Tech-savvy private duty startup Honor has announced a new partnership with the American Cancer Society. The goal is to help the company provide more specialized care to clients with cancer.
 
Honor will license the American Cancer Society’s proprietary care guidance, the San Francisco-based business announced March 23.
 
Honor will build the American Cancer Society’s guidance into the company’s technology and use it to help make caregivers as knowledgeable as possible about how to best care for the company’s many cancer clients, says Seth Sternberg, Honor’s co-founder and CEO.
 
The “mountains” of American Cancer Society information will, for instance, offer Honor’s caregivers guidance about meal prep for cancer patients and detail when to take a cancer patient’s temperature, he says.
 
Honor is one of several startups that have emerged in the private duty industry in recent years, including HomeHero and Hometeam.
 
One thing Honor does to set itself apart is working to become tailored to clients’ individual needs, Sternberg says. “We want to get really, really smart in terms of how we help people with different conditions.”
 
Licensing the American Cancer Society’s guidance “should make Honor more attractive to people who do have cancer,” he says. “We’re now doing something where we absolutely should be best in class around their particular needs.”
 
On March 23, Honor also named its first three official advisors: Bruce Allen Leff, MD; Carol Raphael; and Ronald Greeno, MD.  Leff is director of the Center for Transformative Geriatric Research and founder of the Hospital at Home Program. Raphael served 22 years as president and CEO of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. And Greeno is chief strategy officer for IPC Healthcare Inc. and was the co-founder of Cogent Healthcare Inc.