What You Should Know: 

 – Xealth, a digital health platform provider, today announced a collaboration with Stel Life, a frontrunner in health monitoring device connectivity. 

– The integration partnership aims to optimize remote patient monitoring (RPM) by facilitating faster, more secure integration of patient vital data into care team workflows.

Simplifying Data Access for Improved Patient Care

Enrolling patients in RPM programs is crucial, but ensuring timely access to their health data for researchers and care teams is equally important. Xealth’s integration with electronic health records (EHRs) bridges this gap by seamlessly incorporating Stel’s RPM program into existing clinical workflows. This empowers providers with instant access to vital health data, enabling them to make informed decisions regarding patient care.

Prioritizing Patient Privacy

Xealth and Stel prioritize patient privacy. Their integration is designed to ensure no protected health information (PHI) is ever shared between Stel and healthcare systems. This commitment provides patients with an additional layer of security and trust.

Reliable Connectivity for Diverse Devices

Stel Life offers a unique advantage by leveraging cellular networks for seamless and secure health device connectivity. This ensures reliable data transmission even in areas with limited broadband access. Stel Life’s comprehensive ecosystem supports integration with a wide range of wireless health devices, including:

• Scales
• Blood pressure cuffs
• Glucometers
• Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs)
• Wearables

Unveiling Patient Trends for Better Outcomes

Through Xealth’s digital health platform, data collected from various devices through Stel Life is aggregated and analyzed. This insightful data visualization allows healthcare providers to identify patient trends and patterns.

“We’re privileged to support innovative health systems in evolving care to the home and improving the overall health of the communities they serve,” said Sid Kandan, CEO of Stel Life. “We are excited to deploy Stel through the Xealth digital health platform, as not only does Xealth help power provider workflows, but also maintains our unidentified data design. We don’t need to know exactly who the patient is, but trust Xealth to get data to records.”

What You Should Know:

• Xealth, a pioneer in facilitating digital health on a large scale, revealed today that Children’s Wisconsin, the sole independent healthcare system in Wisconsin focused solely on children’s health, has adopted Xealth’s digital health platform system wide. This integration allows care teams to virtually connect with pediatric patients’ post-hospital discharge through Locus Health’s remote patient monitoring (RPM) solution.
• Children’s Wisconsin, Wisconsin’s exclusive independent healthcare system dedicated solely to children’s health, has implemented Xealth’s digital health platform across its system. This initiative enables seamless virtual connectivity between care teams and pediatric patients after hospital discharge, utilizing Locus Health’s remote patient monitoring (RPM) solution.

Transforming Pediatric Care: Xealth and Children’s Wisconsin Forge Pathways with Digital Health Solutions

Extended hospital stays following a procedure impose significant stress on children and their families. With an initial emphasis on cardiology, enteral feeding, and patients with tracheostomy vents, Children’s Wisconsin is harnessing Locus Health’s pediatric RPM solution, facilitated through Xealth’s digital health platform. This strategy aims to augment the hospital’s capacity to monitor specific pediatric patients post-discharge, facilitating personalized care plans, prompt interventions, and improved outcomes for young patients. Integration into the EHR streamlines the program into clinical workflows, ensuring care teams have immediate access to crucial health data.

Utilizing Xealth’s digital health platform to consolidate digital health assets and tools within the EHR, Children’s Wisconsin’s care teams can electronically order, monitor, and assess the utilization of these resources, fostering transparency in program adoption and effectiveness.

In March 2023, Xealth and Children’s Wisconsin disclosed the healthcare system’s adoption of Xealth’s digital health platform across its entirety to incorporate patient education and tailored content into care team workflows. This facilitates swifter and more convenient dissemination of consistent communications across locations, granting patients and their families timely access to trustworthy information.

“Having the ability to monitor our patients once they leave the hospital is remarkable. Our use of this platform and solution is in the early days, and we are already seeing improved outcomes — from avoiding an unnecessary emergency room visit, to being able to wean from the ventilator faster, or have a feeding tube removed sooner,” said Kimberly Cronsell, MD, associate chief medical officer and medical director for Digital Health & Experience for Children’s Wisconsin. “This is helping us provide better care to our patients, amplify our parents’ and caregivers’ ability to care for their children, streamline provider and care team workflows, and ultimately, improve clinical outcomes.”

What You Should Know:

– Xealth, a leader in enabling digital health at scale, released its 2023 Digital Health Review, analyzing data from over 12 million digital health orders across nearly 30 health systems.

– The report highlights key trends and emerging areas for 2024, offering insights into the evolving digital health landscape.

Key Findings from 2023

Most Enrolled Patients: Surgery preparation and recovery programs saw the highest enrollment, reaching 1.5 million patients.

Most Common Program Area: Women’s health was the most addressed area, with over half of client health systems launching programs.

Most Engaged Patients: Preventative care programs boasted the highest engagement rate at 69%.

