Philips Post Acute & Home Portfolio Leader Karsten Russell-Wood

Digital Health

Philips Expands HealthSuite With New Solutions

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.

Digital Health

Do Clinicians Have Faith in Health Tech’s Future?

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.

Nuance’s Patient Engagement Must-Haves

Consumer demands are shifting, and they’re looking to get more out of their digital health technology. Nuance outlines the 5 must-haves for your patient engagement strategy here.

The Wire

• Patient-Provider Communication: 40% of patients receive no communication from their doctor between visits according to a recent survey from patient management platform provider SymphonyRM. Over 70% of respondents said they would be more likely to schedule preventive screenings if they received an electronic nudge from their doctor between visits, indicating that healthcare teams that rely on patients to initiate contact are missing opportunities to minimize care gaps.

• GenieMD Expands iVisit: Mobile-first healthcare provider GenieMD recently announced the expansion of its iVisit virtual care platform to include remote patient monitoring, enabled by a pair of new partnerships with AliveCor (personal ECG monitoring) and CMI Health (patient vitals monitoring). iVisit now serves as an end-to-end solution inclusive of telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and call triage services, increasing providers’ efficiency while mitigating miscommunication risks and reducing costs.

• One Small Step for Health: One giant leap for telehealth. A HIMSS21 “Caring for Astronauts in Space: NASA’s Experience With Telemedicine” panel outlined how telehealth helps astronauts on the international space station. To make up for the lack of CT or MRI machines, portable ultrasounds are used in novel ways, with remote real-time guidance from ground control used to assist with capturing clinically relevant images. Although the circumstances in orbit differ from a patient’s home, the lessons in adapting to available tech and training levels translate well to terrestrial telehealth. 

• The Power of Social Presence: Patients are far more likely to follow treatment recommendations provided by human physicians (with or without AI support) compared to recommendations from an automated AI tool. That’s from a study that posed hypothetical skin cancer treatment recommendations to 452 USA-based participants, finding that patients’ intention to comply was far higher when recommendations were provided by physicians (ß = 0.27 w/ AI, 0.40 without AI) than by AI.

• Tech Literacy: A new survey of Alberta Cancer Exercise participants (cancer survivor exercise program) found that while electronic health literacy was low, 50% of respondents (n = 313/627) used mobile applications or wearable fitness trackers, which were useful to >80% of users. The findings highlight a need to increase electronic health literacy and take a patient-centered approach to designing physical activity interventions.

• Audio Only: In a new exposé published in the New England Journal of Medicine, one physician outlines how telephone-only visits provided a level of candor that surpassed in-person care, with patients more willing to confide in her about sensitive topics such as smoking habits when they couldn’t see her face. Telephone visits also provided more flexibility to patients without a private room for video calls, challenging the hierarchy in which in-person care is the gold standard, video ranks second, and telephone calls are reserved as a method of last resort.

• mHealth for Travelers: Virtual primary care provider 98point6 recently announced a partnership with health and wellness company XpresSpa to develop a mobile app aimed at providing health tips to travelers, remote access to physicians, and a travel wallet for medical records. As new entrants to the virtual care market continue arriving at a blazing pace, companies are turning to specialized use cases for differentiation. 

• Virtual Effectiveness: A new metastudy from the University Hospital Waterford investigated evidence supporting virtual consultations for orthopedics, reviewing 15 studies comparing clinical outcomes of telemedicine against a matched traditional cohort. Of the 15 studies, 2 demonstrated noninferiority, 9 showed no statistically significant difference, and 4 found telemedicine to be superior – generating new evidence supporting telehealth’s effectiveness.

• Digital Therapeutics: Mahana Therapeutics recently secured $61m Series B financing ($82m total funding) to support the launch of the first FDA-cleared prescription digital therapeutic for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Mahana IBS is a 3-month in-app treatment providing cognitive behavioral therapy to those with IBS, helping patients with limited access to an in-person therapist change their thought patterns to lessen the severity of symptoms.

• BlueJeans Telehealth: Verizon recently announced that its HIPAA-compliant virtual care platform BlueJeans Telehealth is now integrated with Apple Health, allowing patients to share heart rate, sleep, and other data collected through their Apple devices. The information can be viewed in a new Telehealth Tile that showcases shared data during a BlueJeans visit, promoting seamless communication exchange and more closely replicating an onsite care experience.

• CBT for Fatigue: A recent study published in JMIR investigated whether internet-based cognitive behavior therapy (I-CBT) is an effective treatment for fatigue in teenagers on the internet (FITNET) when implemented in routine clinical care (IMP-FITNET). The study found that post-treatment patient scores for fatigue level, physical functioning, and school attendance were in-line with the randomized controlled trial baseline, establishing IMP-FITNET as an effective and safe treatment for adolescents suffering from fatigue.

• Controlling Information Access: The American Medical Group Association is fighting back against the US’ new “information blocking” rules, informing the US ONC that giving patients immediate access to their medical information (sometimes before their physicians) often does more harm than good. The AMGA proposed allowing providers to withhold certain results for 24 to 72 hours if it risks confusing or distressing a patient, expanding the current guideline that allows delays if information could cause physical harm.