Virtual Health is a platform that allows data to be extracted from EMRs, traditional legacy systems, radiology systems, laboratory information systems, PBM systems and claims systems, among others. So now instead of seeing a very partial view of the patient, care teams can see the full picture.

That enables the hospitals and health system to have access to a lot more data, to analyze that data both at the individual and population-wide level, which in turn makes it possible for them to identify care gaps.


DOTmed News: Can this platform either save hospitals money or help them make money?

JP: Right now hospitals are actually penalized for those readmissions and this is going to cost millions of dollars for a typical hospital. But this platform is able to risk stratify patient discharges in real-time.
If there is a high-probability a patient will be readmitted, the hospital is then able to take certain proactive actions such as placing telehealth monitoring into the home of that patient and ensuring the care giver has the right level of education regarding treatment plan compliance.

They can now have a 360 view of the patient and can track them outside of the hospital into any facility they are admitted to. This is becoming increasingly relevant as hospitals are becoming health systems and also as they are turning from just providers to combination providers and payors.

DOTmed News: Hospitals are also under pressure to improve patient engagement. How does this platform help them do that?

JP: One of the things that we have realized in health care is that patient engagement is something that has to be driven from the provider side. Patients tend to not want to think about potential health problems so preventative medicine is challenging to accomplish in practice.

Patients may engage in behaviors that are counterproductive to their conditions because of forgetfulness, distraction, or lack of education, awareness or discipline. So it's very important to have a care coordinator that checks in with the patient, educates them and then tracks their medication regimens and dietary and lifestyle guidelines.

Patient engagement starts with identifying patients that require the highest level of engagement and then ensuring that care coordination staff is focused on those patients and performing daily outreach.

The other side of patient engagement is to do it in such a way that the patient doesn't have to do anything differently. One example is having passive sensors in patient homes that automatically detect pulse and blood pressure and other vital sign changes and then transmitting that information to be analyzed in real-time, which can then generate alerts if needed.

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