The collaboration is one of several between health systems and Big Tech to develop and scale AI programs
A partnership between the Cleveland Clinic and IBM is applying AI to cancer care, with the goal of creating better and more effective treatments.
In a study recently published in Briefings in Bioinformatics, the research team reported that it was able to use both supervised and unsupervised AI technology to better understand the molecular details of peptide antigens, the first step in using them to attack cancer cells or cells infected with viruses. Researchers can use this data to tailor vaccines and engineered immune cells.
“In the past, all our data on cancer antigen targets came from trial and error,” Timothy Chan, MD, PhD, chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Immunotherapy and Precision Immuno-Oncology and Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak Endowed Chair in Immunotherapy and Precision Immuno-Oncology, said in a press release. “Partnering with IBM allows us to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence and health sciences research to change the way we develop and evaluate targets for cancer therapy.”
The research proves the value of using AI to gather and analyze data faster and more accurately. According to the Cleveland Clinic team, antigen peptides interact with immune cells based on specific features on the surface of those cells.
“Research has been limited by the sheer number of variables that affect how immune systems recognize these targets,” Cleveland Clinic executives said in the press release. “Identifying these variables is difficult and time intensive with regular computing, so current models are limited and at times inaccurate.”
Using supervised and unsupervised algorithms “can highlight subtle but key determinants of peptide immunogenicity within the [atomistic molecular dynamics] trajectory data and can … provide significantly more predictive power over a baseline sequence architecture on peptide datasets,” the research team said in the study.
“These insights highlight how MD can help predict and foster understanding of immunogenicity, and the methods developed here lay a framework for broad HLA [ human leukocyte antigen] allele studies to further elucidate mechanisms of immune responses and inform T cell therapies,” they concluded.
The project was borne out of Discovery Accelerator, a collaboration launched in 2021 to match Cleveland Clinic’s biomedical research capabilities with IBM’s AI and quantum computing technology. It’s one of several partnerships forged between health systems and Big Tech to expand access to AI tools for research as well as administrative and clinical services.
Health systems and hospitals are facing competition from disruptors offering personalized urgent and emergency care. But is that a bad thing?
A new disruptor is taking aim at the healthcare industry’s busiest site: The Emergency Department.
Concierge care programs designed specifically for urgent and emergency care are finding support from consumers who don’t want to wait several hours in an ED, along with primary care providers who don’t want to send their patients there. The service offers a cash-only alternative to the ED and could pull more patients away from hospitals and health systems.
“The experience [of an ED] is so challenging,” says Brad Olson, CEO of Sollis Health, which operates 11 clinics in New York City and the nearby Hamptons, as well as California and South Florida, and serves some 18,000 members. “What makes us different is we’re offering [patients] immediacy.”
Launched in 2016 in New York as Priority Private Care, Sollis is building a business model through partnerships with consumers, primary care providers, and businesses who want to avoid the traffic and time spent in an ED, which sees more than 130 million visits a year. The company offers a concierge care model that bypasses payers, and also offers a range of services that include diagnostics, labs and vaccines, virtual care, specialty care, even house calls.
The model adds another wrinkle to the crowded urgent care market, where hospitals and health systems are already competing with retail and stand-alone urgent care clinics that not only pull patients out of the ED, but offer additional resources and connections that pull a patient further outside the health system’s orbit of care.
Olson is quick to point out that Sollis Health is a disruptor, but not necessarily a competitor to health systems and hospitals—he notes the company has partnerships in place with more than 30 health systems for everything from ED services to specialty consults. He notes one clinic is located not far from Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and is partnering with the hospital even while giving consumers an alternative to Cedars-Sinai’s ED.
The ’disruptor’ moniker is important. Olson, a former executive with Peloton and Starwood Hotels & Resorts, brings a retail mentality to healthcare that is propelling companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Walgreens in the healthcare space. He notes that consumers are turning away from hospitals and health systems because of the complexity and cost of healthcare, and they certainly don’t want to wait several hours in a crowded hospital waiting room for fragmented care that leads to more scheduled visits in other locations.
