Hospital systems are experiencing increased cost of care due to workforce shortages, constrained bed capacity and increasing readmission rates.^i,ii Care-at-home programs, which typically include a virtual component, have proven to be effective in decreasing the length of stay and readmission rates which can result in the overall cost of care being reduced.^iii,iv Additionally, care-at-home programs can also support patient recovery and safety, with a potential reduction in fall risk and hospital acquired infections.^v Patients using remote solutions in their homes are three times more likely to be satisfied with the overall care experience.^vi

The goal of the GE HealthCare-Biofourmis collaboration is to enable more patients to go home earlier, and offer an alternative to facility-based care with the comfort and peace of mind that they are receiving high quality care at home with the intent of driving healthy behaviors in patients by managing them remotely. Moreover, insights from Biofourmis’ FDA-cleared, AI-guided algorithms can help care teams deliver efficient, personalized care at home.

“Biofourmis’ demonstrated success with care-at-home solutions will extend GE HealthCare’s current inpatient monitoring portfolio to support patient care from the hospital to home,” said Ashutosh Banerjee, GE HealthCare. “Combining our companies’ demonstrated capabilities will help revolutionize the way we approach the patient care journey as well as help address current challenges faced by health systems including hospital capacity issues and clinical staffing shortages.”

Biofourmis offers care-at-home solutions to deliver and enable care both virtually and in person using its digital platform, with FDA-cleared AI-guided algorithms, clinical-grade wearable devices, in-home services orchestration technology, and nursing services. The solutions provide numerous dynamic care pathways with questionnaire-branching logic to provide enhanced clinical context for care teams.

GE HealthCare’s FlexAcuity™ monitoring solutions in combination with GE HealthCare’s virtual care solutions like Mural ICU, Command Center and Digital CMU adapt to rapidly changing patient needs in the hospital and are built on a legacy of innovation. By offering Biofourmis’ virtual care-at-home solutions to customers, GE HealthCare can extend the care continuum beyond the hospital, and care teams can have a longitudinal patient view beyond the hospital setting.

Ross Armstrong, General Manager of Biofourmis Care, said: “Our collaboration will enable health systems and hospitals to leverage the power of technology and data in order to shape patient-focused solutions across the care continuum, no matter where the site of care is.”

GE HealthCare will begin distributing Biofourmis solutions to customers in the United States starting Q1 2024.

About Biofourmis

Biofourmis delivers technology-enabled solutions that bring the right care to any person anywhere. Biofourmis’ innovative solutions provide people everywhere with connected access to hospital-level services, virtual provider networks for remote care, in-home services, and life-changing clinical trials—all without leaving their homes. The company’s FDA-cleared AI-enabled analytics collect and analyze patient data in real time and identify shifts that can assist in supporting proactive interventions. Trusted by leading health systems, payers, biopharma companies and patients alike, Biofourmis’ connected platform improves patient outcomes, prevents hospital readmissions, aims to accelerate drug development, and closes critical gaps in care—ultimately making science smarter, healthcare simpler, and patients healthier. Biofourmis is a global technology company enabling care delivery, with headquarters in Boston and offices in Singapore and India.

About GE HealthCare Technologies Inc.

GE HealthCare is a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and digital solutions innovator, dedicated to providing integrated solutions, services, and data analytics to make hospitals more efficient, clinicians more effective, therapies more precise, and patients healthier and happier. Serving patients and providers for more than 100 years, GE HealthCare is advancing personalized, connected, and compassionate care, while simplifying the patient’s journey across the care pathway. Together our Imaging, Ultrasound, Patient Care Solutions, and Pharmaceutical Diagnostics businesses help improve patient care from diagnosis, to therapy, to monitoring. We are a $19.6 billion business with 51,000 colleagues working to create a world where healthcare has no limits.