Hottest Area: Chronic disease management saw a 50% increase in deployments, indicating a growing focus on managing these conditions efficiently.

8 Emerging Trends to Watch in 2024

Xealth declares 2024 as the year of digital transformation catch-up for large number of health system as they continue to ramp up adoption of digital health solutions, specifically in chronic disease management. The report outlines eight emerging trends for 2024:

1. It’s Time to Get Creative with Who Pays for Digital Health: Shift from fee-for-service to support digital health adoption.
2. Surgery, PT and Rehab, and Preventive Care Are the Top Three Digital Health Uses: Surgery, physical therapy, rehab, and preventive care remain key areas.
3. Patient Burnout will Continue- Digital Engagement Strategy Can Help: Addressing patient burnout requires a nuanced approach tailored to individual needs and systemic challenges.
4. More Holistic Reporting of Digital Health Solutions: Integrated ecosystems and connected data empower value-based care.
5. Higher Utilization of Chronic Care Services: Increased emphasis on digital solutions for chronic conditions.
6. Leveraging Digital Health to Close Care Gaps: Digital tools to improve access, especially in remote areas.
7. Shut Up and Give Me All Your Preventive Services: Health systems providing preventive services can improve patient health and improve cost containment.
8. EHRs Can’t Carry the Digital Health Burden Alone: EHRs are not built to do everything and there are better digital health solutions available to improve patient experience and outcomes.

“With staffing shortages and burnout, new competition and complexities around reimbursement, hospitals are being challenged like never before,” said Mike McSherry, CEO and co-founder of Xealth. “Digital health brings an opportunity for health systems to do more with less, extending care teams and keeping people connected with their providers. Xealth works with health systems that understood early on the value of strategically rolling out digital programs, and they now hold a competitive advantage.”

What You Should Know:

– Xealth announced that Children’s Wisconsin, Wisconsin’s only independent healthcare system dedicated solely to the health and well-being of children, is using Xealth’s digital health platform system-wide to integrate patient education and custom content into care team workflows.

– The integration enables the faster and easier distribution of consistent communications across locations, providing patients and their families with timely access to reliable information. 

Reduce Clinical Workload and Improve Patient Care

Xealth makes it easier for medical providers to order and monitor digital health solutions by integrating custom content management systems, third-party education and digital health vendors with the customer’s EHR system and patient portal. For Children’s Wisconsin, Xealth supports care teams in personalizing pediatric digital solutions that are incorporated into treatment programs, centralizing all the materials in the patient portal for easy access. Further, the communication from providers remains consistent to reduce alert fatigue for the patients and families.

What You Should Know:

– BrightInsight announced that ixlayer has joined the BrightInsight Ecosystem, a network of more than 20 of the world’s leading healthcare and technology companies driving growth and adoption of digital health solutions.

– The BrightInsight Ecosystem of partners collaborates to solve healthcare’s biggest challenges to drive digital innovation, adoption and engagement. 

Why It Matters

Conditions such as high cholesterol, autoimmune diseases, such as psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes, require diagnostic testing for patients to qualify for certain therapies. This presents a huge opportunity to enhance the patient journey – from diagnosis to therapy matching, to disease management, to the monitoring of adverse side effects – by making it more convenient and streamlined through digital.

Drug companion apps built leveraging BrightInsight’s Disease Management Solution can incorporate ixlayer’s diagnostic testing, enabling biopharma companies to deliver a seamless digital experience for their patients, reduce the burden of in-person diagnostic testing, accelerate therapy matching, and provide a feedback loop to patients on the effectiveness of their therapy, ultimately with the goal of improving persistence.

Launched in September 2022, the BrightInsight Ecosystem brings together leaders from across the healthcare industry, including bioMérieux, Google Cloud, Lyniate and Xealth, collectively focused on advancing digital innovation to improve patient care globally.

What You Should Know:

– Today, Southern Illinois Healthcare (SIH) announced that it’s using Xealth’s digital health platform system-wide to automate digital programs, starting with smoking cessation. SIH plans to add additional digital health programs to deliver operational efficiencies while enhancing the patient experience.

– The Xealth digital health platform is designed to help clinicians integrate, prescribe and monitor digital health tools for patients from one location within their current EHR workflow.

– Utilizing Xealth through SIH’s EHR system helps accelerate the rollout of custom education materials and gives care teams new insight into program enrollment and engagement. Care teams also gain insight into how each tool is performing with program participants.

Venture Capital, Private Equity Funding

Maven Clinic Secures $90M to Advance End-to-End Family Care Platform

Maven Clinic, the largest virtual clinic in women’s and family health raises $90 million Series E funding bringing its total funding to $300M. Maven plans to use the latest round of funding to advance its end-to-end family care platform to enable deeper personalization to meet the diverse needs of women and families everywhere.

