America spends trillions on healthcare each year, yet millions of people still leave doctor’s offices without understanding how to take care of themselves.

Tom Chamberlain, PharmD, spent years watching patients leave clinics with pamphlets they never read.

Some didn’t understand how to manage diabetes. Others struggled to navigate prescriptions, nutrition, insurance, or follow-up care. Many simply disappeared back into a healthcare system they didn’t fully understand until they returned sicker weeks or months later.

“I realized firsthand that low health literacy was the biggest challenge to getting good outcomes,” Chamberlain said.

For Chamberlain, a clinical pharmacist who spent years working in underserved communities through training programs at the Medical University of South Carolina and Virginia Commonwealth University, the issue wasn’t just access to healthcare. It was whether people understood the healthcare system in the first place.

“I’d give them a pamphlet. It was written at a high level. It went into the trash can,” he said.

That experience eventually led Chamberlain to launch EdLogics, a Hampton Roads-based health literacy and engagement platform that uses behavioral science, gamification, multimedia content, and personalized learning tools to educate users about everything from chronic disease and mental health to nutrition and navigating healthcare systems.

On paper, the platform looks more like a mobile game than a traditional healthcare tool. Users spin digital prize wheels, climb leaderboards, maintain streaks, play games, and complete short learning modules designed to make health education feel less like homework and more like interaction.

“It needs to be almost a dopamine stimulating experience to get them to wanna learn,” Chamberlain said.

The concept may sound unconventional, but the scale is growing quickly. EdLogics says more than 43,000 users have played over 12.4 million games and completed more than 2.2 million health learning modules through the platform.

Health literacy, once considered a niche healthcare issue, is now gaining national attention.

The World Health Organization recently identified health literacy as a stronger predictor of an individual’s health status than income, employment status, educational level, or racial and ethnic background. Chamberlain says that recognition reflects what he has spent decades seeing firsthand.

“People don’t know how to navigate,” he said.

According to Chamberlain, that gap contributes to everything from unmanaged chronic disease and poor nutrition to missed preventative care and rising healthcare costs. EdLogics positions itself less as a wellness platform and more as an attempt to change behavior before people require expensive intervention.

“Education’s been really tough to pull off,” Chamberlain said.

That challenge has pushed the company beyond employer wellness programs and deeper into the community through its broader Healthier757 initiative and the Rewards for Healthy Living platform, which provides free access to health education resources across Hampton Roads.

Much of that expansion has been driven through a partnership with the Birdsong Health Literacy Center of Excellence, a nonprofit founded by Hampton Roads businessman and philanthropist George Birdsong focused on improving health literacy across the region.

What started as a healthcare engagement platform is evolving into something larger: a regional effort to improve how Hampton Roads understands health itself.

Partners now include organizations like the United Way of South Hampton Roads, YMCA of South Hampton Roads, the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore, Hampton Roads Chamber, Urban League of Hampton Roads, Black BRAND, Norfolk State University, Batten University, Tidewater Community College, PCs for People, Mercy Chefs, and multiple healthcare providers, municipalities, and academic institutions across the region.

“We are going to be successful as a region together, not individually,” Chamberlain said.

The larger vision, he says, is making Hampton Roads a national model for improving health literacy at scale.

“We think Hampton Roads can be the leader of the nation,” Chamberlain said during his recent Virginia Cup pitch competition appearance.

The company is already beginning to expand elements of the model outside the region, but Chamberlain says Hampton Roads remains the focus.

“We got a lot of work to do in Hampton Roads,” he said.

For Chamberlain, the future of healthcare may depend less on treating disease and more on whether people understand how to prevent it in the first place.

 

EdLogics was one of ten companies selected to compete at the 2025 Virginia Cup. Watch their full pitch replay below:

 

 

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