What You Should Know:

–              Intuity Medical, Inc., a medical technology company committed to making it easier to live with diabetes, announced today that its POGO Automatic® Blood Glucose Monitoring (ABGM) system, featuring one-step testing, is now covered by Medicare Part B. This decision expands access to the innovative monitor for the 16.5 million seniors age 65 and up living with diabetes.

–              The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created two new coverage codes specifically for POGO Automatic, recognizing this new and significantly different technology compared to traditional blood glucose meters (BGMs). POGO Automatic features an all-in-one design that integrates testing supplies into a 10-test cartridge.

Advancing Diabetes Management: POGO Automatic Blood Glucose Monitoring System

POGO Automatic, the pioneering and sole FDA-cleared automatic blood glucose monitoring (ABGM) system available, revolutionizes diabetes management. It enables people with diabetes (PWD) to effortlessly test their glucose levels without disrupting their daily routines. This one-step process automates the multi-step glucose monitoring associated with traditional BGMs, particularly aiding seniors in checking their blood glucose more easily.

Endorsed as the optimal solution for numerous diabetes patients by Rosemarie Lajara, MD, an endocrinologist at Southern Endocrinology & Diabetes Associates, P.A. in Plano, Texas, POGO Automatic is recognized by healthcare professionals for its user-friendly design, which can enhance testing compliance. Dr. Lajara emphasizes the significance of such innovation for diabetes patients, especially within the Medicare population, which often includes individuals facing dexterity, visual, or physical challenges hindering traditional self-monitoring blood glucose (SMBG) meters.

Automating blood glucose testing steps addresses an unmet need for many patients who struggle with handling traditional blood glucose meters, test strips, lancets, and lancing devices. The introduction of new coverage codes—Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes E2104 for the monitor for use with integrated lancing/blood sample testing cartridge and A4271 for the integrated lancing and blood sample testing cartridges—enables Medicare beneficiaries, who previously lacked access to this new technology, to acquire POGO Automatic under their Medicare Part B coverage.

Intuity Medical, Inc., founded with the mission of simplifying life for people with diabetes, introduced the FDA-cleared POGO Automatic® Blood Glucose Monitoring System. This innovative system streamlines testing with its all-in-one design, eliminating the need for separate strips and lancets. Manufactured in the U.S., POGO Automatic cartridges are produced at the company’s headquarters in Fremont, California.

Clinical Natural Language Understanding (cNLU), the technology by which computers extract meaning from clinical text, is quickly becoming a common feature in the healthcare IT landscape. In 2021, 30% of surveyed healthcare organizations were either using or exploring the technology.  (Gradient Flow, 2021). Similar adoption is occurring in the UK as well. (Wu et. al, Nature, 2022). Today, cNLU is being applied to billing/coding, trial enrollment, registry creation, clinical decision support, prior authorization, fraud/abuse detections, and other labor-intensive workflows. In this blog we focus on the cNLU task of extracting and coding concepts from clinical notes, thereby converting unstructured data – the state of the vast majority of clinical data in electronic medical records (EMRs) – into structured data. This list will expand over time, as more clinical innovators become familiar with the technology, and the cNLU tools become better, cheaper, and more accessible. However, for many uses, there is one thing holding the technology back-it generates too much information and, relatedly, too much noise.

First, we should celebrate that we are now at a point where advances in machine learning are enabling sufficiently performant models that understand the meaning of the text in a manner that approximates professional reviewers. The task of concept extraction and coding is typically evaluated by metrics. For example, for every instance of depression in a corpus of clinical documents, how many instances were correctly captured by the model? For every instance, the model captured a span of text and labeled it depression, how frequently were those actually cases of depression? But extracting even a seemingly simple concept like “depression” is challenging. A reference to depression might be “patient exhibited signs of significant depressive disorder.” It could also be “patient’s blood pressure was depressed.” A model that differentiates between these cases, and that determines only the former case represents clinical depression, is understanding the nuance of language. 

The problem is still more challenging insofar as references to the medical condition of depression can also occur, and in fact largely do occur, in the context of family histories, as a condition a patient does not/hypothetically could/possibly does suffer from, or as part of a screening. Consider the examples “reports father suffered from significant depression,”  “patient may suffer from depression,” and “chronic disruptions to sleep patterns may result in depression.” In all of these cases, depression is not conclusively present for the patient. As challenging as these cases are, and while not yet as reliable as clinicians, cNLU has already outperformed trained reviewers in extracting insights from charts, including even in high-risk / high-acuity clinics (Suh et. al., Anest & Analgesia, 2022).

A model that reliably extracts and contextualizes all the salient concepts in a corpus of clinical documents and stops there improves the status quo.  However, it does not meet the needs of a user that is inevitably interested in finding very specific pieces of information about a patient, or patient panel. For example, someone who is trying to find evidence of patients who likely have type 2 diabetes but does not have it on their problem lists will want to know which patients have abnormal fasting glucose or hemoglobin A1C results. But a patient’s chart will feature references to thousands of problems, tests, and treatments and might feature a single reference to blood sugar tests, or else a range of results for these tests that generally wouldn’t indicate a need for review. A recent analysis we conducted found that on average a medical chart generates roughly 12,500 data elements. Finding an abnormal result for a specific test is a needle in a haystack problem for someone manually reviewing a chart. But for the vast majority of people who don’t write code to work with data, it’s the same problem for someone working with structured data from the chart. 