Curavit Raises $5M for Digital Therapeutics Clinical Research

Curavit Clinical Research, a virtual contract research organization (VCRO) that specializes in decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) raises $5M in Series A funding to accelerate its growing portfolio of research in the global digital therapeutics (DTx) market. The new funding will be used to expand the company’s DCT capabilities, partnerships, and market adoption of Curavit’s virtual CRO services and platform for prescription and non-prescription digital therapeutics trials.

Strategic Partnerships

Highmark Health, Google Cloud, League Launches Digital Health Platform

Highmark Health, Google Cloud, and League unveiled their collaboration on an interoperable, digital health platform that makes it simple for individuals to navigate healthcare and connect to the right tools and resources when and where they need them. The navigation technology can be envisioned as a “digital front door” to a holistic customer experience and will initially be integrated into a new My Highmark health insurance member portal and mobile application.

COTA and Google Partner to Use NLP to Harness Unstructured Oncology Data

COTA, Inc., an oncology real-world data and analytics company announced a partnership with Google Cloud to bring clarity to unstructured oncology data through the latest advancements in machine learning and natural language processing. In collaboration with Google Cloud, COTA will look to augment manual, human-led abstraction with technology-first abstraction and curation best practices. This approach will, over time, provide access to even more advanced data elements that may be buried in unstructured notes. 

Google Health – MEDITECH Collaboration Advances to Pilot Phase, Early Adopters

MEDITECH and Google Health announced that DCH Health System and Mile Bluff Medical Center are early adopters in the pilot phase of their clinical search solution collaboration.The solution will embed the Google Health search and summarization capabilities to create a longitudinal view of a patient’s health history directly within the clinical workflow of MEDITECH’s Expanse EHR.

Cerner & Labcorp Partner to Manage Hospital Labs in 10 States

 Oracle Cerner and Labcorp have formed a new relationship to streamline lab operations for one of the nation’s leading nonprofit Catholic health systems. Labcorp purchased select assets of the health system’s outreach laboratory business and will manage its hospital-based laboratories in 10 states. Cerner’s laboratory information system (LIS) will help Labcorp centralize operations and streamline processes within the hospital-based labs to enhance patient care and improve lab efficiency.

Nuance and NVIDIA Bring Medical Imaging AI Models Directly into Clinical Settings

 Nuance Communications, partners with NVIDIA to put artificial intelligence (AI)-based diagnostics tools directly in the hands of radiologists and other clinicians at scale for the first time. The partnership will enable the validation, deployment, and evaluation of medical imaging AI models with the combined power of the Nuance Precision Imaging Network (PIN) – an AI-powered cloud platform that delivers patient insights from diagnostic imaging into clinical and administrative workflows – and MONAI, which is an open-source and domain-specialized medical-imaging AI framework co-founded and accelerated by NVIDIA.

Coeus h3c and Xealth Partner to Streamline Home Health Solutions From Ordering to Fulfillment

Coeus h3c, initially funded by Best Buy partners with Xealth, a leader in enabling digital health at scale, to bring its technology platform into the EHR workflow. Together, Xealth’s digital health platform and Coeus h3c’s Home Health Hybrid Cloud (h3c) will allow clinicians to seamlessly order, deliver and monitor personalized remote care programs from an electronic health record (EHR).

The integration enables them to order, track, analyze and evaluate patient health confidently while using existing, familiar workflows enhanced by data that flows from the remote care program to the EHR reliably and efficiently. Solving the complexities of delivering health solutions in the home, the integrated workflow makes it easier for clinicians to provide more people with the opportunity to heal at home safely.

Wolters Kluwer Selects Microsoft for Virtual Healthcare and Payer Care Management

Wolters Kluwer Health partners with Microsoft to enable healthcare organizations to unleash innovation through the combination of Wolters Kluwer’s market-leading solutions and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The first phase of the partnership focuses on Wolters Kluwer’s expert solutions for healthcare and ranges from the integration of current products to new solutions and applications built on Azure.

One of those new solutions is Digital Health Architect™, which integrates Azure DevOps, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and Azure Cosmos DB. The solutions are available today in the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace for virtual care companies and payer care management using the same evidence-based, technology-enabled content and tools that currently power UpToDate®, Lexicomp®, and Emmi®.

Atropos Health and Mayo Clinic Collaborate to Bring Real-World Evidence to Patient Bedside

Atropos Health partners with Mayo Clinic Platform, a strategic initiative of Mayo Clinic to improve healthcare through insights and knowledge derived from data. The collaboration aims to develop new care techniques and best practices that improve health equity by delivering rapid care to historically under-represented patients.

The parties are collaborating to allow physicians and researchers on Atropos Health’s platform, regardless of specialty or location, access to Mayo Clinic Platform_Discover, a large repository of deidentified data and sophisticated analytical tools. Then they can derive answers to critical questions using the Atropos’ Prognostograms – a digital consult. While it typically takes weeks to determine the best course of treatment for an individual with a challenging case, the Prognostogram leverages millions of deidentified patient records from a variety of sources to advise clinicians action with evidence, in a matter of days.

