Category: Digital Health

Notable’s State of Automation 2022 Report

Posted on by Jason Barry

Burnout and staffing shortages are two of the biggest challenges currently facing the healthcare system, and at this point it doesn’t take another survey to prove that point. The more pressing issue is finding a solution to this well-documented problem, which is what healthcare automation company Notable set out to do with its latest research.

Notable’s State of Automation 2022 Report was based on a survey of over 1,000 US healthcare professionals, and a clear theme emerged in the responses: as workloads continue to increase due to the staffing shortages, health systems looking to grow need to unlock capacity for existing workers to refocus their time on patients.

The key findings echo the sentiment of most medical workforce polls from the last few years:

  • 57% of respondents said they are worried they will burn out due to the number of repetitive tasks required in their role.
  • 45% of respondents are frustrated with how little time is spent on patient care.
  • An average of 58% of staff time is currently spent on repetitive tasks such as data entry and documentation.

The responses also revealed a disconnect in the perception of time spent on repetitive tasks depending on the role, which as likely contributed to the slow relief of this issue:

  • 16% of patient-facing staff agree that “90%+ of staff time is spent on repetitive tasks,” while less than 10% of executives believe the same. 
  • Under 40% of patient-facing staff strongly agree that “their organization is using digital technology effectively,” while 63% of executives agree with the statement.

The Takeaway

The report recommends automating away cumbersome administrative tasks like patient intake and registration to help eliminate downstream work. Although this might be an obvious takeaway from a report conducted by an automation company, it’s hard to argue against streamlining repetitive tasks to support overworked employees.

Health systems today are up against some major obstacles to achieving growth, with patient expectations climbing at a time when expenses are inflating just as quickly. Until we see the supply of healthcare workers begin to rise to meet this demand, freeing up the bandwidth of existing staff to let them spend more time with patients seems like a solid step in the right direction.

Biofourmis Secures $300M for Personalized Care

Posted on by Jason Barry

Biofourmis is taking a two-pronged approach to the healthcare market, leveraging its FDA-cleared data platform to fuel insights for both remote patient monitoring and the development of digital therapeutics. The completion of a $300M Series D funding round will now advance the company’s progress on both fronts, while also minting a new digital health unicorn with a valuation of $1.3B. 

The Biovitals Analytics Engine serves as the foundation of Biofourmis’ services. It employs artificial intelligence to transform biometric data into personalized baselines for each patient, allowing providers to take action as conditions begin to escalate.

Biofourmis’ Care@Home solution uses Biovitals in combination with remote monitoring devices to detect early clinical deterioration and offer dynamic care pathways.

  • These insights are supported by a staff of licensed health professionals that can respond to alerts and update treatments while coordinating with primary care teams.
  • The new financing will be used to scale up these offerings, including the expansion of the recently announced Biofourmis Care service, focused on managing patients with chronic conditions like heart failure and diabetes. 

The other half of Biofourmis’ strategy involves developing digital therapeutics by pairing Biovitals with different medications to optimize dosages as patient health begins to deviate from their baselines. 

  • Biofourmis has a full pipeline of digital therapies, and its BiovitalsHF solution for congestive heart failure is poised to be the first to reach commercialization after receiving FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in July.
  • The influx of capital will be put towards clinical trials to develop new digital therapeutics while growing the product pipeline.

The Takeaway

Remote patient monitoring solutions often live up to their name by focusing more on “monitoring” than “management.” Biofourmis is aiming to change that through a Biovitals platform that enables not only proactive home care, but also individualized insights into the efficacy of digital therapeutics.

It’s the synergies between these service lines that Biofourmis is building around. As the company begins to commercialize its own digital therapeutics, its remote care operations could serve as the perfect distribution channel.

Reuters Digital Health 2022 Takeaways

Posted on by Jason Barry

Fresh off a busy March for health tech conferences, Reuters recently hosted its Digital Health 2022 event in the sunny city of San Diego, with an agenda hyper-focused on sharing the technology and practices that are enabling providers to deliver high quality care.