For software to meet the needs of someone who reviews clinical charts, data needs to be searchable. This is the case even if organizations run limited purpose models that narrowly find references to a single topic such as diabetes, though we believe users will always have additional questions about their data.  Before a user ever makes a search, all of the instances of hemoglobin A1C – as a1c, HbA1c, hgba1c, et al. – need to be coded the same way, so that when the user searches for hemoglobin A1C, they return the results for any occurrence of that test. Lab values should also be extracted from the notes and associated with tests. Users might want to see any instance of a hemoglobin A1C test for an individual patient or a cohort of patients. They might want to see any instance of the test where the test value is >= 6.5%. They might add a further complication, looking for the same results as above, but – assuming the findings from clinical notes have been aggregated with the patient’s already structured data – filtering out the patients who already have type 2 diabetes on their problem lists. And they might add a date parameter, so as only to return results a reviewer would not already have seen. 

Whether one condition or many, search is the tool that enables a user to find the information they care about. In our view, the blend of the capability to make data searchable, in combination with the clinician’s validation results, is how to maximize cNLU for chart review.

Leveraging cNLU to rapidly structure clinical notes and make the entire medical record searchable holds the potential to free up massive labor pools for more valued tasks. Users of cNLU for chart review already report significant reductions in the time spent reviewing charts for coding improvement, visit preparation, prior authorization review, and chart audit. Rather than relying exclusively on high-cost, hard-to-hire, potentially burnt-out clinical labor to read charts manually, cNLU, by making charts searchable, frees up more of the clinician’s time. To validate results, attend to the most difficult cases, and become more informed about their patients. 

About Kevin Agatstein

Kevin Agatstein is the founder and CEO of KAID Health, an AI-powered healthcare data analysis and provider engagement platform. Prior to KAID, Kevin founded Agate Consulting and held roles at McKinsey & Company and Arthur Andersen where he advised providers, payers, healthcare IT companies, life-sciences organizations, and healthcare venture-capital and private-equity firms. Kevin also led operations for CareKEY, Inc., from its early years through its acquisition by The TriZetto Group.

About Dimitr Lindei
Dimitri Linde is a Clinical AI Specialist at KAID Health, focused on clinical natural language processing. He developed KAID Health’s pipeline to extract and encode information from clinical notes.

What You Should Know:

– Ryse Health, a healthcare technology company that’s committed to pursuing a world free from chronic diseases and raising the bar on Type 2 Diabetes care raises $6.5M in Series A funding led by Route 66 Ventures. The round also included support from W Health and Healthworx, the innovation and investment arm of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.

– The company plans to use the funding to enable Ryse to continue to grow its team, strengthen its business operations, partner with like-minded organizations, and expand into new markets.

Type 2 Diabetes Care for the 21^st Century

Ryse Health, which was founded in 2021 and operates low-cost clinics in Arlington, VA, and Baltimore is unique in that it’s a physician-led interdisciplinary care model that includes both in-person visits with tech-enabled virtual care. Ryse designed and built a best-in-class approach to treating Type 2 Diabetes that’s yielding up to 50% better results for patients, as compared to traditional and virtual-care-only options. Ryse delivers superior results for patients by,

1) providing day-to-day support, analytics, and coaching to ensure continued success

2) using continuous glucose monitors and long-term support via its custom app

3) a top-tier team of leading endocrinologists, diabetes educators, dietitians, behavioral therapists, and health coaches all supporting patients’ personalized care plan.

2-point Decrease in AIC

On average Ryse patients see an average of a 2-point decrease in HbA1c in 90 days, which is up to 50% better than virtual-only solutions. And, patients are thrilled with their Ryse experience, with an average third-party rating of 4.95 out of 5.0.

What You Should Know:

– Vida Health is expanding its solution for chronic conditions by adding the ability to prescribe and deprescribe glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists for both type 2 diabetes and obesity for appropriate patients. As part of Vida’s value-oriented treatments for cardiometabolic conditions, patients with obesity and diabetes will now be candidates for GLP-1 therapy within the Vida platform.

– With the addition of GLP-1s and other obesity medications in higher acuity cases, Vida Health will be able to provide patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes a more comprehensive and integrated set of options for managing their conditions. This includes medication management, prescription and deprescription, personalized care plans from licensed professionals, medical nutrition therapy, remote monitoring, and therapy for depression and anxiety.

What You Should Know:

– In an initial trial of continuous glucometer use, faulty device adhesive — a serious wearability challenge — and patient difficulty in interpreting graphs produced by the device, were noted. In a subsequent trial, 70 older adults with diabetes wore glucometers and activity monitors and used smartphones and electronic medication bottles to track and manage blood sugar over a two-week period.

– Among these 70 patients, two-thirds of whom were African American and more than half of whom were female, nearly one in four indicated that prior to the study, they had not checked blood sugar.

