Tag: digital health

Xealth Makes Digital Health Usable

Posted on by Jason Barry

The booming digital health sector has seen such rapid expansion that it is beginning to enter the next level of its industry life cycle: the stage where solutions have solutions.

Digital health integration platform Xealth recently closed $24m in Series B funding, bringing the Providence St. Joseph Health spinoff’s total funding to $52.6m.

Xealth aggregates and organizes digital health tools within the EHR, enabling not only easier reporting, but also centralized distribution, enrollment, and patient monitoring.

The Xealth platform has three interdependent modules:

  • Xealth Clinical Interface – Solutions are ordered, delivered, and tracked from within the EHR, with clinical decision support matching patients to relevant solutions.
  • Xealth Digital Command Center – Provides customized reporting of patient and provider engagement, which is aggregated to match demographics to solutions.
  • Xealth Integration Layer – Supports deployment of multiple solutions through a single integration with the EHR, allowing health systems to save IT resources by avoiding independent vendor integration.

The Takeaway

As health systems pursue innovation, they’re presented with an abundance of disjointed products with specialized use cases, creating the need for a platform that allows physicians to prescribe and monitor these solutions within a single cohesive workflow.

Xealth’s services are already available to over 100k physicians, and the company states that care teams are seeing improved patient engagement metrics as a result of measuring outcomes across a health system’s entire virtual solution ecosystem.

Aggregators that improve usability of existing solutions have emerged as success stories in other industries such as business collaboration software, and Xealth is looking to replicate this success within the digital health landscape.

Unlocking Value With Digital Patient Monitoring

Posted on by Jason Barry

New research from Deloitte and Harvard CBE highlights the value of digital patient monitoring, which provides benefits not only to patients, but also to healthcare systems, hospitals, and governments.

Digital health monitoring covers a wide class of technologies that enable patient follow-ups outside of conventional care settings, including remote care platforms, mHealth apps, and wearable devices.

A whitepaper of the findings released through MSD Connect details the value as it relates to each stakeholder group:

Patients

  • Increased level of health information exchange and patient engagement
  • Improved medication compliance and disease management
  • Improved health outcomes, safety, and quality of care

Healthcare Systems

  • Optimization of HCPs workflow due to reduced no-shows and administrative burden
  • Improved informed decision-making strengthened by longitudinal patient data
  • More personalized care delivery based on real-world data and evidence

Hospitals

  • Reduced hospital (re)admissions, follow-up visits, and length of stay
  • Improved efficiency leading to increased hospital capacity and reduced costs
  • Diminished risk of employee burn-out

Governments

  • Increased value of healthcare services offered through better budgeting
  • Improved population health by better allocation of health resources
  • Improved accessibility and equity of care

The Takeaway

The thread connecting the benefits across all stakeholder groups is clear: better data leads to better outcomes. Digital patient monitoring gives all parties a clearer view of individual healthcare journeys, which in turn leads to more efficient systems built on top of this data and improved health for the entire population.

Pandemic Lessons Led to Google Health Shakeup

Posted on by Jason Barry

The recent dismantling of Google Health following the departure of its chief, David Feinberg, MD, could easily have been interpreted as evidence that the company was retreating from healthcare.

To clear up any confusion, Google Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo, MD, spoke with Bloomberg about the search giant’s reorganization. She revealed that the changes reflect a shift in focus related to Google’s work during the pandemic, and that the company is in no way “retrenching on health.”

For Google, the pandemic was an unexpected crash course in health sector operations, expediting many of the lessons that could otherwise have taken years.

Dr. DeSalvo stated that the company’s work on services ranging from contact tracing to population mobility tracking played a large role in the decision to restructure its health unit.

  • Google’s old strategy revolved around consolidating the company’s wide ranging healthcare efforts, such as disease detection and clinical decision support, into a centralized product unit to be commercialized. Dr. Feinberg was hired in 2019 to lead the new division, Google Health, but his team members were disbanded into research and wearables units shortly after his departure.
  • Google’s new strategy is an effort to embed healthcare initiatives into its core products, such as Search and YouTube, rather than launching independent commercial services. This strategy is designed to have a wider influence on health by meeting consumers where they already are.

Industry Impact

With a majority of Google’s revenue coming from advertising, working with sensitive health data quickly attracts attention from regulators. One of Google Health’s early projects under Feinberg got particularly messy when a search tool created for the Ascension hospital network prompted a federal inquiry over data privacy concerns.

Although the Ascension search tool is still operational and secure, Dr. DeSalvo admits that the company must tread carefully when navigating the healthcare space, but believes that the reorganization will help to deliver superior medical care and human outcomes.

Invitae Acquires Ciitizen to Make Genomics Accessible

Posted on by Jason Barry

Genetic testing leader Invitae recently acquired consumer health tech company Ciitizen for $325m, split between $125m and approximately 7m shares of Invitae stock.

While a medical genetics business and a digital record compiler share few similarities at first glance, the strategy behind the deal comes into focus when looking at the driving themes behind each company.

