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Awell + Astrana | Abridge Lands KP August 15, 2024
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Together with
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“Healthcare workflows aren’t your average business processes. In other industries, business process modeling works great for optimizing operations because you have tight definitions for your tasks. Healthcare needs far more flexibility than that, so we have to find ways to be more agile.”
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Awell CEO Thomas Vande Casteele
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Astrana Health ranks among the rare breed of publicly traded digital health players that can actually turn a profit, so it’s worth paying attention to when they join forces with a company like Awell to push their advantage even further.
Astrana gives physicians the keys to value-based care by supplying the technologies and administrative services needed to succeed in risk-based arrangements.
- Once upon a time, Astrana got its start as “ApolloMed” and established itself as an innovator in the VBC-enablement space, particularly within Medicare Advantage.
- These days, Astrana is taking on financial risk for patient outcomes and creating a “constellation of quality care” to help providers meet quality metrics and manage cost of care.
Awell’s CareOps platform is a low-code editor that lets clinical and ops teams build workflows that embed into their existing tech stack, without requiring IT or engineering resources.
- Picture drag-and-drop building blocks tied together with if-this-then-that logic that you can use to create your ideal workflow. Oversimplification, but you get the gist.
- That allows orgs like Astrana to design and implement automated processes in a matter of days, giving them a unique advantage from an operational efficiency standpoint.
Scaling CareOps across Astrana’s extensive network will not only allow it to eliminate manual workflows and improve the experience of its providers and patients, but it will also accelerate the pace of future improvements by enabling it to adopt an agile development framework.
- Similar to the DevOps transformation that redefined the software industry, CareOps trades fragmented teams and lengthy deployment cycles for integrated dev/care teams and quicker software releases. (Here’s CareOps 101 for the uninitiated.)
- By breaking down the silos between clinicians and engineers, Awell empowers more of Astrana’s best and brightest to participate in the creation of the care processes that should ultimately deliver better patient outcomes.
The Takeaway
Healthcare is changing faster than ever before, and anyone looking to keep up is going to need a tech stack that’s as flexible as the challenges heading their way. Astrana and Awell are all-in on using CareOps to make that possible, and it’ll be exciting to keep an eye on their results as the partnership gets up to speed.
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RPM Made Easy with a User-Friendly Platform
Seamlessly integrate Withings RPM with your existing EHR system and empower your care team to focus on what matters most – patient care.
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The State of Payor Enrollment and Credentialing
We’re on the brink of a new era in healthcare. From AI-enabled chatbots to GenAI, Medallion’s latest report sheds light on how healthcare organizations are prioritizing automation, actively shaping their future with it, and hoping it can live up to its promise. Get the full report here.
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BrainX Live Event: Implementing Ambient AI
Curious about the tangible benefits Ambient AI brings to health systems? Join the next BrainX Community live event on August 21 to hear Nabla CMO Dr. Ed Lee and Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Paul Bryson share their experiences with the hottest tech in healthcare.
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- Abridge Lands KP: Kaiser Permanente announced that it’s making Abridge’s AI documentation tool available system-wide to over 24k physicians, marking the fast-moving startup’s largest implementation to-date. The move follows nearly a year of testing and evaluation, which also involved a Nabla Copilot implementation at The Permanente Medical Group. It’s worth noting that KP invested in Abridge’s Series B round last year, so it had a bit of a vested interest in making the company its sole vendor across 40 hospitals and 600+ medical offices.
- Stryker Acquires care.ai: Medical device juggernaut Stryker acquired care.ai in a somewhat surprising effort to strengthen its “healthcare IT and digital vision.” care.ai’s Smart Care Facility Platform uses ambient sensors to monitor patients and their caregivers while generating clinical / operational insights, which apparently complements Stryker’s existing device portfolio and the Vocera platform it acquired for $3B in January 2022.
- AI Authorization Update: The FDA updated its list of authorized AI medical devices, which now includes 950 AI/ML-enabled tools. Device authorizations are up 15% for the first half of the year compared to H1 2023 (107 vs. 93), with radiology still accounting for the lion’s share of new authorizations (73%). The list includes both software and hardware with built-in AI/ML capabilities, but it’s important to keep in mind that many of the authorizations are for updated versions of already-cleared products, rather than brand-new solutions.