Problems and Impacts of Blood Sugar Monitoring Devices For the Elderly

A study conducted by Regenstrief Institute research scientists to examine the use, by older adults with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, of continuous glucose monitors and other wearable devices to assess and manage low blood sugar, has found that these tools pose both wearability and use problems for patients and their caregivers.

Diabetes is more common in the older population than the general population, with as many as one in five older adults having the disease. Hypoglycemia, also known as low blood sugar, is especially common in people with diabetes because of their medical condition as well as the treatment that they receive for it. Both diabetes and hypoglycemia convey independent risks for dementia. Diabetes confers approximately a two-fold increased risk of dementia. The frequency of low blood sugar episodes among people with diabetes adds to the risk of dementia, independently.

Among the major findings of the study:

1. Study participants found glucose monitors and other wearable devices tricky to use, suggesting a need for device manufacturers to improve the wearability and usability of the devices.

2. Study participants were very interested in understanding their numbers (such as glucose levels) and the implications of these numbers.

3. Nearly three-quarters of the study participants had low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), suggesting the need for monitoring devices to lead to more direct and effective management of blood sugar among older adults.

“That 73 percent of those in our study had low blood sugar is extremely concerning because hypoglycemia should always be addressed.

“Although a smartphone is very commonly used with continuous glucometers, we found that when we issued smartphones to study participants, they often didn’t carry the phones with them, contributing to the fact that, during the study, one-third of daytime phone prompts about medications, behaviors, and symptoms were ignored,” said Dr. Weiner. “And while I think there is a lot of future potential to use electronic medication bottles, we found study participants didn’t use them correctly or didn’t appropriately transfer their oral medications to the bottles.”

“Continuous Glucose Monitoring and Other Wearable Devices to Assess Hypoglycemia among Older Adult Outpatients with Diabetes Mellitus” is published in the peer-reviewed Applied Clinical Informatics. The study was supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

What You Should Know:

– Blue Shield of California has expanded its partnership with Virta Health to help reverse the human and financial impact of type 2 diabetes in the state. 

– The partnership marks Blue Shield as the first health plan in California to implement a digital diabetes reversal solution across multiple lines of business.

Blue Shield is first health plan in California to implement digital diabetes reversal solution across multiple lines of business.

As part of Blue Shield’s provider network, Virta will serve as just one arm of a member’s care team. Eligible Blue Shield members can choose both a traditional provider and Virta, which will work alongside traditional providers as a virtual diabetes specialist. In-network physicians can also refer their patients to Virta. To enroll in Virta, eligible members simply go to the Virta landing page on Blue Shield’s website and sign up. 

Virta Health on Wellvolution Overview

Virta uses advanced telehealth technology and clinically proven personalized nutrition to help patients reverse type 2 diabetes and other chronic metabolic diseases. BSC members who have been using Virta on Wellvolution after one year saw

– an average 7% weight loss (5% is considered clinically significant) after one year 

– have eliminated more than half of their diabetes medications (not including metformin)

– estimated A1c improved by 1.1% on average. Every-one point decrease in A1c reduces risk of long-term diabetes complications – such as eye, kidney, and nerve damage – by up to 40%.

What You Should Know:

– Omada Health and Castell, an Intermountain value-based care subsidiary, announced a first-of-its kind partnership – creating a new, integrated virtual care model to reach and help more at-risk patients through proven prevention and Diabetes programs.  

The new virtual care model expands the access of Omada’s Diabetes Prevention Program and Diabetes Program to patients and caregivers receiving care from Intermountain Healthcare’s primary care providers within its Utah Medical Group.

– As part of the new partnership, Castell will help to target and enroll eligible patients through their existing care pathways. Patients who have, or are at risk for, diabetes will be proactively contacted by Castell care coordinators and Intermountain providers to give them the option to enroll into the appropriate Omada program.

Omada Health’s Diabetes Prevention Program and Diabetes Program

Omada Health’s Diabetes Prevention Program and Diabetes Program offer members support along with intervention from health coaches certified through CDC-affiliated Diabetes Training and Technical Assistance Center. The members of the programs receive pre-connected cellular scales, with Diabetes Program members also receiving continuous glucose monitors and blood glucose meters, all which report data seamlessly and track progress in real-time. The Diabetes Prevention and Diabetes programs also include an individualized care plan that is backed by behavior science to encourage lasting lifestyle changes.

“This announcement points to a critical, strategic need in the industry – deep collaboration between health systems and virtual care providers,” said Wei-Li Shao, President of Omada Health. “Together, Omada Health and Castell can connect traditional care with virtual care to reach more at-risk patients with our proven Diabetes Prevention and Diabetes programs. This new partnership positions Omada Health squarely at the intersection of in-person and virtual healthcare for some of the most prevalent chronic conditions and is a statement on where the evolution of care is headed.”

