Category: Digital Health

Optum Enters the Direct-to-Consumer Arena

Posted on by Jason Barry

Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth, recently began selling prescription medications online directly to patients. The company also began offering telehealth services to provide prescriptions to treat depression, erectile dysfunction, and other common illnesses – directly challenging startups such as Ro and Hims that offer online access to drugs for many of the same ailments.

UnitedHealth is the most profitable US healthcare company, with net income totaling $15.8b in 2020, and Optum is its fastest growing business segment. The company has expanded far beyond its payer roots and now employs or contracts over 50k physicians.

Optum launched its online storefront in November 2020 before adding pharmacy and healthcare services in June. It’s recent redesign and cash payment options make it more friendly to digitally native consumers.

  • The Strategy – More Americans are paying directly for healthcare, and by offering cash services to either uninsured or budget-constrained patients, Optum is increasing access to healthcare.
  • The Real Strategy – Optum’s entrance into the direct-to-consumer world defends against rising competition from retail giants such as Amazon and Walmart, both of which have launched digital pharmacy options as membership incentives.

The Takeaway

UnitedHealth’s largest competitive advantage is its vertical integration. It operates the largest US commercial insurance provider, a substantial pharmacy benefits manager, and is one of the biggest employers of physicians in the country. It’s recent expansion deepens this integration, while keeping patient money in-house amid a sea of new competition.

Do Clinicians Have Faith in Health Tech’s Future?

Posted on by Jason Barry

Accenture’s Health Strategy senior manager Dr. Darryl Gibbings-Isaac took to the HIMSS21 stage to discuss clinicians’ trust in the future of healthcare technology. The keynote addressed the findings of a new Accenture survey that asked physicians a series of true or false questions relating to their trust in technology’s growing clinical role.

1. Clinicians’ digital health adoption will not revert to pre-pandemic levels.

  • 71% will continue to use digital tools to the same or greater extent
  • 61% would invest in digital health tools if it improves their bottom line
  • 76% believe that digital investments will increase in the next five years 
  • Verdict – True

2. Clinicians believe AI is a threat to their future prosperity. 

  • 80% are interested in AI for clinical uses
  • 76% believe AI is not a threat to their job security
  • 45% have received training or have upcoming training about AI and digital tools
  • Verdict – False

3. Clinicians see value in investing in AI and digital health.

  • 68% see digital health’s long-term impact as positive
  • 61% believe that the investment required for digital health tools is a barrier
  • 76% believe that digital health spending will increase in the next five years despite barriers
  • Verdict – True

4. Clinicians trust in the security of healthcare technology.

  • 76% are only somewhat confident in measures to protect patient data
  • 41% have security concerns over patient data that hinders adoption
  • 33% of those uninterested in AI-based solutions cite lack of trust
  • Verdict – False

The Takeaway

To answer Accenture’s original question of whether or not clinicians have trust in the future of healthcare technology, the response is a reserved “yes.” While clinicians believe digital health adoption is here to stay, more work is needed to ensure trust in its security – specifically work centered around improving the three T’s: tools, transparency, and training.

Philips Expands HealthSuite With New Solutions

Posted on by Jason Barry

Although you’d be hard pressed to find a single product launch at HIMSS21 that did not address at least one of digital health’s quadruple aims (better health outcomes, improved patient / provider experience, lower costs), you’d have a similarly difficult time finding a solution that addresses all four. Philips HealthSuite is aiming to do just that.

Philips announced the expansion of its cloud-based HealthSuite platform to include two new solutions: Patient Flow Capacity Suite and Acute Care Telehealth. Both solutions address the quadruple aim not as individual products, but as pieces of a platform aspiring to be more than the sum of its parts.

  • Patient Flow Capacity Suite – A patient logistics solution that combines clinical and operational data to improve patient flow decisions with visualization and AI-supported analytics. PFCS’s value lies in streamlining inefficiencies throughout the continuum, whether in demand prediction, patient transition decisions, or patient flow bottleneck detection.
  • Acute Care Telehealth – A configurable solution that allows health systems to deploy a centralized command center, or a decentralized model of telehealth depending on their needs. By allowing customers to add additional hospitals or clinical units, the solution evolves alongside each organization’s telehealth strategy.

The Theme – Philips is seeking to establish HealthSuite as a future-proof solution, providing modularity for unique needs and a SaaS model that lowers ongoing resource strains. Although Philips’ size might raise questions about its agility in a fast moving digital health environment, its scale enables it to combine a platform infrastructure with its deep experience in clinical settings.

The Takeaway

Big problems require big solutions, and solving resource management and interoperability in healthcare is a heavy burden for a collection of disparate products. Adding Patient Flow Capacity Suite and Acute Care Telehealth to the HealthSuite platform lays the foundation for Philips to grow into a value-based partner for providers, as opposed to a classic transactional based vendor.

Fixing Problems Before They Happen

Posted on by Jason Barry

While the acceleration of digital health adoption has created many positive outcomes, adding “tech support” to the job description of clinicians was probably not one of them.

A Possible Solution: Johns Hopkins Medicine recently unveiled an EHR-embedded calculator that assigns telehealth patients a technical risk score so that IT support teams can proactively address tech challenges prior to an appointment. 