New Product/Platform/Capabilities

LG Launches Virtual Care Solution with Amwell to Address Hospital Workforce Shortages

 LG Electronics announced its first joint solution with digital healthcare enablement leader Amwell®, designed to expand the boundaries of digital health innovation and address a major issue faced by hospitals across the country – workforce shortages. Carepoint™ TV Kit, by LG and powered by the Amwell Converge™ platform, leverages existing LG healthcare TVs in patient rooms to allow providers to remotely engage, monitor and discharge patients, thereby reducing healthcare professionals’ workload. 

Bamboo Health Launches Real-Time Care Intelligence Platform

Bamboo Health unveils its new Real-Time Care Intelligence™ platform and Smart Signals™ care coordination network to drive whole-person care across the spectrum of physical, behavioral and social health needs. The network improves more than 1 billion patient encounters a year across more than 2,500 hospitals, 8,000 post-acute facilities, 25,000 pharmacies, 32 health plans, 50 state governments and 1 million acute and ambulatory providers. 

Hello Heart Adds Breakthrough Artificial Intelligence (AI) Capabilities to Empower Users to Make Better Choices

Hello Heart launches Dot-to-Dot, a new addition to their digital whole heart health program. Dot-to-Dot is a breakthrough feature that leverages well-established clinical research and artificial intelligence (AI) to help people connect their lifestyle choices to their heart health. Something as easy as a short walk or having a conversation with a friend or loved one can help drive sustained blood pressure reduction. While the link between exercise and improved heart health is well-known, not everyone may realize the true impact these simple changes can make to one’s personal health.

Wolters Kluwer Launches Digital Health Solutions for Payers and Virtual Care Players

Wolters Kluwer, Health launches Digital Health Architect™ Consumer Education Suite and EmmiGuide™. These solutions combine digital tools with unprecedented access to expert-vetted content – the same content that powers widely used solutions such as UpToDate®, Lexicomp® and Emmi®, to help virtual care vendors and payers provide consistent, evidence-based information to patients and members and improve care wherever and however it’s delivered.

Twilio, Healthfirst Launch CDP for Health Plans and Providers

Twilio, the customer engagement platform that drives real-time, personalized experiences for today’s leading brands, today announced the general availability of Twilio Segment for Healthcare & Life Sciences, a HIPAA-eligible customer data platform (CDP) that can improve patients’ experiences and health outcomes by unifying Protected Health Information (PHI) data across their entire care journey.

NuraLogix Researchers Announce the Capability to Assess Type 2 Diabetes and Blood Biomarker Health Issues Using Any Video-Enabled Device

Researchers at NuraLogix, a global pioneer of contactless health monitoring through its patented Transdermal Optical Imaging (TOI™) technology adds the ability to perform metabolic and blood biomarker health risk assessments for various chronic conditions to its AnuraTM platform. As a first for video-based contactless health monitoring, the new capabilities add to the existing health and wellness measurements* Anura™ can assess from a 30-second video selfie, including the ability to accurately measure blood pressure.

MDLIVE Expands VPC Program to Improve Health Outcomes for Patients with Chronic Conditions

MDLIVE announced the next evolution of its rapidly growing virtual primary care (VPC) program to enhance support for employees with chronic conditions. The program is part of Evernorth’s long-term effort to build new models of care delivery to provide employees with seamless, convenient access to care while reducing costs and improving health outcomes.

Commure Introduces New Model to Accelerate Transformation in Healthcare with CommureOS

Commure, Inc. introduced CommureOS, a revolutionary transformation platform purpose-built for healthcare. CommureOS is designed to give healthcare organizations the power to synthesize and maximize their existing solutions as well as easily build and rapidly deploy intelligent workflows to enhance clinical, operational, and financial efficiency. By reconciling information through a single platform and facilitating easy and connected innovation, CommureOS enables hospitals and health systems to streamline their technology experience, empower their healthcare workforce, and enhance care delivery and outcomes.

Research Findings

Notable Survey: 61% of Patients Skip Medical Appointments, Due to Scheduling Hassles

61% of patients surveyed said that they skipped going to the doctor in the past year because scheduling an appointment was too much of a hassle, according to a new survey from intelligent automation company Notable Health. The survey data was gathered as part of the company’s annual State of Automation Report, established in 2022 to benchmark the attitudes of patients toward technology and automation. Conducted by OnePoll March 3-5, 2022, it had 1,005 patient respondents.

70% of respondents agreed that in the past year they have tried to schedule a healthcare appointment online via a patient portal, website, or an app but were redirected to call a phone number to finish scheduling. In addition to challenges with scheduling appointments, the survey revealed increasing patient frustration with time spent waiting to see their doctor. Respondents reported spending an average of 28.8 minutes waiting before they can see a doctor, up from an average of 18.2 minutes in 2018 – in spite of increased technology investments by healthcare providers to streamline pre-visit registration and intake. 