Omada’s Diabetes Prevention Program has proven results, as illustrated in the PREDICTS peer-reviewed study, with an average weight loss achieved by Omada participants associated with 50% reduction in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and 58% achieving normal A1C levels. The Diabetes Program members saw an average of 0.8% A1C reduction, including an average of 1.4% reduction for individuals with baseline A1C values at or above 9%, according to the Insights From a Digitally Enhanced Diabetes Program study.

What You Should Know:

– NuraLogix, global pioneers of contactless health monitoring whose technology can take over 30 medical-grade health vitals using any video-enabled device, unveils Anura™ Telehealth, a platform that performs continuous health and vital sign measurements while on a video call.

– This is the latest addition to its AnuraTM platform that uses conventional video cameras to extract facial blood flow information to accurately calculate a host of medical vitals and health risk assessments using numerous consumer devices in the hands of billions of people.

Using Facial Blood Flow Patterns To Unlock a Wealth of Health Data During Telemedicine Consultations

Anura™ is the only video-based contactless health monitoring solution that can measure vital signs and provide health risk assessments. Unlike smartwatches, health trackers, and rings that track blood flow through light sensors, Anura™ can do so with a video selfie.

Anura™ is powered by NuraLogix’s patented Transdermal Optical Imaging (TOI™) technology, a novel form of Remote Photoplethysmography (rPPG). It automatically detects a person’s face, identifies key regions of interest, and extracts blood flow information that is combined with powerful AI data models developed from more than 40,000 patients with multiple health conditions.  

Results are delivered within its intuitive app, showing information on over 30 health parameters such as heart rate, breathing rate, and cuffless blood pressure, and providing health risk assessments for some of the most prevalent chronic conditions. This includes type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and mental health.  

Anura™ Telehealth brings this technology into platforms to enhance remote patient monitoring and telemedicine, making them more valuable to both patients and healthcare professionals. The desktop-based platform performs continuous health and vital sign measurements while on a video call, including heart rate and cuffless blood pressure.  It provides richer interaction and appointments between patients and healthcare practitioners with the ability to provide real-time information and assist physicians in identifying future health risks.  

It is designed for use in the telemedicine, remote patient management, and insurance industries. Key features of the platform include:

• Continuous real-time vital sign measurement

• Ability to integrate with video conference software such as Zoom

• Ability to integrate with telehealth software such as Doxy.me    

• Customizable interfaces, templates, and reporting to accommodate different use cases

“Post-pandemic telemedicine has increasingly become the norm. While convenient and cost-effective, remote visits have until now lacked the ability for health professionals to carry out the routine health checks they would normally perform in the clinical setting,” said Dr. Keith Thompson, Chief Medical Officer at NuraLogix. “From heart rate to blood pressure, Anura™ allows this to occur in real-time while also helping physicians to leverage the power of AI and its potential to help identity, predict and prevent chronic and acute diseases.” 

The ability to carry out risk health assessment is a game changer and a welcome assistance to medical professionals. Uniquely, Anura™ can assess HbA1c, monitor fasting glucose, and assess the risk of Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and hypertriglyceridemia. Its research models have currently appeared in 10 global peer-reviewed research publications, with three additional publications in progress covering topics of hypertension, multi-year cardiovascular risk, diabetes, and fatty liver disease.  Its latest released models have been proven to predict whether a subject’s HbA1c is greater than 5.7% or their Fasting Blood Glucose is greater than 5.5mmol/L to a clinically accurate level.

NuraLogix’s Anura™ includes capabilities for investigational use and go-to-market solutions to allow and is used by customers such as NTT Data, Bupa Group, HSBC, AIA, and FWD to power health programs for consumers. Its capabilities include:

Diabetes prevention is one of the biggest challenges in the healthcare industry as more than 37 million Americans (11.3% of the population) suffer from this debilitating chronic disease. As we close the year out, we sat down with Jon Bloom, MD, CEO and Co-founder of diabetic healthcare tech company Podimetrics to learn how the industry and his company are working to implement health equity change to serve patients living with advanced diabetes. The company’s FDA-cleared SmartMat provides a simple, in-home touchpoint to help stop diabetic foot complications.

Why are racial and ethnic minority populations continuing to experience adverse impacts from complex diabetes more so than other groups of patients?

Jon Bloom, M.D., CEO of Podimetrics: More than 154,000 diabetic amputations occur each year, and up to 80% of people who undergo an amputation will die within five years of the procedure. The risk of amputation is especially high for racial and ethnic minority populations living with type 2 diabetes. For example, Black people are up to 4x more likely to suffer from an amputation resulting from diabetic complications — and Indigenous people are up to 2x more likely. 

A recent consumer survey also uncovered findings that reinforce the serious disparity problems facing minority populations that have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. For instance, Black respondents were more likely (31%) to have experienced a medical emergency because of complications from diabetes compared to the full survey sample (25%). The survey also found that Hispanic individuals with type 2 diabetes are increasingly being impacted by the challenges and disparities created by living with the condition, including 67% reporting mental health issues (compared to 50% for the broader sample) and 65% fearing type 2 diabetes would cause their death (compared to 53% for the broader sample).

