patient engagement Archives - Business RadioX ®

Moving Analytics

March 10, 2016 by angishields

Health Connect South

Moving Analytics

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Moving Analytics

This week I spoke with the co-founder, Harsh Vathsangam, of a technology company, Moving Analytics, that is working to significantly increase participation rates in cardiac rehabilitation. Over 900,000 Americans experience heart attacks each year. Still more will experience heart failure, valvular disease, and other cardiovascular problems that create a diminished tolerance of activity.

We know very well that regular activity and selective behavior choices around such things as diet, alcohol consumption, and smoking, among others, play a large role in stopping or even reversing effects of these conditions. Currently, roughly a third or less of these patients are engaging in a supervised cardiac rehab program. Clearly, there is much room for improvement in this regard.

As a computer scientist, Harsh has long-known the power of computing and analytics data for creating efficiencies and making well-educated strategic decisions. He and some colleagues began to look for opportunities to leverage this power in the healthcare arena, one which we know is actively seeking to reduce cost while at the same time improve patient outcomes.

The Moving Analytics app allows patients to receive frequent feedback regarding their prescribed activities and behavioral choices. Additionally, it provides data regarding the patient’s compliance with their regimen along with some basic health data to the health professional overseeing their cardiac rehab progress. In this way, the patient is able to engage in healthful activities that will improve their condition in the convenience of their home. Additionally it will allow the cardiac rehab professionals to scale their services to a wider patient population, reducing cost of providing care (based on a per-provider cost).

Moving Analytics is looking to partner with hospitals and health systems who are working to improve patient engagement with these important cardiac rehab programs for the post-cardiovascular event patients.

Special Guest:

Harsh Vathsangam, Co-founder, Moving Analytics

PhD, Computer Science, University of Southern California
MS, Computer Science, University of Southern California
Recipient, PhD Award, University of Southern California
Awarded USC Annenberg Fellowship 2008-2012

Radix Health

March 3, 2016 by angishields

Health Connect South

Radix Health

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Radix Health

Jay Shaffer and I sat down with co-founder of Radix Health, Dr. Arun Mohan. Radix Health uses technology to improve patient access. Radix’s flagship product, DASH, is a patent-pending, cloud-based software platform that optimizes ambulatory capacity utilization and reduces scheduling cost. DASH automates and optimizes much of the work currently done by schedulers.

DASH intelligently balances patient characteristics, patient and provider preferences, and appointment availability to match patients with the right provider at the right location for the right duration. The system supports all forms of scheduling including through an agent, provider-provider scheduling and patient self-scheduling. DASH easily integrates with existing practice management systems.

By leveraging predictive analytics, rules-based scheduling, automation, and user experience, DASH improves access, reduces scheduling costs, eliminates scheduling errors and ensures happier patients and providers.

Arun shared how his experience as a physician, coupled with many conversations over time with colleagues, revealed there is an opportunity to improve patient satisfaction and engagement, while at the same time optimizing the physicians’ utilization of their schedule time.

The Radix Health solution integrates and enhances the basic scheduling feature of existing EMR’s, bringing valuable analytics and algorithms designed to insure a patient is scheduled with the correct specialist, avoiding the need for rescheduling and loss of productivity.

Special Guest:

Dr. Arun Mohan, Co-founder, Radix Health

Vitamin C and OBMedical Company

August 31, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Vitamin C and OBMedical Company

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Vitamin C and OBMedical Company

On this episode of Health Connect South Radio we hosted the CEO and co-founder of Vitamin C and President/CEO of OB Medical Company. These two companies are creating technology innovations that help two distinct groups, physician practices and expectant mothers in the birthing process, respectively.

Vitamin C’s Osama Hashmi realized that increasing focus on population health management measures meant a need for greater engagement with particular patient groups. In order to effectively manage chronic diseases such as diabetes or even regular wellness follow up, practices often need to interact with patients to get these visits scheduled. In many cases, patients won’t take initiative to schedule them themselves.

Hashmi and his colleagues decided to create a platform that interfaces with existing EMR’s that allows providers to ID target populations and create a variety of pre-created content for distribution to patients. In some cases, it’s a pre-recorded automated phone call that can encourage the scheduling of a follow up visit. In others, it may be an automated call that queries the patient for particular data such as vitals or blood sugars, quantity of exercise, etc.

In still others, it may be a text or email generated that goes to the patient. In this way, the providers are able to more effectively “scale” their resources to be able to reach what is often hundreds or even thousands of patients with necessary contact to facilitate follow up. The end result is better patient outcomes as well as increased revenue for the practice due to scheduling of necessary, yet high-Revenue visits (based on time/acuity).

OBMedical Company saw an opportunity to improve upon monitoring technology used in the OB delivery room. As I spoke with President/CEO, Weaver Gaines, he explained the technology for the fetal heart rate, contraction frequency/intensity, etc. have not really changed in roughly 40 years.

Today, mothers are tethered to a monitor by wires leading to sensors that are held in place by elastic velcro straps that encircle the mother’s abdomen. They are challenging to keep in position and can provide limited accuracy in cases where the mother is particularly obese.

OBMedical Company has designed a monitoring device that uses wireless electrodes that measure electrical current through the patient’s skin rather than having to rely on skin tension. This allows the mother to be able to ambulate in the room during labor while continuing to be monitored. Additionally, it allows for greater accuracy when the mother is obese.