  • Ciitizen is a patient-centric platform that enables users to organize their medical records in order to optimize their own care or contribute the data towards a different goal, such as rare disease research. CEO Anil Sethi founded Ciitizen in 2017 after having a difficult time accessing his sister’s health records while she was battling cancer. 
  • Invitae is on a mission to bring comprehensive genetic information to mainstream medicine. The company is attempting to aggregate global genetic test results into a single user-friendly service that makes the information accessible to anyone with patient consent.
  • Both companies share a common goal that might be better served by working together: data accessibility. Whether unstructured health records or disjointed genetic test results, each business is seeking to improve the utility of hard-to-reach data.

The Takeaway

As genomics transitions from a laboratory testing-based industry to an information industry, Invitae is aiming to develop a platform that allows patients to make use of their data. The acquisition of Ciitizen gives Invitae the ability to create a centralized hub for genomic and clinical information, a dynamic dataset with the potential to drive better research and health outcomes.

K Health Acquires Trusst, Sets Sights on Mental Health

Posted on by Jason Barry

Digital primary care provider K Health announced its acquisition of text-based therapy app Trusst for an undisclosed sum, expanding its services into the rapidly growing online mental health arena.

  • Trusst offers a proprietary mobile platform that has the look and feel of regular text chats, adding a layer of familiarity to sensitive conversations with a therapist. To use the service, patients download the Trusst app and fill out a short questionnaire about their symptoms before being connected to a licensed therapist.
  • K Health provides a public symptom checker that funnels users into an AI-guided assessment of their health concerns, then allows them to connect to a physician via a telehealth call or explore treatment options through its paid service.

Both companies share a similarly lightweight digital-first approach to healthcare, providing services without the cumbersome overhead of many competitors, and expanding access to mental health professionals who would otherwise be prohibitively expensive or difficult to reach. K Health intends to fold Trusst’s services into its existing offerings, which include 24/7 access to primary care providers and prescriptions for as low as $12/month.

The Hottest Space in Digital Health

According to Rock Health’s H1 2021 digital health funding report, the virtual mental health space attracted over $1.5b during the first six months of the year, making it the leading clinical focus for new digital health capital. 

That definitely seemed true last week. The K Health acquisition took place one day before  Headspace and Ginger’s blockbuster merger, and the timing is far from a coincidence.

With so much investor attention on the space and a limited number of mental health service providers, companies are quickly staking claims through M&A activity, and K Health is betting that Trusst’s text-based therapy could be the answer to meeting the growing demand for accessible mental health services.

Verily Aims to Build GPS for Patient Care

Posted on by Jason Barry

Mayo Clinic and Verily, Alphabet’s life science division, recently announced a two-year strategic partnership to develop a clinical decision support (CDS) tool that caters to a patient’s individual needs. 

Although physicians generally do not love their EHR flashing advice at them, the collaboration aims to sidestep the one-size-fits-all approach of traditional CDS tools with AI-generated recommendations relevant to the patient in the room.

  • The Partnership – Mayo Clinic will provide curated clinical content and deidentified health record data while Verily will apply advanced analytics and user-centered design to deliver insights within existing point-of-care workflows.
  • The Roadmap – The tool will initially focus on cardiovascular and cardiometabolic conditions at Mayo Clinic, but will use open standards to enable integration with multiple EHRs for possible expansion to other use cases for Verily’s health system partners.

The Takeaway

While announcing the partnership, medical director of Mayo Clinic’s Center for Digital Health Bradley Leibovich MD stated that he hopes the tool can be used as “a GPS for patient care.”

The companies cited the exponential growth in medical discovery and knowledge as making it  nearly impossible for caregivers to keep up with the latest advances in their fields, creating a need for a tool that offers clinical support. 

Verily and Mayo Clinic are betting that their combined expertise in clinical informatics and data science will be the solution to creating a patient-relevant CDS that clinicians actually want to use.

Apple Takes a Step Back From Healthcare

Posted on by Jason Barry

According to a new report from Business Insider, Apple is scaling back its internal HealthHabit app that let employees track their fitness, talk to clinicians, and manage hypertension. 

HealthHabit was one of Apple’s largest projects resulting from a partnership with AC Wellness, a primary care provider for employers and families. Unnamed sources at Apple stated that HealthHabit was intended for a consumer launch if successful internally, which… it apparently wasn’t.

Although the project was the focus of more than 50 employees, it struggled with user engagement, a problem all too familiar to those working on digital health products.

  • The Strategy – Apple’s healthcare ambitions are apparent in its products, with the company incorporating a medical-grade EKG in the Apple Watch and data-sharing for clinical trials through the iPhone Health app. HealthHabit’s roadmap likely resembled that of Amazon Care, which began as an employee-only primary care app before expanding nationwide earlier this year.
  • The Trend – Apple’s news follows just days after Alphabet reported that it was dismantling Google Health and reorganizing its healthcare projects to be closer to their team-specific specialties (e.g. Health-AI moves within AI group). Sometimes taking a step back is the best way to move forward, and Apple’s recent moves are far from the end of its healthcare strategy. 