High amputation rates tend to be clustered geographically in areas with high scores on the CDC Social Vulnerability Index and the heaviest concentrations of Black Americans. These areas, many of which are in the Deep South, map directly to known food deserts, pharmacy deserts, designated healthcare provider shortage areas, and lower rates of health literacy. Without access to healthy foods to prevent diabetes, pharmacies to access medications, or qualified primary and specialty care providers to prevent or treat the condition as it develops, residents of these areas don’t have the tools to manage diabetes. As a result, amputation may become the only option.

What changes can be made in the near term to address this health equity challenge?

Bloom: To succeed in reducing unnecessary amputations related to complex diabetes, our team knew we needed to launch a dedicated initiative that combines policy levers, reimbursement strategies, technical innovation, and boots-on-the-ground care to move forward with the ultimate goal of reducing the need for amputations among at-risk populations living with complex diabetes. That’s why we collaborated with the American Diabetes Association just this past year to launch the Amputation Prevention Alliance. 

Success for the Alliance — which is focused specifically on addressing health equity challenges — comes down to reducing the more than 154,000 amputations that occur every year in the U.S. Some of the best ways to help prevent amputations and diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) in people — including those who are racial and ethnic minorities — living with complex diabetes are as follows:

– Patient education (and clinician education) about the signs and symptoms associated with DFUs and diabetic neuropathy;

– Regular patient checkups, including appointments with a podiatrist, that are focused primarily on foot health; and 

– Regulatory changes that include screening coverage for those most likely to be at risk of Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD).

Why is preventive care still so challenging today when it comes to diabetes?

Bloom: Preventive care for chronic diseases, such as diabetes, remains a challenge today as we continue to make small strides in the move from fee-for-service to value-driven care. 

As we look to power preventive care for people dealing with complications from diabetes, we’d be well-served to borrow some ideas from a playbook embraced in oncology care and treatment. In oncology, providers from across the care team huddle up as a tumor board, examining the patient’s condition from every angle and developing a holistic treatment plan together.

People with diabetes could benefit from a similarly coordinated, multidisciplinary, and preventive approach. When a patient is at risk for amputation resulting from something like a diabetic foot ulcer, their primary care physician might convene an “amputation board” with medical specialists, social workers, the patient themselves, caregivers, and others to take a closer look at comprehensive strategies for avoiding a devastating outcome. Previous studies have demonstrated that this type of multidisciplinary care can reduce major amputations by up to 80%, allowing many more people to avoid a traumatic and life-altering event.

What role is / can tech play in the prevention for patients living with complex diabetes?

Bloom: Technology can play a huge role when it comes to preventing devastating complications for people living with diabetes. The emergence of virtual care amid the pandemic is a prime example of how technology can help drive connections and collaboration between care teams and people living with chronic diseases — connections that can help identify health issues before they become full-blown diseases. 

Also, our team has seen positive impact for the patient populations that are using our own home-based technology — the SmartMat — to detect signs of diabetic foot complications up to five weeks before they present clinically, allowing for early intervention. This type of technology-driven prevention for people living with advanced diabetes has been shown through clinical research to help eliminate 71% of amputations, reduce all-cause hospitalizations by 52%, and lessen emergency department visits by 40%.

Can you tell us more about Amputation Prevention Alliance, and what efforts will this group be focused on in 2023?

Bloom: Today, every three minutes in the U.S., a limb is amputated due to diabetes — and most are actually avoidable. Our team at Podimetrics has been fully committed to putting an end to unnecessary “Civil War”–style amputations for people dealing with diabetes for more than a decade, and our work with the American Diabetes Association is an extension of this important mission.

Our collaboration specific to the Amputation Prevention Alliance — which is an effort between Podimetrics, the American Diabetes Association, Abbott, Advanced Oxygen Therapy Inc., Cardiovascular Systems, Inc., and the Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI) Global Society — rose out of our shared desire to finally put an end to unnecessary amputations for those living with advanced diabetes.

This month and in the first half of 2023, the Alliance will be rolling out a series of educational sessions targeted at clinicians and people living with diabetes. As patients are pushed to take more ownership in their health and well-being, it’s critical that they know what signs and symptoms they need to be on the lookout for if they are living with diabetes. It’s critical for these folks to be informed and active, not passive, in their own care. Education on their disease and guidance on best practices — such as access to evidence-supported medical tools and technologies — is the first step in our effort to empower people living with diabetes. 

Our education efforts will also be targeted at clinicians and helping to educate them on early detection and preventive care best practices, instead of traditional sick care. Many clinicians have been trained in fee-for-service best practices, so there is a fundamental shift in how clinicians think and operate that needs to be addressed. Preventing amputations requires a team-based collaborative approach. We’ll be working closely with a variety of physician groups and alliances to broaden our education efforts through the Alliance in 2023.

Next year, the Amputation Prevention Alliance will also be tackling regulatory changes needed to ensure equity in care for all people living with diabetes — with a focus on driving new regulations that power preventive measures, such as facilitating additional research on amputation prevention, quality services performed by a podiatrist, and increased screening for issues such as peripheral artery disease.

What You Should Know:

– Type 2 diabetes reversal leader Virta Health revealed promising one-year outcomes from its partnership with AutoZone, Inc., a retailer and distributor of automotive replacement parts and accessories in the Americas.