– BrightInsight, Inc., a global platform for biopharma and medtech regulated digital health solutions, recently announced the expansion of its recently launched BrightInsight Ecosystem, a network of the world’s leading healthcare and technology companies collaborating to solve healthcare’s biggest challenges to drive digital innovation, adoption and engagement.

– In addition, BrightInsight is proud to be a part of General Catalyst’s Health Assurance network—comprised of healthcare technology companies, advisors and experts, investors, and strategically-partnered health systems across the country.

Improving Healthcare Innovation Collaboratively

BrightInsight provides the leading global platform for biopharma and medtech regulated digital health solutions. BrightInsight replaces the need for lengthy and complex ‘build from scratch’ implementations by offering configurable software solutions and a proven platform built on Google Cloud under a Quality Management System to support global security, privacy and regulatory requirements. When building digital health products on the BrightInsight Platform, compliance is future-proofed as intended use changes scale across geographies.

The BrightInsight Ecosystem, which now includes over 20 global leaders on its roster including bioMérieux, Google Cloud, Lyniate and others, welcomes these new partners:

– Xealth: Xealth is the driving force behind digital health programs at many of the nation’s largest health systems, connecting clinicians and patients with digital resources that extend care teams and deliver outcomes.

– Woebot Health: Woebot Health is the world’s first mental health ally for people and businesses, with products that put personal growth in people’s hands, wherever they are. Their pipeline of prescription digital therapeutics and behavioral health products combine artificial intelligence, decades of clinically proven techniques and a relational agent called Woebot, which together form the foundation for mental health solutions that engage at scale and fit right into people’s lives.

– Claritas Rx: The Claritas Rx platform illuminates the patient experience for specialty biopharmaceutical products, providing actionable insights into patient access, duration of therapy, and other commercial metrics.

“Transforming healthcare requires a broad, collaborative approach. The BrightInsight Ecosystem partners are leaders from across the healthcare industry, collectively focused on advancing digital innovation to improve patient care globally,” said Kal Patel, M.D., CEO and co-founder of BrightInsight. “We are delighted by the enthusiasm shown by so many industry leaders to join us as we collaborate to drive development of new digital therapies and increase patient engagement.”

BrightInsight is also proud to be a part of General Catalyst’s Health Assurance network—comprised of healthcare technology companies, advisors and experts, investors, and strategically-partnered health systems across the country.

General Catalyst Health Assurance Network

The General Catalyst Health Assurance network—through strategic partnerships with leading healthcare systems around the country—covers approximately 10% of the U.S. population for delivery of care. The goal of the Health Assurance network is to drive greater collaboration between technology innovators and healthcare systems to accelerate the digital transformation of care and make it more proactive, accessible and affordable.

“General Catalyst’s Health Assurance is focused on shifting the paradigm from a ‘sick care’ system to a resilient, proactive system that’s designed to help people stay well, bend the cost curve through innovation, and make quality care more affordable and more accessible to all,” said Daryl Tol, Head of Health Assurance Ecosystem, General Catalyst.“We’re delighted that BrightInsight is part of the General Catalyst Health Assurance network: they have an important role to play in terms of helping systems pilot regulated digital solutions, standardize data integrations and ultimately accelerate digital health scale and adoption.”

What You Should Know:

– The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is simplifying the distribution of addiction treatment and recovery support content with the Oracle Cerner EHR and Xealth’s digital therapeutic distribution platform

– The new system makes it easier for Hazelden Betty Ford clinicians to provide patients with digital content as a key part of their treatment and recovery process, including therapeutic education, exercises, and workshops, accessible via the patient portal.

Addiction Treatment and Recovery Content

Hazelden Betty Ford is the nation’s largest nonprofit system of addiction treatment, mental health care, recovery resources and related prevention and education services. In December 2020, Oracle Cerner and Xealth began working together to help health care providers better leverage online content to serve their patients. Caregivers at Hazelden Betty Ford will now have the ability to assign therapeutic content from within their EHR workflow in response to individual patient situations and in anticipation of individual patient needs. In addition, care teams will gain insights into how patients are engaging with the content and how well each is performing via analytics organized in an intuitive dashboard and custom reporting. They can also edit existing content and launch new content as needed.

“Digital health is proving to reshape patient care and helps enable caregivers to create more engaging and effective patient experiences,” said Bob Kopanic, Oracle Cerner senior vice president of North American client relationships. “This integration makes it easier for clinical staff to do their most important work – caring for their patients. We’re pleased to help make it easier for Hazelden Betty Ford caregivers to meet patients where they are with digital health content that is easy to access and consume when and where they’d like to.”

What You Should Know:

– Today, Force Therapeutics and Xealth are partnering to bring remote management of postoperative recovery and care plans into clinicians’ EHR workflows.

– The Force platform delivers provider-prescribed digital education and video content for patients recovering from injury or surgery at home. The partnership integrates the Force platform with a provider’s electronic health record, enabling care teams to view clinically relevant metrics within the patient’s chart and make more informed decisions for their recovery.