One of the keynotes that stood out was a conversation featuring Bon Secours Mercy Health CDO Jason Szczuka and Providence Health’s newly appointed CDO Sara Veazy, who each shared pearls of wisdom surrounding streamlining clinical workflows and reaching key executives at large health systems.

BSMH’s Jason Szczuka explored strategies that vendors can use to influence decision makers when presenting their solutions, and how this usually involves taking a different approach with each stakeholder.

  • Szczuka stressed the importance of knowing the entire landscape of individuals at each organization, then communicating the value of solutions appropriately for each one. The way to sway a data ops team looks much different than convincing a clinical team.
  • He also shared his “jobs-to-be-done approach” to assessing potential solutions. Given that patients need to complete a series of “jobs” from intake to discharge while simultaneously facing difficult health challenges, it’s the responsibility of health systems to make these tasks as easy as possible. New technologies get looked at through this lense.

Providence’s Sara Vaezy, who was appointed to the CDO role just earlier this month, fielded a handful of questions about the types of solutions that are a priority for adoption, including technologies that help flexibly match supply and demand for care.

  • Vaezy shared how the solutions that streamline workflows for clinicians are often disguised as patient-facing changes, such as enabling self service for patients in order to open up provider bandwidth.
  • She also discussed how new solutions must align with all three dimensions of Providence’s services: 1) the business model; 2) the operating model from a network perspective; 3) the technology layer.

The Takeaway

While many of the themes at Reuters Digital Health 2022 had a familiar ring to them, one overarching message rang louder than the rest. Whether you’re a provider looking to deliver the best care possible or a vendor introducing a new solution to make that happen, technology is just a tool to help whoever is wielding it. Healthcare is still all about the people.

NexHealth Raises $125M for Universal API

Posted on by Jason Barry

At a time when patients are expecting more from their healthcare experiences and providers are looking for new ways to rise to the challenge, NexHealth announced the close of $125M in Series C funding to help create the infrastructure needed for frictionless care interactions.

The funding arrives less than a year after the company’s $31M Series B round, pushing its total valuation to an even $1 billion. 

NexHealth’s 29-year-old CEO Alamin Uddin first caught a glimpse of the technical barriers preventing seamless patient management while working as a medical receptionist during his time as a pre-med undergrad.

  • The experience led Uddin to found NexHealth in 2017 with the ambitious mission of accelerating innovation in healthcare through the creation of a “Universal API” that enables developers to quickly build useful services.
  • NexHealth’s Universal API integrates data from EHR systems to break down the silos that have traditionally slowed the pace of healthtech innovation, eliminating the need for developers to integrate with individual EHRs and reducing the time required to deploy new products.
  • Uddin compares the service to fintech company Stripe’s back-end credit processing platform, which allows companies to easily plug-in and start interacting with different vendors.

The fresh financing will be used to drive strategic talent acquisitions and develop new doctor-facing features for NexHealth’s patient experience platform that leverages the Universal API to streamline practice management with features like online scheduling, automatic reminders, and two-way messaging.

  • The platform currently manages over 68M patient records, and the recent capital raise should help bring on more large enterprises by adding functionality for one-click booking and integrated forms.

The Takeaway

NexHealth is looking to establish itself as a way to provide frictionless patient experiences during a period when that’s exactly what the market is calling for. As the healthcare industry continues to lumber its way through the adoption of standards like HL7 and FHIR, NexHealth’s Universal API promises a simpler alternative that’s easier to implement, and the investor attention that it’s attracting appears to be validation that the approach has merit.

Healthcare’s Data Readiness Crisis

Posted on by Jason Barry

Although “digital transformation” probably tops the list of commonly used healthcare buzzwords, a new report conducted by Morning Consult and commissioned by Innovaccer paints a clear picture of why the term has become so popular, as well as the barriers standing in its way.

The “Healthcare’s Data Readiness Crisis: Triage vs. Transformation” report is based on survey results from a blue ribbon panel of 75 US health system executives, which explored their current views with respect to digital transformation.

Among the highlights of the survey was the fact that 95% of respondents are focused on digital transformation, making it the number one imperative for the rest of the decade.