– Virta provides virtual, continuous health coaching, medical supervision and personalized nutrition to help patients reverse their metabolic disease, lose weight, + get off medications. At one year, AutoZoners experience long-term blood sugar control and clinically-significant weight loss while eliminating over half of diabetes medications.

AutoZone’s Health Outcomes for Employees

AutoZone currently offers Virta’s type 2 diabetes reversal, prediabetes reversal, type 2 diabetes management, and obesity and weight loss solutions to eligible AutoZoners at no-cost. Over the past twelve months, AutoZoners living with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, and obesity have achieved transformative results with Virta, including:

– Medication Deprescription: Type 2 diabetes patients eliminated over half of diabetes medications (excluding metformin), including a 73% reduction in insulin prescribed after 12 months.

– Blood Sugar Reduction: Estimated HbA1c (a measure of average blood sugar) improved by 1% on average for diabetes patients. Every one-point decrease in HbA1c reduces the risk of long-term diabetes complications—such as eye, kidney, and nerve disease—by up to 40%.

– Clinically Significant Weight Loss: Across all groups, patients saw at least 8% weight loss on average (5% is the benchmark for FDA-approved weight-loss drugs and what is considered clinically significant). AutoZoners enrolled in Virta’s obesity program experienced 9% weight loss.

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. 

What You Should Know:

– Researchers at NuraLogix, a global pioneer of contactless health monitoring through its patented Transdermal Optical Imaging (TOI™) technology, have announced that it is adding 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.

Assessing Type 2 Diabetes and Blood Biomarker Health Issues Using Any Video-Enabled Device

NuraLogix is the creator of the world’s first contactless blood pressure measurement technology. The company’s patented Transdermal Optical Imaging (TOI™) technology can measure over 30 health and wellness parameters using a conventional video camera to extract facial blood flow information from the human face. This is demonstrated in the company’s ground-breaking Anura™ app. Founded in 2015, NuraLogix’s ground-breaking technology allows third-party clients such as health providers, product developers, insurance companies, and wellness programs to help consumers better manage their physical and mental health. The expansion of its capabilities to assess HbA1c and monitor fasting glucose, as well as assess the risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and hypertriglyceridemia is being unveiled at HLTH in Las Vegas, and is available to experience at booth #3009. 

Anura™ is the only video-based contactless health monitoring solution that can measure vital signs and provide health risk assessments. The metabolic and blood biomarker risk assessments will join the existing cardiovascular disease risk assessments, including 10-year predictions of risk of death from heart attack or stroke. 

“Following years of research and development, we are excited to share the expanded capabilities of the Anura™ platform. Our research models have been proven to predict whether a subject’s HbA1c is greater than 5.7%, or their Fasting Blood Glucose is greater than 5.5mmol/L, to a clinically accurate level,” said Dr. Keith Thompson, Chief Medical Officer at NuraLogix. “The ability to assess health with just a look into every day, readily available consumer devices is a game changer for the healthcare industry. Using ubiquitous devices, Anura™ has the potential to accelerate the adoption of solutions for the early detection of chronic diseases, expand health equity and access to underserved populations while dramatically decreasing costs of care.” 

NuraLogix delivers contactless health monitoring via its Anura™ platform that combines data gathered through its TOI™ technology, a novel form of Remote Photoplethysmography (rPPG). Developed with data from more than 40,000 patients with multiple conditions, NuraLogix’s research on these predicted models has been tested and published in numerous peer-reviewed journals worldwide.  

Anura™ uses a conventional video camera to extract facial blood flow information combined with sophisticated AI model analysis in the cloud that extrapolates health information from the pattern of facial blood flows. Results are delivered within its intuitive app, showing information on over 30 health parameters* such as heart rate, breathing rate, and cuffless blood pressure, and providing health risk assessments for some of the most prevalent chronic conditions. This includes type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and mental health.

Anura™ is hardware and platform agnostic, and performs across most digital consumer health platforms on the market, such as Mobile (iOS and Android), Desktop (Windows, Linux, macOS), Web, Smart Mirrors, Messaging Services, and more.  With the ability to be delivered as a branded or white label solution, NuraLogix is paving the way to a world where health vitals are continually monitored with just a look at a smartphone, bathroom mirror, TV screen, or kiosk — transforming the way chronic diseases are identified, managed, and prevented.  

Combination of genetic testing, custom nutrition/exercise/mental wellbeing planning, and personal coaching thwarts chronic metabolic diseases through habit change.

The most effective approach to treating chronic disease today focuses on behavior change and prevention.  Condition management is yesterday’s innovation; the real key is keeping healthy people healthy in the first place. Smart preventative treatment involves highly personalized experiences informed by behavioral genetic testing to design the right nutrition + exercise + mental wellbeing recommendations delivered through a personal health coach. This combination has achieved remarkable success both warding off chronic disease before it arrives and slowing and reversing disease where it appears.  

Here’s a quick review of the staggering impact chronic disease is currently having on today’s population. Then, we’ll take a closer look at how and why the three-pronged approach to behavioral change and better health is so effective. 