Disruptors like Sollis Health and other concierge care companies are luring consumers away from traditional healthcare organizations with the promise of convenient, personalized care. And Olson says Sollis equips its clinics with ER-trained and boarded clinicians, many of whom also work at nearby health systems. Sollis also offers a range of services that stand-alone and retail urgent care clinics do not.
In the basic business model, Sollis Health partners with primary care providers and businesses who will refer their patients/employees to Sollis for urgent care, with those patients paying out of pocket for services. In some cases a PCP or business will purchase memberships for their patients or employees, figuring the cost of a membership will be much lower than costs associated with going to a hospital or urgent care clinic.
Olson says Sollis Health reaches out to health systems and hospitals to suggest partnerships, particularly in specialty care services, and those organizations haven’t sought out Sollis Health to help with crowded EDs. But the opportunity is there for healthcare executives to see disruptors like Sollis Health as a valuable resource, giving patients another option to access care.
“We definitely don’t compete with them,” he says.
Olson emphasizes that Sollis Health’s growth is in the consumer market, and in building out its concierge care to attract more primary care providers and businesses looking for alternatives to the ED or retail urgent care space. He says payers have expressed interest in this model of care, though the company currently isn’t working with any insurance companies and is focused on membership and cash-only payment plans.
“Our biggest challenge right now is explaining who we are and what we do,” he says. But once that connection is made, the value becomes evident.
Participating providers will receive federal support for integrating mental and physical healthcare services in team-based care
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is launching a new model to test the integration of mental health and primary care services, giving healthcare organization an opportunity to leverage new strategies and technologies in a team-based care approach.
The Innovation in Behavioral Health (IBH) Model will be tested through the CMS Innovation Center (CMI), which will align Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements through state-based programs. The idea is to create a care management plan for patients living with mental health issues and/or substance use disorder that incorporates mental and physical healthcare.
“The systems of care to address physical and behavioral health conditions have historically been siloed, but there is a direct correlation between people with mental health conditions or substance use disorder and poor physical health,” CMS Deputy Administrator and Innovation Center Director Liz Fowler said in a press release issued Friday. “This model will bring historically siloed parts of the health system together to provide whole-person care--designed to keep people out of the emergency department, ensuring better care management and coordination, and improving their overall health.”
The eight-year program will launch this fall in as many as eight states. CMS is expected to release a Notice of Funding Opportunity sometime this spring.
The model lends federal support and funding to a concept being tested by healthcare organizations across the country. Faced with an onslaught of patients living with behavioral health issues and a shortage of resources, providers are turning to team-based care to give these patients a more comprehensive care plan. The team-based approach also supports the theory that many behavioral and substance abuse issues stem from or are exacerbated by other health concerns, including chronic conditions.
The model also enables providers to fold in services and resources that address barriers to care, or social determinants of health (SDOH), to affect many underserved patients, especially those in Medicare and Medicaid programs.
“Addressing the nation’s behavioral health crisis remains a key priority for CMS,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in the press release. “Through this model, CMS will support behavioral health practices to provide integrated care and help meet people’s behavioral and physical health and health-related social needs, like housing, food, and transportation, all of which can negatively impact a person’s ability to manage their care.”
CMS officials say the model will incentivize participating providers “to work collaboratively to screen, assess, and coordinate between individuals’ physical and behavioral health needs.” The model also gives providers a chance to use virtual and digital health technologies to improve access to treatment and support services.
According to a recent CES panel, healthcare executives have a ways to go to make that work
As more healthcare services are accessed in or delivered to the home, health systems and hospitals will have to make significant changes to take full advantage of that setting.
A panel discussion at last week’s CES 2024 event in Las Vegas brought to light the challenges facing healthcare organizations who want to use the home for care delivery. For while the technology is in place to deliver care, healthcare executives have to rethink how they collect and use data from the home and interact with consumers.
“It’s not chronic disease [management], it’s not consumer, it’s not patient. It’s life care,” said Leslie Saxon, MD, executive director of the USC Center for Body Computing and a professor of medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.. “Traditional medical care [providers] have to believe that the patient is the consumer. … And the people who are going to drive this market are the patients.”
