Technologizer

CareZone, a Private Service for People Who Take Care of People

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CareZone

Jonathan Schwartz was the last CEO of once-mighty Sun Microsystems before it was swallowed up by Oracle in 2010. Now he’s back with a new startup in an entirely different line of business than Sun. It’s called CareZone, and it’s a web-based service designed for people who give care to others–especially kids and aging parents.

CareZone, which Schwartz demoed for me this week, is nothing terribly fancy. It’s a straightforward way to record relevant contacts (such as doctors and other healthcare providers), details on medications, to-dos and notes, and any document you upload. Multiple people, such as siblings, or spouses, can access and add to the records for one “beloved,” and site users can grant temporary access to anyone who needs it, like a nurse.

The stuff that gets stored in CareZone may be quite sensitive, and the site has an emphasis on privacy. There are no ads or other marketing hooks,  everything’s encrypted and password-protected, and nothing you save will get shared with anyone else. The company plans to make money by charging for accounts: $5 per month or $48 per year per beloved. But it’s giving away free one-year accounts for up to three beloveds to anyone who signs up before March 17th.

Schwartz told me that CareZone’s competition isn’t other health sites so much as every other means of storing information of any sort, online or off. The company plans to add more features over time, although it wants to steer clear of anything that smacks of medical advice, and would therefore introduce liability issues that don’t apply in its current role as a repository of data.

It’s not a given that CareZone will take off, but this much is clear: Its potential market is enormous, since almost everyone will join its target audience–people responsible for tending to the medical care of someone else–sooner or later.

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