ⁱ Fleron, A., Krishna, A., & Singhal, S. (2022, September 19). The gathering storm: The transformative impact of inflation on the healthcare sector. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/the-gathering-storm-the-transformative-impact-of-inflation-on-the-healthcare-sector

ⁱⁱ Massive Growth in Expenses and Rising Inflation Fuel Continued Financial Challenges for America’s Hospitals and Health Systems. American Hospital Association. (2022, April). https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2022/04/2022-Hospital-Expenses-Increase-Report-Final-Final.pdf

ⁱⁱⁱ Levine DM, Ouchi K, Blanchfield B, Saenz A, Burke K, Paz M,Diamond K, Pu CT, Schnipper JL. Hospital-Level Care at Home for Acutely Ill Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Ann Intern Med. 2020 Jan21;172(2):77-85. doi: 10.7326/M19-0600. Epub 2019 Dec 17. PMID: 31842232.

^iv Leff B, Burton L, Mader SL, Naughton B, Burl J, Inouye SK, Greenough WB 3rd, Guido S, Langston C, Frick KD, Steinwachs D, Burton JR. Hospital at home: feasibility and outcomes of a program to provide hospital-level care at home for acutely ill older patients. Ann Intern Med.2005 Dec 6;143(11):798-808. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-143-11-200512060-00008. PMID: 16330791.

^v Telehealth: Helping hospitals deliver cost-effective care.American Hospital Association. (2016, April 22). https://www.aha.org/system/files/content/16/16telehealthissuebrief.pdf  

^vi Leff B, Burton L, Mader S, Naughton B, Burl J, Clark R, Greenough WB 3rd, Guido S, Steinwachs D, Burton JR. Satisfaction with hospital at home care. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2006 Sep;54(9):1355-63. doi:10.1111/j.1532-5415.2006.00855.x. PMID: 16970642.

The post GE HealthCare and Biofourmis Collaborate to Extend Patient Monitoring Outside the Hospital with Virtual Care-at-Home Solutions appeared first on Medika Life.

Significant change is needed. But what change? Lowering drug costs will not lower total spending on health so long as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) continue to profit from the “spread.” Access to care will not improve so long as we ponder the future of essential telehealth services. Patient adherence will not be supported if formularies can call upon “non-medical switching” as a go-to negotiating tool. The US percentage of GDP will not align with other developed nations’ investments in health if we don’t redirect effort to emotional and physical preventive and value-based care. Fixing one piece of the healthcare puzzle is helpful – but is it transformational?

There are changes afoot that we need to make happen sooner rather than later by moving minds, systems and behaviors so that life-sustaining and life-saving approaches to patient care may eventually tip the scale of human survival toward health and wellness. However, we see data through the lens of a human perspective – sometimes self-interests or emotional needs for control.

Here are 10 possibilities that are not dreams – they can happen – if the health ecosystem leaders think beyond cost, reimbursement or authoritative voice and focus on people’s healthy longevity:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) — A future of engagement and collaboration:

AI has been around since the Gutenberg Bible! In 1899, medicine made a giant leap into AI by publishing the Merck Manual — a handbook that collected all known medical advice and gave physicians a compendium of diagnoses and treatments. No expert can remember the vast canon of medical information within their specialty, and books became a source of “augmented knowledge.”

Too many health systems and physicians view AI as “novel.” Addressing the obstacles to implementation within their health systems is critical to enhanced decision-making benefits offered by AI. Concerns about cybersecurity and training are valid! However, the value of implementing artificial intelligence is not about embracing technology — it’s about amplifying human wisdom to address patient urgencies effectively.

Human intelligence can be augmented by uniting data, patient files and other health professionals’ patient-care experiences, channeled through this technology platform. We must now rally to address questions about data quality, emotional resistance to change and cybersecurity. As innovation theorist, John Nosta writes about the emerging importance of aligning IQ and EQ with TQ (technology quotient).

“The battle of man versus machine might be ending where cooperative engagement provides transformative solutions to a wide variety of problems and opportunities.”