“We have an untapped resource in the home,” added Hon Pak, a vice president and head of the digital health team at Samsung Electronics. “Fundamentally, we have to change the model” of how care is delivered.
Spurred by a shortage of in-patient beds and staff, health systems have been moving some services to the home. More than 300 health systems across the country are taking part in the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCaH) model, which is supported by a waiver for Medicare reimbursement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). That program involves a complex mix of virtual and in-person care.
Jared Conley, MD, PhD, MPH, associate director of the Healthcare Transformation Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and part of Mass General Brigham’s Hospital at Home program, said the Hospital at Home strategy, which encompasses more than just the CMS-approved model, has been proven to improve clinical outcomes, reduce rehospitalizations and adverse events, and cut healthcare costs. He said he anticipates this will become a standard for clinical care at home in the future.
On the other hand, collecting data from the home and working with consumers to improve their health and wellness is as-yet uncharted territory.
“Ultimately … the goal is prevention,” Conley said. But healthcare organizations don’t have the science, technology, or behavioral health background to gather and use the data yet.
Pak said the Hospital at Home movement “isn’t transformational.”
“We have to have a better understanding of where people are at their life stage,” he said.
Pak, noting that many “amazing innovations [turn into] siloed point solutions that never get integrated,” said healthcare organizations have to learn how to use the home and all that it offers for healthcare transformation. Some 60% of care costs are tied to a patient’s lifestyle, he added, and yet only about 3% of the money spent on healthcare is tied to behavior change.
“The data to date has not given us the linkage” of lifestyle to chronic diseases and care management, he said.
Ed Miller, chief technology officer for the Center of Medical Interoperability at the Connectivity Standards Alliance, said the industry needs to develop standards so that home-based devices and smart technology can share data with healthcare organizations. The technology itself isn’t an issue, he added, but creating pathways for hospitals and health systems to gather and use that data is.
Saxon called it a “profound cultural drive.” Health systems and hospitals are very good at delivering healthcare, she pointed out. But they aren’t skilled at working with consumers to manage health and wellness.
Enter the disruptors, who know how to reach consumers in their homes.
“Given our reliance on digital health, we cannot do this alone,” Conley pointed out. “There’s a huge opportunity to collaborate.”
Healthcare has “a horrible customer experience,” added Saxon. “Who’s good at that? Amazon and Apple are good at what they do. Consumers are going to expect that.”
Healthcare organizations “aren’t going to be the jailbreakers,” she said. “It’s just too much to ask of a busy health system.”
With competition from disruptors increasing and the industry under pressure to make healthcare more convenient and less expensive, health system leaders need to take CES seriously. Here are a few takeaways from the recent event
As CES 2024 slides into the rear-view mirror, here are some of the key takeaways for health system executives who either attended the show or kept track of the goings-on from a distance.
Keeping the Consumer in the Loop
CES is all about the consumer experience, a strategy that many healthcare organizations have been slow to embrace. But with HCAHPS scores and Joint Commission reviews giving more weight to the consumer experience, the emphasis for healthcare leaders is not only in improving consumer engagement but creating a dynamic that allows providers and patients to work together on care management.
(Of course, one of the enduring ironies of healthcare conferences is that while the patient is becoming more of an active participant in the industry, very few patients are actually invited to these conferences.)
CES does have the advantage in that everything is geared toward the consumer, so all the technologies on display—in the area designated for digital health as well as in all the other halls—are designed to be sold to the consumer. In digital health, that means creating a marketable product that a consumer will be interested in buying and using, which again isn’t a strong point of clinical grade devices or platforms. In fact, the healthcare industry has long struggled to bridge that gap between consumer-friendly and clinically relevant technology.
But the stakes are higher now, thanks to Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Walgreens, and others who are taking the consumer experience in other industries (like retail, banking, and travel) and applying lessons learned to healthcare. Health system executives need to pay attention to those trends and take a look at wearables, consumer-facing apps, smart home technology, and other products that can allow them to make a connection with their patients and improve care.