Osama Hashmi, CEO/Chief Product Officer, of VitaminC

Doctor of Medicine, College of Georgia, Georgia Regents University
Master of Public Health, University of Georgia
Previous Policy Director, Roosevelt Institute, University of Georgia
Former Research Assistant, Stanford University

Weaver Gaines, President/CEO of OBMedical Company

Juris Doctor, University of Virginia School of Law
Director and Treasurer, Dance Alive National Ballet
Chairman, Board of Directors, Florida Research Consortium
Adjunct Professor, University of Virginia School of Law

Health IT and Accelerating Innovation – Top Docs Radio

July 29, 2015 by angishields

Top Docs Radio

Health IT and Accelerating Innovation - Top Docs Radio

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Health IT and Accelerating Innovation

This week I sat down with experts from the healthcare IT sector. John Mamon is the CEO of mPoweredIT, an outsourced IT company that devotes expertise to the small to mid-sized medical practice, helping them manage their computer hardware, infrastructure, and software needs for far less than it typically costs to employ someone dedicated to these functions within the practice.

John talked about how often, in an effort to save money, small practices place responsibility for managing these facets on a practice manager, a clinician within the office, or even the doctors themselves. Clearly this can take away from the core function of the office—taking care of more patients.

He shared a number of important concerns that can expose these offices to risk such as HIPAA requirements, downtime of equipment, ACA compliance, and others. Each of these can create significant cost or loss of productivity when small offices attempt to handle things on their own.

mPoweredIT is able to scale their services to the needs of the practice, providing the full suite of IT management or taking over particular elements on behalf of the practice. The company also partners with several other health experts who can provide additional support in areas such as billing/revenue cycle management, EMR selection, and others, to allow their clients to maximize productivity and profitability at the same time.

John introduced us to Harvey Shuster, of Emergence, a Georgia Medical Accelerator. Harvey, a multiple-time entrepreneur, was one of the founders of Peachtree Software among others. He and his team work with emerging healthcare technology companies, helping them to commercialize and bring to market their devices/technologies more quickly.

Harvey brought along Osama Hashmi, CEO/Founder of VitaminC. This company adds an additional layer of automation and engagement to EMR systems. Their software allows providers to contact patients and encourage follow-up visits where appropriate to facilitate care/outcomes while at the same time helping the practice to maximize its potential for seeing patients in need.

VitaminC integrates well with numerous EMR systems and has proven valuable to primary care doctors and specialists such as dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and others.

Special Guests:

John Mamon, CEO/Founder, mPoweredIT

Associates Degree, Information Technology, Bryant and Stratton College
Previous VP, Professional Services, BMC Solutions
Former Executive VP, CDI Managed Services

Harvey Shuster, COO, of Emergence Georgia Medical Accelerator

MBA, Finance, Drexell University LeBow College of Business
Bronze Star Recipient, US Army
Published Author
Co-founder, Southeast Medical Device Association

Osama Hashmi, CEO/Chief Product Officer, of VitaminC

Doctor of Medicine, College of Georgia, Georgia Regents University
Master of Public Health, University of Georgia
Previous Policy Director, Roosevelt Institute, University of Georgia
Former Research Assistant, Stanford University

ShareWIK, Bioscape Digital, and ER Express – Top Docs Radio

October 29, 2014 by angishields

Top Docs Radio

ShareWIK, Bioscape Digital, and ER Express - Top Docs Radio

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ShareWIK, Bioscape Digital, and ER Express

This week I sat down with the CEO’s of ShareWIK, Bioscape Digital, and ER Express. With the recent implementation of the Affordable Care Act, new requirements came into effect that placed emphasis on patient satisfaction as a component of reimbursement. As it happens, these innovative companies had been developing and implementing their innovative platforms that dramatically improve patient experience and engagement before the law came into effect. That positions them as leaders in the space and I was pleased to have them join us to talk about what they’re doing.

ShareWIK.com provides licensed health information to a wide variety of organizations seeking to provide useful health content to their website and social media visitors. The writers who contribute to the ShareWIK content are journalists who have a true understanding of the topics they are covering. Content is vetted for accuracy before distribution. That means companies and healthcare organizations seeking to control health costs through helping employees and patients make better choices in their daily lives now have an effective, engaging tool to do just that. The team at ShareWIK is also collaborating with the Bioscape Digital platform to provide content that will be served to their patient-users.

ER Express is an application/platform that enables participating ER’s and Urgent Care centers to post an estimated time they can expect to be seen at their location. This means a prospective patient can register and hold their place in line and do much of their wait time at home, work, etc. The application uses IP address and Geo-tagging for users on mobile devices to display nearby area care centers and their estimated Time To Be Seen. In this way patients can reduce their overall wait time as well as optimize ER versus Urgent Care utilization for non-life-threatening problems. The service is free for patients to use and is currently available for numerous major health facilities in the Atlanta metro (and elsewhere in the country).

Bioscape Digital is a tablet-based platform for use in the emergency department and urgent care settings. The platform is simple to use with a simple, intuitive point-click interface. It serves the patient with professionally-produced health content provided by ShareWIK that covers a variety of topics from what to expect with a given type of study or procedure to information about available services within the hospital. The platform provides an engaging way for patients to occupy their time spent waiting for care that improves their awareness of useful health information at the same time. Patients can use the platform to communicate positive and negative feedback in real time to hospital personnel, giving the staff the opportunity to potentially address and correct issues of concern. Their platform is already showing a dramatic improvement in patient satisfaction scores as well as staff morale in their client-user facilities.

These Atlanta-based companies are helping to improve the way care is delivered and the way the experience is perceived by patients. It’s exciting to get to introduce them to a wider audience and help them expand adoption of these helpful, innovative technology platforms.

Special Guests:

Diana Keough, CEO/Founder of ShareWIK.com

Journalism Instructor/Guest Lecturer, Emory University
Member, Koles College of Business Advisory Board, Kennsaw State University
Former Front Page Series Writer, The Plain Dealer
Former Reporter/Commentator, WKSU
Co-author, “Building a Business, Building a Life: The Incredible Life of a Woman Business Owner”

Sahil Patel, President of ER Express