  • 83% are aiming to have their organizations achieve full digital transformation in under five years, which might as well be a fraction of a second in healthcare time.
  • To accomplish this, healthcare IT leaders are prioritizing solutions that can make a measurable difference in the near-term, such as population health (41%), hiring talent (40%), and competitive analysis (40%).

When asked about the obstacles that are stifling innovation, interoperability ranked as the leading technical challenge (41%), surpassing both implementation (25%) and data quality (23%).

  • 42% said their organizations’ data is highly fragmented and siloed, and 58% didn’t believe that their EHR vendor could support their enterprise data strategy.
  • Despite these hurdles, only 5% of executives are currently investing in data activation platforms that facilitate interoperability across all of their systems. 

Industry Impact

Out of all the takeaways from the report, the disconnect between healthcare’s high aspirations for digital transformation and the lack of data readiness that’s needed to support it is likely the biggest.

Across the industry, data and the insights it can reveal are trapped in disconnected siloes within each institution, yet many organizations are still tackling data optimization as a one-off project vs. a foundational capability. This results in short-term fixes to long-term problems and postpones any sort of true digital transformation.

As a result, only the health systems that crack the code on data readiness will have the foundation needed to sustain accelerated transformation over the long haul, which should create a durable competitive advantage over slower organizations while pressuring others to follow suit.

Optum’s Digital Health Acquisition Spree

Posted on by Jason Barry

To some investors, this year’s brutal pullback in health company valuations might be hurting their appetite for risk. Others, like UnitedHealth Group’s Optum unit, seem to be treating the lower multiples like it’s Black Friday at the M&A store.

Last week, Optum added home healthcare provider LHC Group and behavioral health clinic operator Refresh Mental Health to its already expansive portfolio of doctor groups, surgery centers, and remote care services.

LHC Group is one of the nation’s largest home health and hospice companies, providing over 12M in-home interventions to 500k patients annually. 

  • The acquisition values LHC Group at $5.4B and will see the company’s staff of 30k front-line care providers and support personnel join Optum after an expected close in the second half of the year.
  • Bolstering home health services aims to support UnitedHealth’s payor division, UnitedHealthcare, in expanding the role of home services as an efficient alternative to nursing homes and a way to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations.

Refresh Mental Health operates a network of over 300 outpatient mental health, substance abuse, and eating disorder clinics across 37 states.

  • Although the terms of the acquisition were net disclosed, Refresh was previously acquired by a private equity firm for $700M in 2020, and was reportedly generating $40M in revenue at the time.
  • Refresh gives Optum a large access point to the growing behavioral health sector, which has proven to see sustained patient demand and telehealth uptake as the pandemic draws on.

The Takeaway

One of the reasons why UniteHealth Group has grown into an industry juggernaut is because it’s successfully been able to create value through synergies between its payor and health services divisions (almost too much success according to the DOJ’s case against its Change Healthcare acquisition). Adding new at-home and behavioral health services through M&A makes perfect sense for companies that can turn a combined service portfolio into more than a sum of its parts, and that’s exactly what UnitedHealth Group is banking on with the addition of LHC and Refresh.

What is Google Doing in Health?

Posted on by Jason Barry

It was a big week for big tech in healthcare, with Google hosting its second annual The Check Up event to let teams across the company share updates on their latest health-related features.

The Search team had one of the biggest announcements of the event with the unveiling of a new feature that shows the appointment availability of nearby healthcare providers so users can easily schedule a visit. It’ll look something like this. 

  • Upon launching, the feature will first let users view open appointments at CVS MinuteClinics, but other providers can add their availability to their Google profiles through new scheduling integration with Kyruus and Stericycle.
  • Google emphasized that it won’t use any of the data for advertising purposes, a perennial concern as the search giant pushes further into healthcare.

YouTube is adding health source information panels designed to help viewers identify videos from authoritative sources, as well as health content shelves that more effectively highlight videos from these sources when searching for specific topics.

  • The features highlight Google’s plan to take an active role in combating health-related misinformation on its platforms, which has been a hot discussion topic since the start of the pandemic.

Fitbit announced that it submitted a request to the FDA for clearance to use photoplethysmography sensors to help detect atrial fibrillation after finding that the light-based PPG sensors identified the condition 98% of the time.