Creating a Connected Health Experience
Smart technology was all the rage at CES, from toilets and showers to beds and pillows to refrigerators and ovens to, believe it or not, grills, patio furniture and fireplaces, birdhouses, exercise equipment, and beer-making and bartending machines (thankfully, sex technology seemed to be on the way out this year). In short, data is king, and anything that can gather data on the user experience and use that data to make the experience better is in play.
No more so than in healthcare, where doctors and nurses are coordinating and managing more care based on data outside the electronic health record. The shift away from episodic care and toward value-based care means that providers (and payers) are interested in the entire patient journey, and health and wellness are part of that ecosystem. They need to collect data from the patient’s everyday life and experiences, from the home to the office to the school to the car and everywhere in between.
Health system executives looking at this shifting landscape need to understand not only the technology available for gathering and disseminating data but the platforms needed to connect those disparate devices and points. This puts an emphasis on infrastructure management and interoperability. It’s nice to have a bed and a toilet that can tell you how a person is sleeping and, ahem, pooping, but is that data being transmitted seamlessly back to doctors who can use it to improve care?
Homing in on … the Home
One of the bigger themes in healthcare is the shift from the hospital to the home, or the understanding that healthcare can be delivered in locations outside the traditional care setting At CES, the focus was on technology and smart home products that could help consumers improve their health and wellness.
At the Digital Health Summit, the focus shifted to how a tech-enabled home could help healthcare providers improve monitoring and care delivery. That might include the Hospital at Home strategy, in which health systems provide both in-person and virtual care at home for patients who would otherwise be in a hospital. But it also offers opportunities for health systems to gather and use data from the home setting to manage and coordinate care, working with consumers to prevent serious health issues from cropping up.
The key is in understanding what the consumer wants out of healthcare.
“It’s life care,” Leslie Saxon, MD, executive director of the USC Center for Body Computing and a professor of medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, said during a panel discussion on healthcare in the home. “Traditional medical care [providers] have to believe that the patient is the consumer. … And the people who are going to drive this market are the patients.”
All in on AI
As with every other conference over the past year, AI was a part of almost every conversation and panel presentation at CES.
A lot of the talk in the digital health space centered on how the technology could make things easier for consumers to access healthcare services. Integrating AI tools into the back end can help match consumers to the right resources, selecting the appropriate care providers and locations, while also speeding up the registration and insurance/payment processes. AI has the ability to sort through large amounts of data, speeding up the process and taking pressure off nurses and other office staff.
The technology will be particularly helpful in gathering and sorting data coming from devices and other locations outside the healthcare setting. Roughly 80% of that data is unstructured, and needs a little coaxing to be able to fit into the medical record, where providers can use it to improve care pathways.
“I think the greatest advance that we are going to see in the next few years is the ability to take unstructured data and use it,” Lee Schwamm, MD, SVP and chief digital health officer at the Yale New Haven System and associate dean of digital strategy and transformation at the Yake School of Medicine, said during a panel on AI and the future of healthcare.
Simplicity Matters
Above all else, CES was about consumer convenience, and the key to digital health success will lie in making healthcare access as convenient as possible for consumers. That means embracing tech tools and platforms that make the process intuitive.
“Healthcare is more confusing, more complex, and more costly than ever before,” Glen Tullman, the former Allscripts executive who launched a digital health startup focused on chronic care management and now fronts Transcarent, said during a closing session with billionaire businessman Mark Cuban.
That’s why disruptors like Amazon, Walgreens, and Cuban’s own Cost Plus Drug Company are drawing consumers away from traditional healthcare organizations amid what some are calling the “battle for primary care.” They’re cutting through the complexity and using technology to give consumers what they want in an easy format.
Elevance Health announced at CES that it will give free smartphones to Medicaid program members to help them access healthcare services
Elevance Health is addressing a critical care gap for its underserved members by giving them a smartphone to connect with healthcare resources.
The Indianapolis-based insurer formerly known as Anthem, which announced the program at CES 2024 this past week in Las Vegas, is targeting a Medicaid population that faces barriers to accessing the care they need. According to Elevance, roughly one quarter of American households making $30,000 or less a year aren’t using a smartphone, and 43% don’t have home broadband internet access.