- Agony for Ecstasy: Behavioral health innovation hit a setback this week after the FDA rejected MDMA as a therapy aid for treating PTSD. The FDA concluded that it couldn’t approve the treatment due to the insufficient data provided, and requested that Lykos Therapeutics run another Phase 3 trial to produce more safety and efficacy evidence. The bad news didn’t end there, with Psychopharmacology journal following up the FDA decision by retracting three papers on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy due to “protocol violations amounting to unethical conduct.”
- Rejoyn Launch: Otsuka and Click Therapeutics officially launched their Rejoyn prescription digital therapeutic for major depressive disorder, first FDA cleared back in March. Rejoyn is designed to enhance emotional control through a combination of cognitive emotional training and therapeutic exercises, with a $50 OOP cost that might actually entice people to give it a try (Pear’s CBT apps were $1,000+ before it went bankrupt). Those economics don’t translate to positive margins, but Otsuka believes “that’s sort of the approach that you need to take to be able to understand the market learnings.”
- PayZen Closes $232M: Healthcare fintech startup PayZen locked in $232M in Series B financing, split between $32M in equity and a $200M debt facility courtesy of payor syndicate Viola Credit. PayZen offers BNPL services to help patients access the care they need while giving health systems a better way to ensure the revenue they generate actually gets collected (provider clients see patient collections increase by 23%-35%). The Series B is earmarked for developing new AI-driven solutions and fueling market expansion.
- Caregility Debuts Edge Fall Detection: Caregility debuted a first-of-its-kind fall risk detection capability for its iObserver solution, which uses computer vision to analyze visual data, detect potential hazards, and alert caregivers accordingly. Unlike similar solutions, the Caregility platform allows AI to run on telehealth edge devices in the patient room, eliminating the need to stream data to the cloud and giving providers a cost-effective way to scale clinical AI while keeping PHI local.
- Health AI Registry Proposal: A JAMA editorial was making the rounds this week after proposing an interconnected registry of all AI tools “in development, deployed, or retired from use” at healthcare facilities. Using the ClinicalTrials.gov registry as a model, the authors suggest each health system would have its own AI registry with categories that track national standards. AI developers would have to provide key characteristics for their products, including the results of independent testing, then the local registries would be connected at a national level.
- Wellinks + UMass Memorial: Wellinks is rolling out its virtual pulmonary rehabilitation program at UMass Memorial Health to support patients with COPD. UMMH physicians will be equipped with Wellinks’ comprehensive solution suite to support rehab, dedicated care management, remote monitoring, and specialized nursing care. The deployment was reportedly inspired by the duo’s ongoing research collaboration to assess the feasibility of combining a consumer app with virtual disease management platforms to improve COPD outcomes.
- Neffy Nasal Spray: It’s a great week for people with severe allergic reactions and trypanophobia, because the scary needle in their EpiPen is no longer the only way to treat anaphylaxis. The FDA just approved the single-use nasal spray Neffy as the first non-injection treatment for anaphylaxis, and the data so far suggests that it’s just as effective as an EpiPen. Neffy is on track to hit the market in about eight weeks and will cost $50 with commercial coverage.
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A First Principles Approach to Responsible AI
Playback Health has over 15 years of experience breaking down complicated technology problems into basic elements then reassembling new solutions from the ground up, and just published a short-and-sweet guide to help others take a “first principles approach” to responsible AI.
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K Health’s First-of-its-Kind AI Knowledge Agent
K Health’s AI Knowledge Agent is a first-of-its-kind GenAI system purpose-built for the clinical setting, with a familiar feel hiding some major innovation under the hood. Discover how the AI Knowledge Agent is bringing new levels of personalization to answering patient medical questions and changing what it means to have a “digital front door” in the process.
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Bridging Care Gaps for Underserved Populations
Is your health system, rural health clinic, or federally qualified health center struggling to reach patients with obstacles to receiving in-person care? This Clear Arch Health whitepaper explores how combining RPM with VBC can help facilitate proactive interventions, address social determinants of health, and get the most out of new CMS reimbursement pathways.
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