Sapphire Digital, the market leader in digital healthcare shopping, cost transparency, and incentivized healthcare navigation, announced a partnership with Rx Savings Solutions, the market-leading pharmacy cost transparency and decision support solution.

Another step forward in building a health system that is less complex, improves quality, and importantly, is less costly

As the cost of healthcare continues to rise, consumers are becoming more likely to seek alternative care options to save money. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that half of U.S. adults say they or a family member put off or skipped some sort of health care or relied on an alternative treatment in the past year because of the cost, and about one in eight say their medical condition got worse as a result. By integrating the innovative capabilities of Rx Savings Solutions into Sapphire’s leading S365 shopping platform, Sapphire Digital and Rx Savings Solutions guide and advise consumers on ways to reduce their out-of-pocket costs for care.

Pharmacy is becoming one of the most costly healthcare expenses for many Americans. According to the CDC, 73% of physician office visits and 79% of hospital visits result in drug therapy. Allowing shoppers to view medical and pharmaceutical care in a single location delivers improved healthcare navigation while reducing the total cost of care for consumers, health plans, and employers.

The S365 platform is an intuitive and modular provider discovery and cost transparency platform that makes it easy for members to select better, more affordable care. It integrates best-of-breed solution partners including expert medical opinions, surgery decision support, virtual care, online appointment scheduling, and now pharmaceutical savings to eliminate member friction in care selection and access.

The integration of Rx Savings Solutions services further expands the reach of the Sapphire Digital platform into pharmaceutical transparency and supports both companies’ mission to empower improved healthcare decisions for consumers.” said Kyle Raffaniello, Chief Executive Officer of Sapphire Digital.

“Through this strategic partnership, we can further empower consumers to shop for medical and pharmaceutical treatment options based on their individual benefits from their employers, pharmacy benefit managers and health insurance carriers while saving money,” said Michael Rea, a clinical pharmacist who founded and currently leads Rx Savings Solutions. “By integrating our platforms, we are taking yet another step forward in building a health system that is less complex, improves quality, and importantly, is less costly.”

About Sapphire Digital

Sapphire Digital empowers over 87 million healthcare shoppers to find and connect to the right healthcare at the right time and at the right place. By eliminating the complexity, our simple and intuitive shopping and navigation tools help customers select better, more affordable care. Our market-leading integrated incentive and engagement programs are proven to drive higher levels of activation by rewarding shoppers for making the best decision within their plan design.

About Rx Savings Solutions

Rx Savings Solutions offers an innovative, patented engagement software system empowering employers and employees to be educated consumers of healthcare. Serving more than 9 million members nationwide, including 41 Fortune 500 clients and more than a dozen health plans, Rx Savings Solutions provides a state-of-the-art approach to pharmacy transparency using objective and unbiased information to inform better decision making. Rx Savings Solutions was founded and is operated by a team of pharmacists and software engineers who support a collaborative, cost-saving solution for purchasing prescription drugs.

GSK announced proposals for a major new UK-based headquarters and global campus for the new Consumer Healthcare company following separation in 2022, and its long-term plan for the future headquarters of GSK.

New Consumer Healthcare company headquarters to be based in Weybridge, UK
The proposals announced today form part of GSK’s ongoing work to prepare for the separation of the Group into two leading UK-based companies next year – new GSK, a global pharmaceuticals and vaccines company with an R&D approach focused on the science of the immune system, human genetics and advanced technologies, and a world leading Consumer Healthcare company with annual sales of more than £10 billion, including nine global power brands holding category leadership positions.

Under the proposals announced today the new Consumer Healthcare company will build a new campus in Weybridge, UK. This campus will house the global headquarters for the new Consumer Healthcare business, including an innovation centre (made up of R&D laboratories and the Consumer Healthcare Shopper Science lab) and the company’s global support function teams based in the UK. It will be home to around 1,400 employees.

The new Consumer Healthcare company will open its new headquarters at the end of 2024, subject to consultation and planning approvals. Whilst the development of the campus is ongoing, and at the point of separation of the two companies – expected in mid-2022 – Consumer Healthcare teams will leave GSK House in Brentford and will move to a temporary headquarters in Weybridge, at a site close to but separate from the company’s existing facilities in the area.

Brian McNamara, CEO Designate, GSK Consumer Healthcare said: “This investment in a new cutting-edge campus in the UK will bring together our first-in-class teams as we drive towards our ambitions as the world’s leading consumer healthcare company. Today’s announcement is an important step as we prepare for separation, marking an exciting new beginning for New Consumer Healthcare.”