"The lack of sufficient internet connectivity and technology access remains a significant barrier for many – increasing health inequities," Kurt Small, president of Elevance Health’s Medicaid business, said in a press release. “This program aims to directly address this challenge and helps improve the health of the people we serve.”
The program targets a glaring care gap that both payers and healthcare organizations are trying to address through digital health and telemedicine. Consumers who have trouble accessing care often end up in a clinic or hospital later on with a serious health issue that could have been prevented, and which now will cost more to treat and affect long-term clinical outcomes. That, in turn, puts stress on Medicaid and Medicare programs that support those populations.
CES, through its Digital Health Summit, often focuses on using consumer technology to close gaps. This year’s summit track and exhibit halls featured a wide variety of strategies and technologies aimed at helping consumers monitor their health and connect with care providers at the time and place of their choosing.
Elevance Health is targeting the root of the problem: Communication. The company is offering qualified members on Medicaid programs a smartphone with unlimited data, talk, and texting services, as well as customized access to healthcare resources, both digital and virtual, and instructions on how to use the phone.
“Increased availability of digital technologies, such as a smartphone, as well as fast, reliable internet is critical to supporting a person’s health journey," Omid Toloui, Elevance Health’s vice president of innovation, said in the press release. “We believe the digital tools and the custom, curated experience offered through this program can help improve health, make healthcare more affordable, and serve people more equitably.”
The program is supported with funds from the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and offered through partnerships with Verizon, Samsung, AT&T, and T-Mobile.
Mark Cuban and Glen Tullman are two of the many disruptors aiming to make healthcare more convenient for consumers. Their advice to healthcare execs: Do more by doing less
As CES 2024 winds down, the message to healthcare executives is simple: Do more by doing less.
The healthcare industry has become too complicated, frustrating patients and stressing out doctors and nurses. As a result, consumers are looking elsewhere for their healthcare, to retail companies, pharmacies, and online companies that promise convenience and transparency.
“You need to start questioning the long-held beliefs of the way you thought things needed to be done,” billionaire investor and businessman Mark Cuban said during a closing session of the two-day Digital Health Summit.
In other words, healthcare executives need to find a way to cut through the complexity and return to the simple process of health and care. And technologies like digital health and AI will help them make that transformation.
Cuban, who launched the Cost Plus Drug Company in 2022 to give consumers access to generic medications, shared the stage at CES with Glen Tullman, the former Allscripts executive who now heads the integrated healthcare benefits company Transcarent. The two are part of the growing ranks of disruptors aiming to make healthcare more consumer-friendly.
Their appearance capped two days of sessions on the value of consumer-facing digital health technology to address a healthcare ecosystem that many say is broken. Advocates say digital health tools like AI can take on some of the industry’s biggest pain points by automating tasks, improving workflows and boosting clinical outcomes.
The challenge is in getting health system executives and payers to take notice. Few made it to Las Vegas this week, giving attendees just a few examples of how health systems are using technology to improve operations and little evidence that payers will pay for it.
Tullman, who launched the successful digital healthcare startup Livongo prior to developing Transcarent, said the industry needs to focus on the consumer experience, embracing new technologies and ideas that make it easier for the consumer to access healthcare at the time and place of their choosing. Technology, he said, should be the foundation of that experience.
“But if people are talking about the technology, that’s a problem,” he added. “Look for technology to simplify things rather than [produce} complications,”
That’s one reason that AI is such a hot topic, at CES and elsewhere. Health systems and hospitals are embracing the technology as a means of reducing administrative and data-intensive tasks, giving clinicians more time to focus on healthcare delivery and giving consumers an easier path to that care.
“There are many practical uses,” said Tullman, whose company has developed an AI tool called 10X—designed, he said, “to make physicians 10 times more proficient.” He predicted AI would “simplify the paperwork” and “improve the quality of the experience.”
Cuban said AI will change the entire healthcare industry, and he predicted “millions” of models and applications. It will, he said, democratize healthcare.
