Introducing Canopy: Prioritizing the safety of our healthcare workers

If you know a doctor or a nurse, odds are that they have experienced a violent encounter with a patient and if they have not, they have a close colleague who has. Somehow, we’ve reached a place where healthcare workers often believe this sort of violence is part of the job. No nurse, physician or hospital staff should feel that way. Ever.

In 2019, Hemanth Meenakshisundaram , Vinay Pulim and I founded SMP Labs – to build technology that brings safety and peace of mind to America’s healthcare workers. We worked in close partnerships with nurses, doctors, health system administrators, and a few forward-looking, visionary healthcare veterans. Our approach, however, has been fairly unique; we’ve remained in stealth for the entirety of the last four years.?

This strategy has been remarkably successful. We have quietly built the leading healthcare staff safety solution on the market. Our technology – a wearable duress button – currently protects over 200,000 healthcare workers at 30 leading health systems across the country. Thus far, our product has been exclusively available as a white labeled solution under the brand of our distribution partners. We are fortunate to have worked with incredible partners to get to where we are today.

Here’s how the technology works: when a staff member pushes their duress button, security and nearby co-workers are alerted with real-time location and identification information. Canopy ’s technology enables a rapid response from security, and gives nearby co-workers an opportunity to help, recording a complete transcript of the incident for post-mortem review.

Aggregate Canopy data for 2023 demonstrates the extent of the problem. In 2023, more than 10% of hospital staff carrying Canopy buttons have used our product in over 20,000 incidents. Those who use the button do so because they feel threatened enough by patients to require the hospital security team’s intervention in de-escalating the situation.

We have been able to help a lot of people along the way, but we also lost something during our journey – namely, our deep partnership with the health systems and healthcare workers who have directly shaped a very successful product along most dimensions. Our distribution model has left a wedge between us and the people and systems we’re building for.?

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that we are (finally!) exiting 4 years of stealth and rebranding SMP Labs as Canopy. Our mission remains the same: to partner with health systems and help healthcare workers feel safe, appreciated, and empowered everyday they come to work.?

Moving forward, together

Today, we are taking our next step and launching Canopy Protect, our next generation staff safety system designed to protect every worker in every location of their facility, including ALL indoor and outdoor locations. Canopy Protect leverages 4 years of experience building rock solid technology that never fails and is designed with hospitals, for hospitals. It’s a critical supplement to existing de-escalation policies and training, allowing staff to get the help any time, any day, and anywhere on campus – from isolated exam rooms to underground parking lots.?

Most importantly, with the launch of Canopy Protect, we are eliminating that wedge and returning to partnering directly with customers to build technology that works for them. Canopy Protect will only be available directly from us.

Over the next 12 months, we will be winding down support for and sunsetting all of our distribution partners and their products. We are offering seamless migration options to our distribution partners and those customers that have deployed them so that they do not need to experience any discontinuity in their service or change to their infrastructure.??

Canopy’s technology has been successfully implemented at some of the largest and most complex health systems around the country due to our intimate knowledge of what it takes for a product like this to be successfully implemented in hospital environments. As we exit stealth, we’re delighted to foster and deepen those relationships – and much of that work will be led by an individual who has established herself as an expert in applying technology to staff safety challenges in healthcare.

Amy Burton will be joining our team as VP of Customer Experience. Prior to Canopy, Amy was an executive at Strongline (acquired by Commure in 2022), a leading staff safety solution distributor.? At Canopy, she will be responsible for ensuring Canopy Protect is the smoothest and best technology that health system leaders ever deploy. We are beyond excited to have someone of her caliber and experience join our team. I believe we have an opportunity to do some great things together – and, in the process, help the healthcare industry tackle an especially complex problem.?

Improving healthcare starts with ensuring safety???

Hospitals are pillars in their communities. They’re centers of healing, and often a place of solace and restoration for members of our society and their families. But healthcare is also difficult, demanding, and confusing. Hospitals are hotbeds of raw emotion – and healthcare workers endure the brunt of it. It interferes with their ability to provide care to people who need it.?

Personal safety is at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. None of healthcare’s other problems – patient experience, quality of care, care coordination – can be adequately addressed if caregivers do not feel safe at work.?

We are confident that the steps we are taking today will enable us to build better products, faster – and move us closer to our goal of protecting and empowering all six million healthcare workers in the country.?

Canopy Protect is just the beginning.? We will have much more to announce in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, we are thrilled to work with the industry to do our part in creating technology that provides a bit of care to those who commit their lives to care for us.