West Warwick sisters Janice Gil and Maria Gil created the ER Card in the late 1990s as a way for patients to keep track of and make available their medical information. They built a customer base of 3,500 subscribers paying $99 per year per individual, $149 per couple or $199 per family. Now with the soaring popularity of electronic health records, the ER Card is finding new interest and investment.

"ER Card struck us not because of the technology per se or even the idea of a PHR, but because of the level of concierge services that were wrapped around the delivery," [William F.] Cesare said. "It was a PHR with a high level of care management, and that’s unique."..

...In March, Cesare and his partners in Angel Health Strategies LLC, an investment group and consulting firm based in Providence, bought a stake in the business and created a new company with the Gil sisters, ER Card LLC.

Since then, they’ve invested in a major technology upgrade – starting with a move from a server-based system to a Web-based system hosted by PURVIS Systems Inc. Next they’re planning to make the ER Card truly electronic, by making the patient record available on a flash drive the subscriber can carry on a keychain...

...“We think the [ER Card] is going to provide a stepping stone to some of the larger electronic medical record solutions,” he said.