Remote care management data now available on EHRs

With the explosion of remote care apps, it’s difficult for care teams to manage reams of incoming data from different data sources. With daily pain, medication usage, and engagement data at their fingertips in the EHR, care teams can now see an integrated patient record—and quickly determine when they need to intervene. A fast response can help prevent postoperative readmissions and speed the recovery journey.

Force’s strategy capitalizes on what researchers say is critical for patient-facing tools: the company’s digital care management platform is physician-prescribed and now fully integrated within the EHR, giving clinicians immediate insights into whether or not their patients are completing their remote physical therapy, or are hurting more than could be expected despite the limited activity. 

The integration optimizes physicians’ workflow, as they can now monitor patients’ postoperative data and remote behavior directly from the EHR. The integrated platforms can use event-based triggers, such as the moment a patient is scheduled for surgery, to automatically prescribe the Force platform without the need for physician intervention. From within the patient’s chart, care teams can track patient data such as reported daily pain, medication usage, activity levels, platform engagement, patient-reported outcomes, and physical therapy records. In the near future, clinicians can also monitor patients’ progression toward their recovery goals, which is one of the primary indicators of patient satisfaction.

“In this digital age, care teams need greater visibility into their patients’ behavior outside the health system,” said Mike McSherry, CEO and co-founder of Xealth. “We’re proud to partner with Force Therapeutics to make it easier for clinicians to incorporate digital resources into treatment plans, view patient activity in between appointments, and determine whether they are progressing as expected. The seamless integration of our two platforms is already helping to reduce variations in care, address emergent concerns, and improve patient outcomes.”

What You Should Know: 

–  Xealth, a Seattle-based provider enabling digital health at scale, today announced at HLTH21 that Trinity Health, one of the nation’s largest Catholic health care systems, has invested in the company, bringing the total Series B funding to $25 million. 

– The announcements mark Trinity as one of 15 health system investors for Xealth: Advocate Aurora Enterprises, Atrium Health, Banner Health, ChristianaCare, Cone Health, Memorial Hermann, Nebraska Medicine, Novant Health, Stanford Health Care, Cleveland Clinic, Froedtert & MCW Health Network, MemorialCare Innovation Fund, Providence, UPMC and Trinity.

– Digital therapeutics, mobile apps, and remote patient monitoring help fill a necessary role in extending care options for patients. In September, Xealth announced Advocate Aurora Enterprises, Banner Health, ChristianaCare, Cone Health, Memorial Hermann, Nebraska Medicine, Novant Health and Stanford Health Care joining existing health system investors Atrium Health, Cleveland Clinic, Froedtert & MCW Health Network, MemorialCare Innovation Fund, Providence and UPMC. Collectively, these 15 health systems represent millions of patients and more than 100,000 physicians across 34 states. 

About Xealth

Xealth’s digital health platform serves a critical role in bringing digital health into clinicians’ workflows, an essential element for program success. It delivers centralized integration, prescribing, monitoring and governance for digital health tools from current clinician workflows, demonstrating a 50-80 percent reduction in integration and deployment costs, and substantial patient engagement with digital assets. Successful programs have been initiated around maternity, diabetes, behavioral health, heart disease, kidney disease, advance directives, infectious disease, surgery preparation and many other areas of care.

Hospitals and providers can further leverage intelligent automation and gain insight into how each tool is performing with patients. Patients can be enrolled in beneficial programs and share information directly with care providers through the EHR.

Spun out from Providence in 2017, Xealth has backing from 15 health systems and full integrations with the largest EHR vendors. Additional investors include Cerner, LRV Health, Threshold Ventures, McKesson Ventures, Novartis, Philips, and ResMed.

What You Should Know:

– Xealth, a Seattle-based provider enabling digital health at scale, today announced that the company has secured $24 million in Series B funding led by Advocate Aurora Enterprises, a subsidiary of Advocate Aurora Health. Seven additional health systems – Banner Health, ChristianaCare, Cone Health, Memorial Hermann, Nebraska Medicine, Novant Health and Stanford Health Care – join existing health system investors Atrium Health, Cleveland Clinic, Froedtert & MCW Health Network, MemorialCare Innovation Fund, Providence and UPMC. This brings the company’s total funding to date to $52.6M.

– Xealth will utilize the latest round of funding to  fuel growth of the company’s team, approximately doubling its size. It will also support product innovation, including further enhancing its intelligence engine to better help health systems determine which tools are working best with which patients, further enabling the scale of Xealth’s deployment across the US.

– Available to more than 100,000 physicians, Xealth’s digital health platform serves a critical role in bringing digital health into clinicians’ workflow, an essential element for program success. Tightly integrated with electronic health records (EHRs), the platform supports care teams to personalize digital solution ordering with one click and helps to elevate the patient experience.