2. Behavioral Health — America does not lack a supply chain to manufacture chronically ill citizens:

We are killing ourselves slowly…with poor nutrition. We continue to add belt notches to our waistlines. The added weight also increases risks for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, mental health stressors, and more. Who pays those sickness bills? Employers foot a large percentage of the nation’s workforce health insurance. It’s time to look beyond providing an expected workplace benefit. Physicians, employers, payers and the people they seek to help must reduce the waistlines of people tipping toward the obesity border! Helping consumers shed unnecessary pounds and meeting their corresponding medical priorities offers immediate life-saving and personalized health benefits.

The best option for corporations footing a large part of the health bill is to intervene with payers and recognize benign neglect in tackling the obesity epidemic only adds to suffering and expense. Louis J. Aronne, M.D., who founded the breakthrough patient-centered health-tech Intellihealth along with Weill Cornell Medicine physician colleague Katherine Saunders, MD, notes:

“Obesity is a very complex chronic disease with a number of causes from diet to underlying medical conditions, medications and genetics. “Through our extensive research and applied medical model, we have incorporated all of our practice methodologies into a single software platform, which delivers a blueprint for treating obesity with supervision and continued oversight. Evaluation of our approach demonstrates 3x the number of patients reaching the key outcome measure of 5% or greater weight loss compared to programs that incorporate behavioral interventions alone.”

3. Decentralized Clinical Trials — Democratize drug development:

Even before COVID-19 appeared, traditional clinical trial recruitment models were being reconsidered. Drug development was almost sidelined during the pandemic, and clinical research organizations (CROs) recognized that they needed to reinvent patient recruitment. Operation Warp Speed showed how to put the pedal to the metal for COVID-19 vaccines; systems developed now can be applied to other high-priority, clinical urgencies such as treatments for rare diseases and often-fatal cancers.

Collaboration to advance the process is working. Science and research pioneers such as Amir Kalali, MD, and Craig Lipset, who co-lead the industry-wide DTRA.org group, show the sector’s readiness to change direction collectively. Innovators like Michelle Longmire, MD, CEO of Medable, and Irfan Khan, MD, CEO of Circuit Clinical, demonstrate that an industry known to advance new medications from bench to bedside can innovate how and where patients are invited to participate in urgently needed therapeutic discoveries. Innovation is based on finding new paths to address unmet needs.

To accelerate drug discovery and development possibilities, biopharma and medical device companies need to find a new set of allies – patient advocacy organizations and their communities; primary care centers with access to people in rural and inner-city communities. They must recognize that in working with government, sector companies, and those that seek to serve – people with health needs – they can go farther, faster.

4. Digital Health — Physicians and patients need coverage clarity:

Food and Drug Administration approval for life-sustaining innovations does not necessarily sway payer access decisions. “Claim denied” is the all-to-often refrain when physicians and their patients seek access to a 510 K-approved medical device or digital therapeutic.

Payers may have sufficient justification to deny coverage. But what are the criteria for those “dead-on-arrival” reimbursement decisions? What are the guidelines to secure formulary approval? If more data are needed to ensure access for patients — insurance customers — payers must become partners in the sector’s and patient-care success. Adding bricks to the walls patients must circumvent to secure care for themselves and their families does little to improve care or customer relationships.

Digital health analyst and author Artur Olesch outlines a challenge for the coming year in a question many more should be asking:

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the implementation of telecare and telemedicine. Individuals are increasingly using mobile health apps. What can be done not to waste this potential?

5. Ecohealth — We need a healthy planet or else:

Where you live impacts how long and how well you live. Thousands of U.S. communities are ticking time bombs. The harsh reality is that 26% of Black Americans and 29% of Hispanic Americans live within three miles of a toxic landfill site, exposing these communities of color to dangerous levels of lead and other heavy metals and chemicals. We must face the harsh reality that while planet earth can do just fine without humanity; humanity needs a healthy planet. This was the striking call-to-action by Meharry Medical College President and CEO Dr. James E.K. Hildreth.