  • Fitbit already has the FDA’s go-ahead to use an ECG to monitor heart rhythms, but the PPG sensors are better suited for consistent long term monitoring.

Google’s Health AI team is teaming up with Northwestern Medicine to increase access to maternal health screening in low-income countries using a handheld ultrasound AI solution that helps lightly trained health workers and or even pregnant women conduct scans and interpret the results.

The Takeaway

Google’s latest feature updates illustrate the company’s revamped strategy of integrating health into its main service lines, which it announced following the dismantling of its Google Health business late last year. While none of the features are a huge shift individually, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Google seems committed to pivoting back to basics by bolstering the healthcare functions of Search and YouTube, which remain the foundation of its business.

HIMSS 2022 Digital Health Recap

Posted on by Jason Barry

It’s Thursday afternoon on the final day of HIMSS 2022, and although many exhibitors are still diligently stationed at their booths, the giant wave of announcements has already crashed and it’s time to round up some of the event’s biggest digital health stories.

Where last week’s ViVE conference highlighted the latest shiny platforms being used to interact with patients, HIMSS instead returned to its usual focus on the IT infrastructure that makes care delivery more seamless and works best when it’s invisible.

That said, there was still plenty of digital health news to go around, and the attendees seemed genuinely excited to finally see their peers in person and showcase the latest updates from their companies. So without further ado…

  • Andor Health is partnering with Microsoft to launch its ThinkAndor enterprise platform that helps health systems configure tailored hybrid care powered by Microsoft Teams’ device endpoint management and Microsoft Azure’s data integration features.
  • Amwell’s SilverCloud Health launched its Family Support Suite leveraging internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy to support the mental health of parents and their children, following a successful pilot of the six course program at MemorialCare.
  • Caregility debuted its Inpatient Virtual Engagement solution-as-a-service that enables hybrid care at scale with minimal upfront investment by integrating a point of care system for low acuity patients with a telehealth administration portal and an endpoint fleet management tool.
  • mPulse Mobile acquired Medicaid-focused communications platform HealthCrowd to combine its conversational AI with HealthCrowd’s engagement expertise to build tailored programs addressing challenges such as medication adherence and plan navigation.
  • Notable unveiled its Intelligent Scheduling solution designed to cut down on call center volume by automating appointment setting depending on patient care needs and provider preferences, proactively prompting visits after predefined events.
  • Relatient debuted a sleek new Dash platform that unifies the company’s scheduling, patient communication, and digital registration offerings into a cohesive offering, following its recent merger with Radix and a fresh $100M in funding.
  • TytoCare published its 2022 Virtual Primary Care Adoption Survey that does a great job exploring US consumers’ feelings towards digital care, such as the fact that 67% of patients are more likely to stay with a payor if it offers VPC with remote physical exams.
  • Unite Us successfully rolled out its Social Care Payments offering that extends financing beyond the clinical setting by connecting payors to community-based organizations and streamlining the implementation of social care funding programs.
  • VeeOne Health announced its VeeGo 360 RPM service that combines body sensors, a patient-facing mobile app, and a care team portal to enable post-acute and chronic disease monitoring from the patient’s home.
  • Woebot Health raised $9.5M in strategic funding from Bayer’s impact investment arm to help accelerate the development of its AI-enabled behavioral health platform, pushing the company’s total investment to $123.5M following a $90M Series B in 2021.

Two years after HIMSS 2020 became COVID’s first trade show casualty, healthcare’s leading IT conference returned to Orlando with a full exhibitor list and an energetic crowd that should be a good sign for future events as long as the pandemic cooperates. We hope that everyone had a blast if you made it to HIMSS, and welcome all of our new readers that we met at the tradeshow. Stay tuned for deeper dives into many of these announcements over the following weeks.

ViVE 2022 Recap and Major Announcements

Posted on by Jason Barry

ViVE 2022 is officially a wrap, and the collaborative event between HLTH and CHIME was as action packed as the Miami Beach streets surrounding it. The event put the spotlight right where it should be, on the companies working to bring innovation to areas such as health equity, patient engagement, and interoperability.

Although ViVE attendees shared enough news to fill multiple full issues of Digital Health Wire, this wrap up highlights some of the biggest partnerships and product launches announced during the event.

