In February 2014, Charu Raheja was out on the town in Miami celebrating a friend’s birthday when she suffered what she thought was a migraine headache but was in fact a hemorrhagic stroke — a burst blood vessel bleeding into her brain. “All I have is a headache because I’m getting old,” Raheja remembers thinking then, at age 40. She flew home to Jacksonville before doctors discovered the truth. That began a lengthy recovery that included brain surgery, temporary paralysis, depression and memory loss.
Raheja’s close call in Miami led her to create an answering service for physicians and triage nurses called MedMessage Assist. MedMessage uses proprietary algorithms to ensure patients are treated equitably, get emergency care when needed, and don’t end up in the ER when they don’t need to be there — even if their call is answered after hours by operators with no medical training.
“If I miss something this serious and I thought it was nothing, imagine how many lives I could save if I could make sure people end up in the ER when they need to be,” Raheja says.
Raheja considers MedMessage Assist her signature achievement as CEO and co-founder of TriageLogic, which develops advanced telehealth technology and services for the health care industry, including remote patient monitoring, triage software and on-call nurses. She started the business in 2007 with her husband, physician Ravi Raheja. In 2021 it was ranked on Inc. 5000’s list of fastest-growing private companies.
Raheja’s path as an entrepreneur wasn’t straightforward. After emigrating to the United States from Brazil in her teens, she earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and a doctorate in finance from New York University. She settled into an academic career as an assistant professor, first at Vanderbilt University and then Wake Forest University, but developed an entrepreneurial itch.
Her desire to create high-quality telehealth services was sparked by late-night, family-disrupting phone calls her husband received as a physician. Colleagues and mentors encouraged her to take the plunge. She recalls John Allison, a former CEO of BB&T and professor at Wake Forest, writing her a letter that read in part: “You are doing your hobby when you should be doing your passion, what you are really meant to do.”
With telehealth medicine and remote working exploding in popularity after the COVID-19 pandemic, Raheja’s vision for TriageLogic and its MedMessage Assist service proved prescient.
That validation has been a high-water mark for her company, while recovering from her stroke is among her top personal accomplishments. It also led to her advocacy work, including serving as a board member for the American Heart Association and volunteer with the Joe Niekro Foundation, which supports awareness, research and treatment for brain aneurysms, hemorrhagic strokes and other cerebral disorders. She’s proud to lead a company that’s not just financially successful, but that also has social benefits: “That’s something that’s hard to build, but we’ve done a great job getting there.”
Boardroom Update: Last year, FLORIDA TREND examined efforts to recruit more women to serve on the corporate boards. To learn what’s happened since, visit: Floridatrend.com/boardroomupdate