The longer we wait, the harder it will be to course-correct. The shift to a healthier world requires other innovative superpowers — courage and collaboration. According to Bob Martineau, senior partner FINN Partners, a former Federal and State government official focusing on environment issues: 

Though we breathe, eat and live in the environment, we often forget just how interconnected all aspects of our health are with the world around us. Exposure to dangerous levels of air, soil and groundwater pollution is proven to cause a cascade of life-threatening woes that include cancers, nervous system disorders, respiratory diseases, and premature births.

6. Tackle older patients’ care and adherence challenges:

When people are diagnosed with a chronic or severe medical condition, we must ensure that the patient-physician relationship guides care and that the medical ecosystem prioritizes medication adherence. The National Health Institute reports that 40% of patients sustain significant risks by misunderstanding, forgetting, or ignoring healthcare advice. We don’t need to invent or create new care challenges. Let physicians already seeking to do good oversee clinical-care decisions.

Age discrimination and comfort with using technology to access the health system are barriers to access and understanding medication use and adherence. Age bias is often attached to health conditions often experienced in older persons. While older Americans often are the health system’s most significant customers, they face continued discrimination. We must see continued innovation in earlier detection of illnesses that impact seniors, such as loneliness, Alzheimer’s and even sexually transmitted diseases.

7. Health disparities — The most vulnerable need access to care now:

Decades of racism place people of color in harm’s way from COVID-19 more than any other community. Blacks are dying at a rate of 50.3 per 100,000 people, compared with 20.7 for whites. In New York City, the most densely populated place in America, 19% of residents, many people of color, live in poverty, while 17% live in overcrowded conditions. We seem unable to come to grips with the reality that health disparities cause multiple public health disasters and cost lives and dollars.

We must reach the communities that seek information in ways that speak to their interests and needs. What groups such as Hip Hop Public Health creatively use the power of music with health-specific messages to mobilize and change mindsets.

America is among the few developed nations that deny good healthcare services to those most in need. Neglect and racism are morally counter to the health mission of medical leaders. The changes of senior citizens to access health networks easily must be addressed. Policymakers, corporate leaders and citizens must raise their voices to enact change. A cultural shift is needed to rally communities for awareness and education. According to Yele Aluko, MD, MBA, chief medical officer at EY:

The current conversation going on nationally about societal justice, about health equity, drives a moral imperative. This conversation is going on across health systems, big business, government, and philanthropic organizations. Everybody’s talking about how we need to fix this wrong, so the time is now. We have a convergence of goodwill that drives my optimism. But we must seize the moment and translate it into actionable solutions.

8. Metaverse — Smart technologies channel our imagination toward curative possibilities:

Do you have an imagination? Put it to work to heal. After all, medical engineering is a pioneering effort that connects people’s ideas with human biology to overcome sickness. We entered the “Matrix” the first time we imaged a therapeutic stent, LVAD and 3D-printed artificial limb; complex operations became possible when expert hands drew upon technology to realize new concepts.

Rafael Grossman, MD, FACS, has been tapping technology to improve patient-centered medical care. Always ready to explore the disruptive power of technology in medicine, Dr. Grossman has been at the forefront of using smart glasses, augmented, virtual and mixed reality to change the way we practice and teach medicine.

Grossman and medical compatriots such as Daniel Kraft, MD, don’t see the metaverse as sci-fi. Artificial reality, virtual reality and wearables are used by leading-edge practitioners to advance patient outcomes.

9. Remote Patient Monitoring and Telehealth — Remote care after COVID-19:

Digital systems are built into beds, furniture and watches. Medical wearables make hospital stays more customer-friendly by delivering patient information straight to providers’ smartphones and central monitoring stations. At the height of the pandemic, there was a dramatic uptick in telehealth and remote care. As reimbursement rates shift, patients worry they will lose the benefits of remote care.