Both said the key to the transformation of healthcare lies in putting healthcare in the hands of the consumer. If health systems and hospitals are slow to make that adjustment, they’ll lose patients to the disruptors who are making the experience more convenient and less costly.
Cuban told a story about his son needing an MRI. Through their health plan, that MRI would cost roughly $2,000. Cuban called the doctor’s office and asked for the cash price, and was told the MRI would cost $470. Some providers, he pointed out, would prefer cash in hand rather than going through the process of scheduling and billing.
“Healthcare is more confusing, more complex, and more costly than ever before,” Tullman added.
As health system execs attending CES 2024 talked of using AI to address specific challenges, the FDA commissioner pointed out that the technology will fundamentally change how healthcare is delivered in the future.
Healthcare executives are in uncharted territory, due to the speed at which AI is evolving. And with that progress, health systems and the federal government are going to have to continually adjust how the technology is governed.
“The assessment of the algorithms needs to be continuous,” US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, told a packed room during a session Wednesday at the CES 2024 show in Las Vegas. In fact, he added, post-market evaluations of new tools may be more important than pre-market evaluations.
“It’s a different world,” the FDA commissioner added. “The changes are dramatic. … We can see the time when [healthcare] is going to be guided and assisted so much more by algorithms and AI.”
As the massive consumer technology show continues this week, AI is dominating the many exhibit halls and the discussion around the two-day Digital Health Summit, which runs through today. Aside from getting a glimpse at new advances in smart health technology—from smart toilets and bathrooms to smart beds and pillows to more refined wearables and sensors—healthcare execs who braved the typical Las Vegas chaos talked of how AI is already being used to address key pain points like administrative overload, stressed out providers, and siloed care.
“This stuff is so powerful,” Lee Schwamm, MD, chief digital health officer at the Yale New Haven Health System and associate dean of digital strategy and transformation at the Yale School of Medicine, offered during a panel discussion. “Health systems are just now trying to figure out what the business model will be.”
Sara Vaezy, EVP and chief strategy and digital health at Providence and a panelist at the upcoming HealthLeaders AI NOW Virtual Summit later this month, said her health system is working on four distinct AI demonstration projects in a partnership with Microsoft, primarily around automating tasks that affect the clinician workload and improving self-service options for patients.
“It’s just too expensive to deliver care in the way that we normally have,” she said.
Both she and Schwamm pointed out that the use of AI in healthcare will be different than in other industries, primarily because of the inclusion of patient data. Health systems and hospitals need to plan carefully to protect that information, since so much of AI depends on using data to make decisions and advance processes.
“This is a very special space,” Schwamm pointed out.
Califf, whose appearance at CES was as part of the government and policy track, also pointed out the intricacies of healthcare. He noted the industry is gradually shifting from episodic to value-based care, where not just immediate outcomes but long-term outcomes are valued.
“In order to make it work you’ve got to [focus on] complete outcomes,” he said.
Califf said he’s excited about how AI will factor into healthcare in three distinct venues: The home, where more care is being delivered and more patient data is being collected; the operating room, where robotics and digital health are changing how surgical procedures are done; and the clinic, where providers are learning how to use technology to develop care management and coordination plans that surround the patient and become part of his or her journey.
He also noted the advance of wearables, which are becoming more sophisticated, and the rapid pace of development for adaptive AI models such as ChatGPT.
“The chance to learn through algorithms is the basis for so many things we take for granted in life,” he said.
Health Condition Programs gives consumers convenient and virtual access to care management and other services to address chronic health conditions like diabetes and hypertension
Amazon has launched a new service aimed at helping consumers manage their chronic conditions.
Health Condition Programs, which was unveiled on January 8 during the JP Morgan Conference, gives the online retail giant a significant platform in the healthcare space—and another reason for healthcare executives to fret about competition from disruptors. The service gives consumers a virtual link to a personalized care team to help manage their health.
