Jason Warrelmann, Global Director of Healthcare and Life Sciences at UiPath

Digital Health

HIMSS 2022 Digital Health Recap

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.

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• A Digital Therapeutic Win: Pear Therapeutics announced that CMS published a new HCPCS Level II code for “prescription digital behavioral therapy,” such as Pear’s software-based treatments for substance use disorder and insomnia. The new code gives payors the option to cover specified digital therapeutics as medical devices, widening their pathway to reimbursement and suggesting that CMS recognizes similar services as a unique product type

• Improved AFib Detection: Monitoring cryptogenic stroke patients for 30 days with a Philips BioTel Heart mobile cardiac outpatient telemetry patch was found to detect AFIB in 4.6x more patients than using an implantable loop recorder alone (209 vs. 45, n = 1,000). The MCOT detection helped to reduce secondary stroke risk due to improved anticoagulant use in subjects with the patch, leading to an 8x lower cost per AFib patient (total reduction $4M).

• Anthem Rebrand: Anthem announced plans to change its name to Elevance Health, a combination of the upbeat word pair “elevate” and “advance.” The rebranding is meant to reflect the company’s shift from traditional health plans to holistic care for a wide variety of needs, as seen with the launch of its PBM IngenioRx and recent investments in care navigation platform Sharecare.

• Nice Funding Round: Subscription-based primary care provider Nice Healthcare closed a $30M Series A round (total funding now $31.6M) to accelerate development of its virtual primary care, mental health, and physical therapy services. Nice focuses on bringing affordable benefits to small businesses with remote workforces by serving as “the clinic that comes to you” for everything from X-rays to lab tests.

• Patient Safety Concerns: The latest report from Emergency Care Research Institute lists staffing shortages as the top patient safety concern in 2022. Staffing shortages are frequently leading to longer wait times for care while also negatively impacting active workers’ mental health, which ranked as the second biggest concern after taking the spot of pre-pandemic worries such as malfunctioning devices and medical errors.

• Vivante Series A1: Digital digestive health company Vivante Health added $16M to its Series A funding, bringing the total for the round to $21.8M. Vivante triages patients through a symptom checker survey before connecting them with registered dietitians, nurses, and remote monitoring devices, enabling personalized and convenient care to help cater to the 40% of GI patients who are reportedly dissatisfied with their current treatments.

• Remote BP Accuracy: At-home blood pressure monitoring was found to be more accurate than clinic- and kiosk-based monitoring in a new study published in Journal of General Internal Medicine (n = 510). When comparing systolic BP results to patients’ 24-hour ambulatory monitoring data, the home group had a significantly smaller mean difference (-0.1mmHg) than the clinic (-4.7mmHg) or kiosk (9.5mmHg) groups, supporting home monitoring as a viable method of new hypertension diagnosis.

• LG-Amwell Partnership: LG Electronics and Amwell are working together to develop new device-based solutions that improve patient access to care both in the hospital and at home. LG will begin with developing a platform to host services from Amwell’s Converge platform, enabling an easy way to facilitate virtual care beginning in US hospitals, where LG is the leading provider of smart TVs for patient rooms.

• ePNa Improves Outcomes: A new study in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine found that real-time electronic decision support systems (ePNa) were associated with improved processes of care and 38% lower mortality in patients with pneumonia (n = 6,848). After the researchers deployed the ePNa into 16 Utah community hospitals (the tool incorporated indicators such as fever, vital signs, and chest imaging results to make care suggestions), mortality in pneumonia patients decreased from 8.6% to 4.8%, and the average wait time from admission to the first antibiotic was reduced by 8.5 minutes.