Ever so often, Congress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and private payers pump the brakes on continued remote access with life-saving services such as telemedicine. We need to change the culture of conservatism when it comes to remote advancements and access. Groups like the American Telemedicine Association are essential voices for access and a sensible hybrid approach to care.

Medicine is a culture where patients are not yet seen as customers. Cancer survivor, caregiver and health professional Stacy Hurt, a HIMSS Digital Health Influencer and recent participant in a VyTrac-sponsored webinar on remote patient monitoring, writes on the importance of a hybrid approach:

Patients ultimately want two things: hope and options. We’re finally to a point where telemedicine is an option. It for sure shouldn’t replace the in-person encounter and relationship between the healthcare provider and patient, but it is an option we need to preserve.

10. Self-Care — Our health system keeps us alive — it doesn’t keep us well:

Our health system is not built around sustaining “health.” We have invested mightily in national illness management, a sick-care structure that offers no return on investment regarding a better path to healthy longevity. Value-based and preventive care to keep the illness at bay is a big win-win-win for households, companies and governments that now foot the nation’s health insurance bill. Employers and payers will find that incentivizing self-care and illness prevention is a more innovative business model.

WebMD Chief Medical Officer John Whyte, MD, an author on bestsellers with life-saving tips to reduce cancer and diabetes risks, writes:

The biggest myth has been that (cancer) is primarily caused by genetics or just bad luck and there is nothing that you can do about it. The reality is only about 30% of cancer is caused by what we would say are inherited mutations or family history. The rest is primarily influenced by lifestyle. I know, although nothing is 100% preventable, we have learned through science that you can reduce your risk by deciding what you eat, how much you exercise, your level of stress, the quality of your sleep. These are all things you have control over.

If this roster of innovations in hand tells us anything, it’s time we put health-system mindset change front and center. There are plenty of great reasons to say, “this won’t work” or “let’s not do it; it adds to costs.” It is understandable that new products, services and approaches take time to implement and cost money. But when we look at people’s well-being, adding complexity to people’s lives that separates them from access to the best quality of care has never been medicine’s intended mission.

We look to changes such as Amazon purchasing One Medical as a pathway to fix that which is broken. We have an abundance of innovative, readily and inexpensive (often generic) medicines. We often can speak with a skilled health professional through our smartphones and tablets. Perhaps the change so sorely needed isn’t another billion-dollar acquisition and “roll-up,” it’s addressing the challenges of collaboration and transparency?

Health providers are at the forefront of confronting our significant societal challenges. They have risen to the task heroically. Health disparities between the haves and have-nots and developed and developing nations have opened our eyes and hearts. Innovation combined with our determination must open the door to fundamental system change.

The post Health Possibilities We Can’t Afford to Block appeared first on Medika Life.

Qure4u’s RPM solution is part of its MyCarePlan patient engagement and virtual care platform to manage comprehensive health. AT&T Professional Services is handling the set-up, delivery and management of the Qure4u ready-to-use RPM kits. The kits include a Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure cuff and the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite with mobile device management solution for enhanced security. The tablets transmit vitals from hypertension patients to their healthcare providers using the Qure4u platform, enabling care teams to closely monitor the patients. Hypertension can lead to two of the biggest killers in the U.S. – heart disease and stroke. Qure4u plans to include additional peripherals in the RPM kits as the program quickly grows.

For patients, Qure4u’s RPM solution means easy access to improved healthcare with the peace of mind that comes from daily assurances and support. For healthcare providers, the benefits include ready access to patient data and the ability to act on it in near-real time; increased staffing efficiencies; better management of chronic conditions; and reimbursement.