“Amazon wants to make it easier for people to get and stay healthy, and part of that is making it easier to discover the products, services, and professionals that can help them do that,” Aaron Martin, Amazon’s vice president, said in a press release issued by Omada Health, a digital health company that is partnering with Amazon to offer diabetes prevention and care and hypertension care services through the new platform. “Many aren’t aware of the healthcare benefits they are eligible for, that are typically no cost or subsidized by their employer or insurance plan. When customers are shopping for health-related products on Amazon, we can surface these benefits to provide even more support in improving their health, at no additional cost.”
Amazon will partner with companies like Omada Health to cover a wide range of chronic health conditions, creating a care management path that would traditionally be handled by one’s primary care doctor or health system.
The company matches consumers to the appropriate care team based on their online searches and shopping history. Consumers accessing the program can first find out if their employer or health plan covers the Health Condition Program; if the program is covered, the consumer can then access services such as virtual visits, health coaching, remote patient monitoring, and access to online forums and other resources.
The program gives consumers convenient and virtual access to care management, an option to the often complicated task of scheduling appointments with primary care doctors and specialists and visiting doctors’ offices or clinics.
“This partnership is pivotal for Omada, as we are leveraging Amazon’s wide reach to literally meet consumers where they are, just as we do for our members as a virtual-first care provider,” Omada Health CEO and Co-Founder Sean Duffy said in the press release. “Ultimately, the more people we’re able to reach, the larger impact we can have on the rising prevalence of chronic disease.”
The platform gives healthcare executives yet another reason to develop virtual care programs to compete with the disruptors, focusing on convenient access to a trusted healthcare provider or health system.
While much of the focus at CES is on innovative technology, a policy panel on the first day of the event discussed how the government can shape AI standards
With innovation on full display at CES this week, one of the more compelling panel discussions on the first full day focused on the intersection of technology and policy. And the general consensus was that collaboration is best.
“We’re definitely seeing the right incremental steps being taken,” said Matthew Hine, a senior international trade specialist in the Office of Health Industries, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Industry and Analysis business unit.
To wit: The Biden Administration has been focused so far on working with the healthcare industry to develop AI policy, particularly around standards and guidelines. And health system executives have so far said they’re moving cautiously but firmly forward, using the technology where they can but making sure a human still makes the final decision when clinical care is concerned.
Congress isn’t in the loop on developing policy, though some lawmakers have called for more of a say on the matter. And that’s OK with Conor Sheehy, a senior health policy advisor for the minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee.
“It’s not an area where Congress, to my mind, has shown a great deal of expertise … or understanding,” he pointed out.
Both Sheehy and Marisa Salemme, a senior health policy advisor for the majority staff on the Senate Finance Committee, agreed that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been in agreement on supporting the use of innovative technologies, such as virtual care. The hope is that Congress will push through a logjam of healthcare-related bills this year, giving health systems more opportunities to use technology.
But the challenges remain. Healthcare is still focused on reimbursing providers for episodes of care, and is only moving slowly towards outcomes-based care. And providers won’t embrace new technology if they’re not incentivized to use it. To that end, both the government and Congress need to come together on incentives that will spur the use of innovative technology.
How or when that happens remains to be seen. And some parts of that conversation are expected to be picked up on Wednesday with the opening of the Digital Health Summit, as well as in a special panel session featuring FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, and FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Anna Gomez.
That’s also why health system executives aren’t flocking to CES to take in the latest innovations in consumer technology, and are instead keeping tabs on the technology from afar. New technology and ideas need room to grow into healthcare, and that isn’t happening at a time when operating margins are thin and hospitals are struggling to stay afloat.
Many of the companies exhibiting in the digital health space at CES have said they’re talking with health systems about small pilot programs, but the key to adoption lies in support from the payers, especially the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. CMS has been traditionally hesitant to embrace new technology like telemedicine and digital health, thougn the gradual move toward reimbursing for remote patient monitoring tools and services has spurred some hope.
“Medicare reimbursement would be huge,” said Aaron Labbe, co-founder and chief technology officer for LUCID Therapeutics, a company that develops music-based treatments for providers and is talking to health systems about using the technology in everything from pediatric care to the ICU. “We need their support.”
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