The healthcare history books are filled with would-be disruptors who seemed to have everything they needed (excellent teams, funding, strong industry connections), but few if any have had the bottomless warchest of capital and talent commanded by Apple.

While the moat around healthcare is incredibly wide (entrenched tech/vendors, complex datasets, demanding users), the same could be said about the smartphone market circa 2008.

Despite this step back, if any industry needs a disruptor, it’s healthcare – and if any consumer brand is going to pull it off, it’s Apple.

The Mental Health Mega-Merger

Posted on by Jason Barry

At a time when mental health problems are rapidly escalating, Headspace and Ginger have a solution: mega-merger.

Meditation app Headspace is merging with teletherapy platform Ginger to create a combined company called Headspace Health. The agreement values the joint venture at $3b (10x this year’s expected revenue) and will give Headspace Health the ability to begin offering affordable mental health services to over 100 million people globally. 

  • Headspace – The company is best known as one of the first guided meditation apps and remains a leader in mindfulness training. Headspace has partnerships with many consumer-favorite brands such as Netflix and Spotify, giving many of those suffering from anxiety and depression their first exposure to accessible care.
  • Ginger – Ginger offers its members access to mobile-first mental healthcare, including behavioral health coaching and telehealth therapy. It has an on-demand, team-based care model, giving users 24/7 access to therapists.
  • Headspace Health – The newly formed company will blend Headspace’s 65m+ user base with Ginger’s evidence-based interventions, creating an easy way for patients to improve their well-being from a unified platform. Headspace Health will also have one of the world’s largest mental health data sets, which it will leverage to deliver highly personalized care.

Industry Impact

Headspace Health plays at the intersection of the mental health crisis and telemedicine, two areas that have been attracting significant investor attention. With so much capital flowing into the space, consolidation was soon to follow, and this merger could kick off a wave of similar deals involving other popular meditation apps such as Calm.

Competing acquisitions aren’t the only change foreshadowed by the merger. Headspace Health was originally the name of Headspace’s 2018 digital therapeutic product that failed to receive FDA approval, and it’s now easier to see how federal clearance, and reimbursement, could be on the horizon.

Remote Care Investment is Climbing

Posted on by Jason Barry

According to a Current Health survey of 250 health system decision makers, 81% expect their organizations to increase investment in remote care technology over the next year.

While home care was once a nice-to-have option for forward thinking providers, it is now a necessity for those looking to effectively care for high risk patients amid the ongoing pandemic.

Many health systems have already begun to adopt new remote care technologies, with 89% of respondents expanding its use over the past year, but the study suggests that care-at-home programs have more room to grow.

  • Investment Areas: Respondents indicated that they plan to increase investments in three main categories: home-based chronic care (64%), hospital at home (60%), and transitional care (58%). When asked about the key benefits of remote care in these areas, answers included reduced hospital admissions (69%), and improved patient (63%) and provider (62%) satisfaction.
  • Barriers to Success: According to those surveyed, the key barriers to remote care’s success are patient and provider engagement, workflow integrations, and operational concerns. Additionally, over 50% of respondents reported patient adoption and adherence as a challenge they’ve faced with care-at-home.

The Takeaway

As healthcare organizations transition from small remote care pilots to enterprise-wide strategies, new investments are addressing the long-term challenges of scaling to care for more patients with limited clinical staff. The technologies that are likely to find the most success are those that keep sight of patient engagement barriers without adding complicated workflows for providers.

Pandemic Leads to Trust Issues

Posted on by Jason Barry

New research from patient engagement services provider SymphonyRM explored the growing distrust patients have for their doctors in the wake of COVID-19. 

A survey of 1,192 US healthcare consumers found that 41% had lost confidence in their doctor because of the pandemic, with a majority of mistrust stemming from preventable causes.

Reasons for Physician Mistrust

  • Infrequent communication about COVID-19 (53%)
  • Slow adoption of virtual care (29%)
  • Under-utilization of digital communication tools (24%)

Reasons for Improved Physician Trust

  • Quick transition to virtual care (61%)
  • High communication frequency about COVID-19 (58%)
  • Proactive use of digital communication (47%)

Patient Communication Needs

  • 41% would like to receive information about preventive screenings
  • 37% would like to receive information related to their chronic condition(s)
  • 37% would like to receive information and updates about the COVID-19 vaccine

Learning From Leaders

When asked what companies are the best at sharing information with users, 40% of respondents cited Amazon as the “gold standard” of communication. 

Amazon’s investments in real time shipping updates and 24/7 status monitoring have resonated with consumers, and it’s clear that patients are now looking for the same level of communication about their health. 

The survey suggests that providers looking to meet these evolving communication needs should look to consumer-facing brands when it comes to creating convenient experiences and driving engagement.

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!