The calculator works by assigning a 0-4 score based on the following factors:

  • Two points for the patient not having an active account in MyChart
  • One point for the patient not having completed the eCheck-in process
  • One point for the patient not attending a telehealth visit in the past three months 

Pilot Program: Johns Hopkins created a two-stage pilot program to test the efficacy of the technical risk score. Phase 1 involved text-only outreach and found that 7 of 384 patients contacted via text proceeded to seek IT support. Phase 2 involved text plus phone outreach and had 44 of 98 patients successfully reached via telephone, but found preemptive IT support difficult to schedule.

The Takeaway

Despite the inconclusive pilot program, Johns Hopkins found that its calculator anecdotally eased the burden on IT support staff while creating more equitable telehealth visits for patients.

The Wire – Americans Want Data

Posted on by Jason Barry
  • Americans Want Data: A new survey from The Pew Charitable Trusts found that over half of US adults want to use apps on smartphones, tablets, and computers to access their healthcare data. However, when told that federal privacy protections do not cover data stored on apps, respondents expressing serious privacy concerns nearly doubled from 35% to 62%.
  • Zoom Interpreters: Voyce recently announced the launch of its live language interpreter app for Zoom Meetings, enabling an embedded interpretation experience for non-English speaking patients. The app makes professional interpreters accessible within the video platform, helping to ensure that language is not an obstacle for diagnosis and care.
  • A Brutal Commute: The Wall Street Journal recently shared the story of an Ithaca College biology professor living in upstate New York who found herself skipping postoperative oncology appointments due to outdated interstate telehealth coverage policies. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston informed her that recent post-pandemic waivers for out-of-state patients had expired, and that she’d have to drive 3.5 hours and cross the Massachusetts border before she could hold any further video calls with her doctors.
  • Making Telehealth Permanent: In a move that’s sure to please at least one Ithaca College biology professor, a coalition of 430 advocacy groups recently sent a letter to Congress expressing an urgent need to permanently adopt the relaxed telehealth policies that followed the onset of the pandemic. These measures include the lifting of patient/provider geographic barriers and the need for an in-person visit prior to telehealth, both of which could abruptly expire following the public health emergency.
  • Telehealth for Headaches: A survey of American Headache Society clinicians found that nearly all of the 225 respondents were “comfortable/very comfortable” treating via telehealth, citing patient convenience (97%) and reducing patient travel stress (91%) as key benefits. Providers were also “interested/very interested” in adopting new digital health technologies (prescribing headache apps, remote symptom monitors) to address remote care’s shortcomings.
  • Front End Funding: b.well Connected Health secured a $32m Series B round ($58.7m total post-round funding) that it will use to further develop its digital platform that helps organizations manage their population health initiatives. End users of the b.well app can access all of their health data from a single source and receive proactive health guidance, while also taking advantage of provider incentive programs deployed directly through the app.
  • Telemedicine Saves the World: A new 5-year study (2015 – 2020) of Kaiser Permanente’s 600k members found that digital health platforms are healthy for the environment as well as patients, with healthcare visit greenhouse gas emissions falling 46% following the pandemic. The researchers pointed out that the reduction in emissions was not tied to a decline in appointments, but from the shift to telemedicine solutions.
  • Inaccurate Symptom Checkers: A recent PLOS study of 12 online symptom checkers revealed that many aren’t accurate, with the correct diagnosis listed in the top five tools only 51% of the time (Range 22.2% to 84.0%). The online symptom checkers’ wide diagnostic variation and poor overall performance would be unacceptable in most other medical fields, suggesting more validation is required to ensure these public facing tools are safe.
  • Amwell’s Shopping Spree: Amwell recently acquired a duo of digital health startups to expand its longitudinal care offerings and grow in new markets. The telemedicine company acquired SilverCloud (digital mental health platform) and Conversa (automated virtual care) for a combined $320m, which is quite an investment considering that Amwell generated $245m in revenue last year.
  • Satisfaction Survey: A Catholic University of Korea study found that South Korean patients were far more satisfied than clinicians with telephone-based remote care during the COVID shutdown. Although nearly 80% of patients were satisfied with all five of the study’s evaluation criteria, the same share of clinicians expressed worries about their inability to perform complete medical assessments over the phone.
  • Physical Meets Digital: LifeScan (glucose monitoring hardware) and Noom (behavior change platform) recently signed a multi-year partnership that integrates both companies’ diabetes management solutions. Users of LifeScan’s OneTouch monitors will be able to access Noom’s behavior change programs through a new combined platform set to debut in fall 2021.
  • Deep Brain Stimulation: A new Parkinsonism & Related Disorders study found that telemedicine improves patient satisfaction in the management of chronic neurological conditions. Although telemedicine is effective for movement disorders, the study showed that utilization for patients with device-aided therapies like deep brain stimulation is limited due to the challenge of adjusting the devices remotely, highlighting the need for more care guidelines for this patient population.
Get the top digital health stories right in your inbox

You might also like..

Select All

You're signed up!

It's great to have you as a reader. Check your inbox for a welcome email.

-- The Digital Health Wire team

You're all set!