Xealth Background

Spun out from Providence in 2017, Xealth has backing from 14 health systems and full integrations with the largest EHR vendors. The Xealth platform delivers centralized integration, prescribing, monitoring and governance for digital health tools from current clinician workflow, demonstrating a 50-80 percent reduction in integration and deployment costs, and substantial patient engagement with digital assets. Hospitals and providers can also leverage intelligent automation and gain insight into how each tool is performing with patients. Patients can be enrolled in beneficial programs and share information directly with care providers through the EHR.

Digital Prescription Platform

The Xealth platform has three interdependent modules:

Xealth Clinical Interface: Digital health is ordered, delivered and monitored from within the EHR.

Xealth Digital Command Center: Houses customized reporting and analytics of patient and provider engagement and activation

Xealth Integration Layer: The technology that supports the organization and deployment of multiple solutions through a single integration and clinical decision support engine, powering a health system’s digital vendor ecosystem.

“Digital health use is accelerating and can be a key driver of growth for hospital systems,” said Mike McSherry, CEO and co-founder of Xealth. “The support from leading health systems, including Advocate Aurora, as well as The Health Management Academy, validates our approach to incorporating digital health in ways that empower both providers and patients and will elevate our growth, taking our technology vision to the next level and creating a personalized care experience that deepens the connection between patients and clinical care teams.”

What You Should Know: 

–  Banner Health announced the launch of its digital health program with Xealth to enable digital health at scale. Banner Health is making it simpler for medical providers to order digital health solutions directly from its Cerner EHR, helping to strengthen its connection with patients across its 30 acute-care hospitals and other entities. The launch will begin with Babyscripts, a leading virtual care platform for managing obstetrics.

– Available to obstetricians and family practitioners system-wide, Babyscripts facilitates remote monitoring, delivering flexibility to prenatal visits and the ability to advise pregnant patients remotely, when possible. Patients can share biometrics, like weight and blood pressure data, directly with care providers through their EHR.

– Integrating Babyscripts via Xealth helps accelerate the rollout of the virtual maternity care plan and gives clinical care teams new insight into patients’ program enrollment and engagement. Xealth also facilitates patient enrollment – reducing adoption hurdles and giving back time to patients and providers. –  The Xealth platform is designed to help clinicians integrate, prescribe and monitor digital health tools for patients from one location in the EHR. In addition to maternity care, Banner Health clinical care teams will soon be able to order additional resources related to chronic conditions and behavioral health, from the Cerner EHR. 

HIT Consultant sat down with Mike McSherry, CEO, and co-founder of Seattle-based digital prescription platform Xealth to discuss digital health lessons learned in 2020 and what we can expect in 2021. As Xealth’s CEO, Mike also works with Duke Health, UPMC, Atrium Health, and The Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network where he uses his background in digital health to connect patients and care teams outside of traditional care settings. 

HITC: In 2021, How can digital health reduce race and minority disparities in healthcare?

McSherry: The U.S. has struggled with health disparities, which this pandemic has widened. Many of these disparities can be linked to access, which digital health can assist with – telehealth makes care virtual from any location, clinical decision support can reduce human errors, remote patient monitoring helps keep patients home while linked to care. 

Digital health removes hurdles related to transportation, taking time off work, or finding childcare in order to travel in-person for an appointment. It brings care to the patient instead of the other way around, making access simpler. Care through these pathways is also more cost-efficient. 

There are still hurdles to overcome. Broadband is widespread but not everywhere and inclusive design of these tools should be considered. How digital tools, including wearables, are built should address differences in gender and ethnicity, especially as these tools are used more frequently in clinical trials, so as not to inadvertently perpetuate disparities.  

HITC: Why some hospitals are offering digital health tools to staff but not patients?

McSherry: There are a few factors at play when hospitals offer digital health tools to staff but not patients. One, most health systems are not currently deploying system-wide digital health initiatives, leaving the decisions to individual departments or providers. This can lead to inconsistent patient experiences and more data siloes as solutions are brought in as one-offs. 

The second issue is reimbursement. A hospital acting as an employer offering digital health tools as part of its benefits package is different than a patient, who must rely on their health insurance, whether it is a public or private plan. The fact healthcare organizations see digital health tools as a perk shows their value. Now, it is time for CMS and commercial payers to consistently enable their use to help providers care for patients and incorporate digital health as clinicians see fit. 

HITC: How hospitals can remain competitive in 2021, especially after tighter margins from COVID-19?

McSherry: Large tech companies, like Google and Amazon, and huge retailers, including Walmart and Best Buy, are looking to deliver the promise of health care that has so far eluded the industry. Venture capital money has been pouring in for funding innovation, with digital health funding hitting a new high in 2020. 

These initiatives are all racing to control health care’s front door and if hospitals don’t innovate as well, they run a very real risk of having patients turn elsewhere for care. Payers are also building digital front doors and telling members to go there. People have long expressed their desire to have the same consumer experience in health care that they receive in other industries. The technology is there. It needs to be incorporated with the correct care pathways. 