  • Amazon Pharmacy expanded its MedsYourWay card to allow Blue Cross and Blue Shield members in five states to compare medication costs while applying any purchases to their out-of-pocket maximums.
  • Cedar launched its Cedar Pre solution that delivers “concierge-style guidance” to patients preparing for care in order to create transparency as early as possible and help people make informed decisions while avoiding surprises later in the process.
  • eVisit debuted its eAnalyze reporting dashboard that allows providers to view visit metrics in user-friendly graphs and tables to help identify the dynamics behind visit traffic to prompt proactive changes that can improve operational efficiency.
  • Google Health is adding a new Conditions feature to its Care Studio that uses natural language processing of patient notes to provide physicians with a summary of a patient’s medical conditions along with context from labs, medications, and other sources.
  • Get Well is expanding its population health offerings to help payors and at-risk providers better manage rising-risk members by rapidly adjusting engagement to drive improvements in key metrics including wellness visit completions and CAHPS surveys.
  • Homeward emerged from stealth with $20M in Series A funding and a leadership team of ex-Livongo execs to help bring value-based primary and specialty care to rural communities by combining remote monitoring services with in-person visits via mobile units.
  • Luma Health launched its LumaBot chatbot that addresses provider burnout by helping patients handle tasks such as scheduling appointments and intake paperwork, then writing details such as appointment changes directly back to the EHR to save staff time.
  • Quil debuted its Quil Assure platform that uses ambient sensors placed around a senior’s living space to notify their ‘Care Circle’ of any unusual routine changes, helping seniors enjoy greater independence by reducing the need for unnecessary check-ins.
  • Salesforce showcased Safety Cloud improvements that help businesses scale health testing and status collection, including automation features for COVID-19 protocols and multi-factor credentials to streamline entry into events or buildings.
  • Unite Us launched a Social Care Payments solution designed to bridge the gap between payors and community-based organizations by streamlining the implementation of social care programs so that they can focus on improving outcomes.

Although ViVE contained plenty of news to satisfy most digital health appetites, there’s good news for those still craving more announcements. HIMSS22 kicks off next week, and while the themes will be similar, it should bring another wave of fresh releases from attendees.

Allscripts Sells Hospital EHR Segment for $700M

Posted on by Jason Barry

The quickly shifting EHR landscape saw another major move last week following Allscripts’ announcement that it is focusing its offerings by offloading its hospital EHR assets to Harris Computer, a subsidiary of Canada-based holding company Constellation Software.

Harris is set to acquire Allscripts’ Hospitals and Large Physician Practices business segment for $670M, plus an additional $30M tied to the segment’s performance in the next two years.

  • The transaction includes Allscripts’ Sunrise, Paragon, TouchWorks, STAR, Opal, HealthQuest, and dbMotion solutions, which together accounted for $928M of the company’s $1.5B total revenue in 2021, but have also been steadily losing market share.
  • The $700M valuation implies a 4.8x multiple on the hospital EHR segment’s expected earnings for this year, not particularly high given that other publicly traded EHR companies command an average multiple of over 10x, which reflects two consecutive years of shrinking revenue with another decline forecast for 2022.
  • By divesting the contracting division, Allscripts can now “maximize focus” on its healthier service lines like the Practice Fusion EHR for small practices and the Veradigm analytics solution, which has faster growth (up 4.6% to $552M in 2021) and healthier margins than the legacy EHR business.
  • Veradigm houses one of the largest EHR-linked patient databases available for research, transforming data from Allscripts’ clients into insights that help connect providers and payors to life sciences companies. The data flow won’t be affected by the hospital EHR division’s new ownership, and the platform will now serve as the core of the company’s operations moving forward.

The Takeaway

Allscripts has been committed to refining its offerings since posting a wide net loss in 2019, a process that included similar sales of its 2bPrecise genetic research arm and its CarePort patient coordination services. Offloading the business segment that generates a majority of its revenue highlights just how committed Allscripts is to focusing its portfolio on high growth areas, and the uptick in the company’s stock price following the announcement is a good indication that investors agree with that strategy.

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