Why is this important? As the healthcare industry works to lower costs and produce better patient outcomes, it’s turning to technology and innovation like RPM. Reliable, highly secure connectivity is a must for doctors to access actionable patient health data which may help avoid preventable emergencies and manage chronic illnesses. That’s what FirstNet, Built with AT&T, delivers. FirstNet is the only nationwide, high-speed broadband communications platform dedicated to and purpose-built for America’s first responders and the extended public safety community. It’s Built with AT&T in a public-private partnership with the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority) – an independent agency within the federal government.

Qure4u joins FirstNet as an extended primary user – organizations and agencies that could be called on to help support public safety during emergency response. Extended primary users include healthcare, public works, essential government services, school security, transportation, and utilities. The work they are called on to perform ranges from mitigation, remediation, clean-up, and restoration to the provisioning of other services required during the time of an emergency or its aftermath. Eligibility for extended primary user status is rigorously reviewed before service is approved, to help ensure that FirstNet’s unique capabilities remain dedicated to first responders and those who support them.

What are people saying? 
“More doctors are embracing remote patient monitoring, because they’re realizing the many benefits. For patients, it’s about peace of mind and daily assurance and better quality of care. For doctors, it’s ease of access to patient data, the ability to act in near real-time, better efficiencies, and reimbursement. And at the core of this vital service is what AT&T is all about: creating reliable and highly secure connectivity. We keep the lines of communication open so healthcare professionals can communicate where and when it matters. We enable healthcare through connectivity.” – Joe Drygas, VP of AT&T Healthcare Industry Solutions

“Secure, reliable connectivity is paramount to help ensure at-risk patients receive the high level of care they need. A quarter of the healthcare organizations Qure4u supports today are Federally Qualified Health Centers, community health centers, and critical access hospitals caring for rural patient populations. It’s vital that our platform can reach all of those patients, regardless of geographic, socioeconomic, or technological barriers. We can provide ubiquitous healthcare connectivity with FirstNet and AT&T, device partnerships with vendors committed to the field like Samsung, and lifecycle management for everything from kitting to order fulfillment. We are excited to collaborate on this mission to bring greater health equity to rural communities.” – Bradley Dick, Chief Information & Security Officer, Qure4u

“Remote patient monitoring has the potential to transform the patient experience, improve health outcomes and save patients and providers money. Together with AT&T and Qure4U, we’ll be able to help high-risk patients in underserved, rural communities safely and securely monitor their health, empowering their doctors to make more informed decisions based on patient data.” – Dr. Hon Pak, Chief Medical Officer of Samsung Electronics America

About AT&T Communications
We help family, friends and neighbors connect in meaningful ways every day. From the first phone call 140+ years ago to mobile video streaming, we @ATT innovate to improve lives. AT&T Communications is part of AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T). For more information, please visit us at att.com.

About Qure4u 
Qure4u’s complete digital health platform, with contactless “digital front door” solutions, offers patients and providers a scalable, EHR-embedded ecosystem to support the entire patient journey. Remote check-in, Virtual Waiting Room™, Digital Health Key™, Qure4u DriveUp™, data sharing, telehealth, pre- and post-procedure prep, remote patient monitoring, secure communication, and care plan features close the gap for patients and providers between office visits. By enabling patients with self-service tools to manage their health from anywhere, Qure4u drives practice efficiency and enhances clinical insight. The company’s solutions improve patient engagement, outcomes, and satisfaction. Qure4u was recently recognized as one of the MedikaLife Top 50 Most Impactful Tech Innovators for Digital Healthcare in 2021 and won the 2020 athenahealth Client Feedback Award. For more information about Qure4u, visit www.qure4u.com.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Samsung inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, digital appliances, network systems, and memory, system LSI, foundry and LED solutions. For the latest news, please visit the Samsung Newsroom at news.samsung.com.

FirstNet and the FirstNet logo are registered trademarks of the First Responder Network Authority.  All other marks are the property of their respective owners. 

Media Contact
Jess Clifton
FINN Partners
jess@ten22pr.com
678-360-9043

SOURCE Qure4u

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