Healthcare conferences give executives the opportunity to convene and share ideas. They also give them the opportunity to announce news from their companies, oftentimes about new products, research or partnerships.
Below are nine noteworthy announcements made during this year’s ViVE conference in Los Angeles.
16 health systems help launch health & wellness marketplace
A new startup named Vale Health announced its launch. It is a health and wellness marketplace platform backed by a consortium of 16 health systems.
Vale’s marketplace platform aims to help health systems increase patient engagement by connecting users with various products and services in the health and wellness space. This space encompasses things that patients typically don’t seek medical attention for, such as getting better sleep, maintaining a healthy weight, alleviating muscle pain or solving digestive issues.
With the health and wellness market getting more and more crowded with solutions, Vale’s marketplace is designed to help consumers cut through that noise. The Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network is the first of Vale’s 16 founding health systems partners to go live with the platform.
Veradigm buys ScienceIO for $140 million
EHR company Veradigm (formerly known as Allscripts) announced plans to acquire ScienceIO in a $140 million deal. ScienceIO, a startup that emerged from stealth in 2021, is focused on developing AI foundation models for healthcare.
Veradigm plans to leverage ScienceIO’s AI platform to produce its own proprietary large language models trained on its own data set. The EHR company said the acquisition will also help it launch new features across Veradigm’s business to strengthen the customer experience.
Highmark Health collaborates with Epic, Google Cloud
Highmark Health announced a collaboration with Epic and Google Cloud to improve the coordination between payers and providers. Epic’s Payer Platform (which facilitates the collaboration between payers and providers) is being integrated with Highmark’s claims data on Google Cloud. Leveraging Google Cloud’s data analytics technologies, insights will be delivered to Epic’s provider partner organizations, as well as Highmark health plan staff and members.
This partnership aims to improve providers’ understanding of patients’ health, such as their conditions, health plan benefits, insurance claims, acute events and in- and out-of-network visits. In addition, providers will have a better idea of what’s covered by patients’ health plans.
GE HealthCare enters the at-home monitoring space with Biofourmis partnership
GE HealthCare announced a collaboration with Biofourmis, a company that provides remote patient monitoring technology and digital therapeutics. The company’s platform and tools for remote monitoring are designed to help providers keep tabs on acute and post-acute patients in their homes to avoid future hospitalizations.
“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’s general manager of cardiology solutions and remote patient monitoring, said in a statement.
GE HealthCare is also seeking to tap into Biofourmis’ FDA-cleared algorithms meant to help clinicians deliver more personalized care at home. The company said it will begin distributing Biofourmis solutions to its U.S. customers beginning in the first quarter of this year.
Quantum Health teams up with Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network
To support self-funded employers, healthcare navigation company Quantum Health is collaborating with Vanderbilt Health Affiliated network, a network of providers, hospitals and health systems. Through the partnership, Quantum’s navigation platform will be connected with VHAN’s network in Tennessee and surrounding states. Quantum has 70,000 lives in the VHAN footprint.
“Our new strategy to collaborate with high-performing networks like VHAN is a strategic market differentiator for us, integrating care navigation across networks of leading providers offering employees the highest-quality care, proactively guiding members to the right care solutions, and creating efficiency and benefits cost savings for the employer,” said Zane Burke, CEO of Quantum Health, in a statement.
Humana partners with Veda to make provider directories more accurate
Keeping provider directories up to date is often a massive undertaking for health plans and providers. In the past, Humana has had to make “millions of calls annually” to make sure its provider directory is accurate. To improve its provider directory, Humana announced that it is working with Veda, a company that helps solve provider data issues.
Through the partnership, Veda is using its automation technology to “analyze, verify, and standardize Humana’s data to ensure it is accurate and comprehensive, along with real-time scoring of data quality,” the announcement said.
Simple HealthKit rolls out new testing program for kidney disease
Diagnostics company Simple HealthKit launched a new testing program for kidney disease. Like all of Simple HealthKit’s diagnostic programs, this one is designed to help health plans boost their ratings and improve their members’ health.
The test, which can be administered at home or at a healthcare facility, examines a patient’s kidney damage and function.
Omada Health to study the effect of behavior change and GLP-1s on weight loss
Virtual healthcare provider Omada Health has expanded its Insights Lab to study the effect of combining behavior change with GLP-1s on weight loss. The Insights Lab is focused on offering insights and analysis on virtual care and has led to 28 peer-reviewed publications.
Omada is creating the ANSWERS (ANalyzing Success of WEight medication with Real-world evidence and Stats) Initiative and plans to release research on GLP-1s. Its next project will research the effect of Omada Health’s GLP-1 support program after people stop using GLP-1s. In addition, the company will research its newest additions to the program, such as exercise support.
Included Health releases findings from patient outreach program
Included Health unveiled positive outcomes from its patient outreach pilot that used CDC’s Healthy Days measure. The company decided to embed the program into its navigation offering. The pilot started in 2022 and included more than 23,000 people across the country. It “combined SMS/text message surveys with clinical outreach and showcases the simplicity and impact of asking individuals, ‘How are you doing?’” the announcement said. It also connected patients to a clinician if they had a certain number of unhealthy days in the previous month.
The pilot found that 40% of the patients who were offered the chance to connect with a clinician agreed to the offer. In addition, those who engaged with a clinician had two extra healthy days per month on average.
Photo: HLTH Events