Chronic Disease Epidemic 

The U.S. and its workforce is increasingly aging, obese and suffering from chronic disease. A full 24% of the workforce is 55 or older, according to the CDC, and hypertension affects almost half of that population. Today’s top causes of death include heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases and diabetes. All appear far more prevalently among today’s workforce than in generations past because of both age and a more sedentary lifestyle.  

Covid vigorously exacerbated our already bad national health condition. Millions of us have gained weight. NPR reports we almost universally took on bad habits, becoming more sedentary, drinking more and neglecting our care in everything from cholesterol checks to cancer screenings.  Psychological stress grew. Various studies reported increases in post-traumatic stress disorder, depressive disorders, delirium, somatic symptoms, panic disorder, psychosis, harmful substance use, despair, self-harm and even suicide.  Roughly 40% of the Americans – 400,000 people! – who tragically perished from Covid had Type 2 Diabetes.  Today, six in 10 U.S. adults have a chronic disease according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and nearly 30 percent suffer from multiple chronic diseases.  

Effective Habit Building 

Preventative health programs offered through employers and health plans are helping people at risk who voluntarily choose to participate achieve impressive results in effectively warding off the most disastrous effects of our current chronic disease epidemic. Here’s how they work. 

To participate in such programs, individuals determine their “at risk” status through biometric measures (if they’ve been screened previously) or by taking a simple online assessment.  Once qualified, individuals begin a highly personalized journey to improve numerous physical and mental aspects – everything from their waist circumference, blood pressure, blood glucose, and cholesterol to behavioral measures related to anxiety, depression, resilience, sleep and mood.  Each participant receives an individually tailored plan and ongoing support to help them move forward and meet their goals. 

To be effective, preventative health programs need to address three necessary and complementary components:  genetic analysis, custom nutritional, exercise, and mental wellbeing planning, and coach-aided habit change. 

– Behavioral genetic testing. Solid preventative health programs offer insights based on the presence or absence of a compilation of extensively researched behavioral genetic variants – for example, alleles of genes related to weight loss, stress and lifestyle.  The genes involved may include ones like FTO (aka “The Body Fat Gene”), DRD2 (“The Cravings Gene”), MC4R (“The Appetite Gene”), and BDNF (“The Resilience to Stress Gene”). Folks who have the “fat gene,” for example, have a harder time breaking down and using carbs. Folks with the “cravings gene” are susceptible to eating food to stimulate the pleasure centers of their brains which might not be receiving enough dopamine. When you have the “appetite gene,” it might mean your brain is a bit slower than your stomach in understanding when you are full, meaning you could be unusually susceptible to overeating. Finally, low levels of the “resilience to stress” gene in the brain tend to increase appetite and decrease energy expenditure, both of which can lead to overeating and weight gain. Each of these circumstances can be effectively addressed and mitigated through customized nutritional, exercise and mental wellbeing recommendations. 

– Custom nutritional, exercise and mental wellbeing planning.  Lifestyle programs are custom-built for plan participants and designed in line with what their genetic testing reveals as well as any conditions they may currently be suffering from (or are most worried about preventing) and their lifestyles. Participants learn how different types of food affect their bodies, what’s involved in metabolism and digestion, and how varying times of day or stress levels can affect their consumption habits.  They gain tips and tricks for eating well and building sustainable, healthy habits for lasting weight control.  Individualized exercise plans are provided to help participants reach their fitness goals.  Participants also receive guidance and instruction regarding resilience and mindfulness, as well as education on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques and coping strategies.  

– Health coaching.  Every individual engaged in a three-pronged prevention plan receives the guidance, motivation and support of a dedicated health coach. Unlike trainers you find in gyms or teachers of a pre-set curriculum, effective health coaches provide more than mere instruction. These coaches have training in nutrition, exercise, and cognitive behavioral therapy and are focused on the entire spectrum of wellbeing.  They are part habit change designer, part behavior change expert and serve as confidantes, accountability partners and resources with no agenda other than helping you become your best self. Over time, they both monitor progress and help individuals fine-tune their approach. 

These preventative health programs often measure success in large part by tracking engagement levels and improvement in whole health outcomes – improvements in both physical and mental health factors. How often are employees and members reaching their health goals? How fully are employees and members remaining engaged and sticking with their habits over time? How likely are engaged employees and members to refer others? Look for answers of 80% or greater in each case. 

The Smart Way Ahead

Employers and health plans today evaluating future healthcare expenses for their populations realize they face steep cost pressures and that the incidence of chronic diseases in today’s populations is growing and life-threatening. 

A platform that generates personalized health programs and creates healthy lifelong habits promises a revolution of relief by preventing, reversing and slowing chronic disease. Such a platform not only saves costs but can be profitable and self-funding within as little as a year, as peer-reviewed evidence demonstrates.  Such a platform can also curate and optimize existing benefits or value-added services for employers and health plans.

Employees and members who develop new and sustainable healthy habits become happier, have greater focus and are more productive.  This helps shrink costs associated with the chronic disease epidemic as well as promoting individuals to live their best lives.  That sure sounds like the health care we all aspire to.  