One silver lining during the COVID-19 pandemic is that it showed fast-moving innovation can happen in health care. We worked with hospitals to stand up workflows around telehealth in four days and remote patient monitoring in seven days – an amazing pace. The key is to keep this stride going once we are on the other side of this crisis. 

Providers are becoming more digitally savvy to engage patients and deliver holistic care. Hospitals should support this.  

HITC: What will be Biden’s impact on COVID-19, how hospital leaders should respond, and what it means that we have a divided congress?   

McSherry: Under the current administration, telehealth rules have been relaxed, at least temporarily, along with cross-state licensure so providers are better able to build a front door strategy, helping organizations roll out remote patient monitoring and chronic care management apps. Biden has been a proponent of digitalization in health care and will have a broader engagement. This could lead toward more funding and more covered lives. 

A divided Congress will not make much easy for the Biden administration, however, getting on the other side of this pandemic as quickly and as safely as possible is best for everyone. Biden has shown he will make fighting COVID-19 a top priority.  

HITC: Will remote patient monitoring become financially viable for hospital leaders in 2021?

McSherry: Why does a diabetic patient need to have every check-in be in-person or a healthy, pregnancy met every few weeks with an in-person visit as opposed to remote monitoring for key values and a telehealth check-in in place of a couple of those visits? Moving forward, hospitals will see the benefit of remote monitoring in terms of lower overhead, along with better patient engagement, outcomes and retention. 

To make this work, providers must share risk, and determine digital strategies around attracting patients and then manage them in a capitated way with more digital tools because of the cost efficiencies.   

HITC: How do we foster tighter physician-patient relationships?

McSherry: Patients trust their doctors, period. The struggle is going to be more obvious as more people do not have a PCP and turn to health care with a bandage approach to take care of an immediate concern.  That will lead to entire populations without that trusted bond who are sicker when they finally do seek care, due to the lack of continuity and engagement early on. 

By connecting with people now, where they are comfortable, there is a tighter physician-patient relationship by making it more accessible and reciprocal.  

What You Should Know:

– Cerner Corporation today announced with Xealth new centralized digital ordering and monitoring for health systems, starting with Banner Health, to foster digital innovation.

– Health systems can prescribe digital therapeutics, smartphones, and internet apps directly within the EHR to address areas such as chronic disease management, behavioral health, maternity care, and surgery prep.

Cerner, today announced it’s building on the recent collaboration with Xealth to offer health systems new centralized digital ordering and monitoring for clients. These capabilities are designed to help health systems choose, manage, and deploy digital tools and applications while offering clinicians access to remote monitoring and more direct engagement with patients. Phoenix-based Banner Health, one of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital systems, is one of the first Cerner clients to use the new capabilities to benefit its clinicians and patients.

Prescribe Digital Therapeutics Via EHR

With the new capabilities, health systems can prescribe digital therapeutics, smartphones, and internet applications to address areas such as chronic disease management, behavioral health, maternity care, and surgery prep. This access to a more holistic view of the organization’s digital health solutions supports the clinical decisions doctors make every day and provides real opportunities to improve medical outcomes and enhance efficiency, meet the increasing demand for telehealth and offer remote patient monitoring.

For example, the new capabilities can help simplify how clinicians prescribe tools such as mobile mental health apps to monitor anxiety triggers or a glucose device to help trace blood sugar levels for diabetes patients.

Digital solutions will be available in a single location in the electronic health record where health systems can use apps based on clinical and financial metrics. A wide array of digital health tools is integrated with Xealth’s offering today and the list is ever-growing. Early examples of companies that have previously deployed in health systems using Xealth include Babyscripts, Glooko, SilverCloud Health, Welldoc, as well as Healthwise Inc., GetWellNetwork and ResMed that have existing relationships with Cerner.

“As digital tools are increasingly included in care plans, health systems seek a way to organize and oversee their use across the health system. We anticipate the emergence of digital and therapeutic committees to govern digital tool selection similar to how pharmacy and therapeutic committees have historically governed medication formularies,” said David Bradshaw, senior vice president, Consumer and Employer Solutions, Cerner. “Digital health has extraordinary potential to reshape the way we care for patients and, working with Xealth, we are answering the need and helping providers create more engaging and effective patient experiences.”

Why It Matters

Digital health has great potential to make an immediate difference, especially as it relates to automating patient education, delivering virtual care, supporting telehealth, and offering remote patient monitoring. Health systems with a digital health program and strategy in place have the ability to respond faster and more efficiently.

“Now, more than ever, extending care teams to meet patients where they are is critical,” said Mike McSherry, CEO and co-founder, Xealth. “As digital health programs roll out, they should elevate both the patient and provider experience. Cerner building out a digital formulary, with Xealth at its core, is listening to its strong clinician base by delivering tools to enhance patient care, without adding additional steps for the care team.”