solving a problem with our platform,” said Betts. “There’s a gap that needs to be filled. There hasn’t been a lot of new technology within our sector to help us do our jobs and that’s why we’re meeting this need.”

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When she began to work on the project a few years ago, Betts investigated what digital products were available to improve efficiency in seniors’ homes. What she found was a lot of solutions that helped with the administrative or financial side of the business. But there was nothing that helped to improve medical records and to keep family members informed about their loved ones’ well-being.

Betts and her five-member team have been developing and testing the product, and they consider 2018 to be Year 1 in terms of a sales strategy they hope will gain customers across the country. So far, she has financed the company from her own resources, and with the assistance of a number of organizations, such as Ignite Fredericton and the Pond-Deshpande Centre at University of New Brunswick. The company has also graduated from Propel ICT’s Launch accelerator. Now that eChart is gaining clients, Betts is looking at taking on equity investment, though she will only say she has spoken with potential investors.

As the company progresses, Betts has plans to use the data that the company collects to improve the health of the elderly. She’s already begun discussions internally and with organizations specializing in Big Data.

“We’re not doing anything at the moment, but we have some more exciting things planned,” she said when asked about what she plans to do with the company’s data. “We plan to explore personal health predictive analytics and genetic testing. We have a really incredible technology team that bought into the discussions on this and they see the value of the data.”