About Jeff Ruby

Jeff Ruby is founder and CEO of Newtopia, a tech-enabled habit change provider focused on disease prevention and reducing the cost of care for risk-bearing entities like large, self-insured employers. A health innovator with an extensive entrepreneurial track record in preventive health, Ruby was Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Cleveland Clinic Canada, a collaboration between the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Canyon Ranch. Before that, he served as Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Life Screening Centers, a cancer screening and prevention company. He has a joint Juris Doctorate and Master of Business Administration (JD/MBA) from Osgoode Hall and the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Western University. Ruby is a global thought leader and expert on scalable and sustainable behavior change.

What You Should Know:

– Health insurer UnitedHealthcare has donated $11M in grants to nonprofit organizations across 11 states. 

– These grants are part of our Empowering Health program focused on expanding access to care and addressing the social determinants of health (SDoH) for people in underserved communities. These grants assist individuals and families experiencing challenges from food insecurity, social isolation and behavioral health issues, and support local health promotion and health literacy efforts. 

Empowering Health Program

These grants will help those struggling with food insecurity, social isolation, behavioral health issues, health literacy efforts and more.

The grants include:

· $300,000 to Mama’s Kitchen in San Diego County, California to expand the home-delivered meal service program, which provides medically tailored meals for low-income individuals recently discharged from the hospital with a primary diagnosis of HIV, cancer, congestive heart failure or type 2 diabetes.

·  $250,000 to Boys and Girls Clubs in Benton Harbor, Michigan to help expand the Triple Play program which addresses physical activity, good nutrition and healthy relationships for children ages 6-18. 

· $150,000 to American Indian Health Center, Goodheart Behavioral Health in Spokane, Washington to hire a mental health clinician who specializes in therapeutic interventions for the Native American community and increase the number of community members served.

· $150,000 to Sowega Council on Aging in South Georgia to deploy social isolation solutions through the Senior Center Without Walls program.

· $90,000 to On Our Own of Maryland to conduct facilitator training to start and expand recognized, evidence-based peer support programs such as Whole Health Action Management and Wellness Recovery Action Plan, at five peer-run Wellness and Recovery Centers.

·       $65,000 to Resource Council of WNY in Buffalo, New York to establish the R-Kids Cupboard children’s food pantry (with refrigerators, freezers, shelving units, nutritious food and more) and a demonstration kitchen to offer healthy cooking classes for the community.

The Empowering Health program launched across the country in 2018 and has invested more than $51 million through partnerships with community-based organizations in 30 states and the District of Columbia. In June, the United Health Foundation, the philanthropic foundation of UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, made a $100 million commitment over 10 years to advance health equity, furthering its efforts to eliminate health disparities. This was the largest single philanthropic commitment ever made by the United Health Foundation.

“We see profound, persistent disparities playing out along racial lines in communities across the country. UnitedHealthcare is committed to addressing social and economic factors that have an impact on achieving and maintaining good health,” said Olivia Jefferson, vice president of social responsibility at UnitedHealthcare. “Ultimately, health is local. That’s why we’re working collectively with community organizations through our Empowering Health grants to advance change for people we call our friends, family and neighbors.”

What You Should Know:

– One Drop, a leader in precision health solutions for people living with diabetes and other chronic conditions,  announced outcomes from a retrospective cohort study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) on the effects of its novel AI-powered blood glucose (BG) forecasting feature.

– In the present study, cohort members using One Drop’s glucose forecasting feature were more likely to log glucose values in the app than those who did not receive forecasts (i.e., matched control group). They also had more glucose measurements within a healthy range after 12 weeks, corresponding to significantly lower average glucose 

AI-Driven Precision Health Solutions

According to the Association of Diabetes Care & Education Specialists (ADCES), self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) is an integral component of effective therapy for people with diabetes and is associated with improved glycemic control. It was found that adults with type 2 diabetes who received glucose forecasts and personalized insights were more likely to track health data in the One Drop app and achieved lower average glucose.

Researchers identified glucose logging as a partial mediator of the relationship between forecast exposure and week-12 average glucose, thus highlighting a potential mechanism through which glucose forecasts exert their effect among T2Ds—improved mHealth engagement associated with increased self-monitoring of blood glucose and better glycemic management.

“AI-based digital health tools must go beyond data generation to keep people engaged and motivated to make healthier decisions,” said Dr. Dan Goldner, EVP of advanced technologies, research, and discovery at One Drop. “Results from the present study validate the strength of our predictive intelligence and cross-disciplinary approach: behavioral data science. In simple terms, One Drop AI reduces cognitive burden caused by managing a chronic condition like diabetes and encourages self-care behaviors to drive cost-saving outcomes.”

Unlike other digital health solutions, which apply machine learning to backend infrastructure, One Drop uses artificial intelligence to provide direct support through eight-hour glucose forecasts with over 90% accuracy and deliver immediate insights people can use. The feature simplifies healthy decision-making by connecting everyday behaviors with outcomes and offering ongoing guidance to complement the support members receive from their healthcare providers.