GeekWire HealthTech Podcast: The last time we caught up with Pillsy co-founders Jeff LeBrun and Chuks Onwuneme, three years ago, they were focused on their flagship product, a smart pill bottle that sounds an alarm if people forget to take their pills. 

But that was just one example of the broader trend of remote patient monitoring — technology that helps medical professionals keep tabs on the status of patients at home, day in and day out, not just during periodic visits to the doctor’s office. Even before COVID-19 led to a boom in telehealth, LeBrun says, the need for better remote patient monitoring was becoming clear to Medicare officials, due to an aging population and a limited supply of health care workers. The company, now operating under the name optimize.health, raised a $3.5 million bridge investment from Bonfire Ventures and other investors earlier this year to help expand into this larger market.