GSK to move to new UK headquarters after separation
Following separation, GSK will move to a new UK headquarters. The company will identify an appropriate site that meets the needs of the new organisation, with the search based in the same area as GSK’s current headquarters, maintaining access to the UK’s world-leading science and innovation hubs; GSK will provide a further update on its new headquarters in mid-2022, and expects to remain at the company’s current headquarters, at GSK House in Brentford, until at least the end of 2023.

About GSK
GSK is a science-led global healthcare company.

About new Consumer Healthcare
Through separation, GSK is creating a new world-leader in Consumer Healthcare. With sales of £10 billion in 2020, the business will serve more than 100 markets, driven by strong brands and innovation, with cutting-edge science and human understanding to deliver better everyday health. With an industry leading portfolio, including nine global brands holding category leadership positions in oral health, pain relief, cold, flu and allergy, digestive health and vitamins, minerals and supplements; significant scale in the US and China; and a further 11 brands each generating more than £100 million in sales, the business is well placed to address consumer needs and drive long term growth.

Apollo Hospitals, one of India’s biggest hospital chains, has harnessed ten years’ worth of data from over 400,000 patients across India to develop an AI tool that predicts the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Introduced yesterday, the Apollo AI-powered Cardiovascular Disease Risk tool provides a risk score – categorised into high, moderate and minimal – that takes into account a patient’s lifestyle attributes, such as diet, tobacco and smoking preferences and physical activity, as well as psychological stress and anxiety as reflected via respiratory rate and blood pressure reading.

A news report that cited the hospital’s statement noted that the risk prediction tool, when used in the Indian population, is more accurate than the Framingham Risk Score, one of the commonly used scoring systems worldwide to assess patients’ risk of heart diseases.

The AI device has been validated in a long-term cohort health study by the Heart+Vascular Center at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. It has also been validated by King George’s Medical University in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. A study on this tool is undergoing a peer review process for potential publication.

WHY IT MATTERS Deriving actionable insights via Microsoft Azure, the latest AI tool at Apollo Hospitals enables doctors to deliver “proactive, pre-emptive and preventive” care for at-risk individuals. This also empowers them to provide “more holistic” advice to patients with specific insights for lifestyle modification.

Studies are being done to use artificial intelligence to predict the risk of heart diseases. Omron and Kyoto University in Japan have teamed up to study the use of AI and home-recorded health data in predicting early signs of CVDs. Researchers at the University of Western Australia were recently awarded a government grant to develop a tool that can predict the risk of coronary heart disease from heart CT scans.

Meanwhile, an existing AI-enabled device developed by VUNO analyses the potential risk of cardiac arrest using primary vital signs, such as blood pressure and heart rate. The VUNO Med DeepCARS has recently received regulatory approval in South Korea.

“While some predictive tools do exist to help physicians understand the probability of their patients developing heart disease, most of these are based on Western datasets and don’t take regional risk variations into account. This impacts their accuracy when applied in an Indian context. The Apollo AI-powered cardiovascular disease risk tool will change that and put the knowledge and the means to predict and prevent heart disease in the physician’s hands. Available till now only to Apollo’s physicians, it is a proud moment for us to dedicate this AI tool to all physicians in the country,” said Dr Prathap C. Reddy, chairman of Apollo Hospitals Group.

MITRE has created two new organizations intended to help the company better focus on cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure and new approaches to public health challenges.

The Cyber Infrastructure Protection Innovation Center and Clinical Insights Innovation Cell are part of MITRE Labs, which MITRE established in 2020 to drive breakthroughs in applied science and advanced technology that transform the future of U.S. scientific and economic leadership.

“MITRE Labs has made significant progress to expand MITRE’s impact, inspire innovative disruption, accelerate risk-taking and discovery, and deliver technology capabilities,” said Charles Clancy, senior vice president and general manager of MITRE Labs. “These new groups will help us move faster, be bolder, and act as better partners for securing our nation’s critical infrastructure and leveraging clinical and genomic data to tackle the problems of infectious disease and the promise of precision medicine.”

The Cyber Infrastructure Protection Innovation Center bridges public and private sectors to protect critical infrastructure with a mission-driven approach that brings a deep understanding of operational technology and adversarial behavior. The center works to protect infrastructure including operational technology, industrial control systems, and cyber-physical systems.

“As seen with recent attacks on the Colonial Pipeline and a Florida water treatment plant, nation states and criminal groups are increasingly targeting the operators of our critical systems with potentially devastating cyberattacks,” said George Roelke, acting director of the Cyber Infrastructure Protection Innovation Center. “As critical infrastructure is primarily in the hands of the private sector, our new Cyber Infrastructure Protection Innovation Center will work across industry and government to better understand cyber threats and identify practical steps to make their operations more secure. We can work together to address the safety, regulatory, and national security issues that will make our society more resilient.”

The Clinical Insights Innovation Cell also brings together public and private sector leaders as it takes on critical healthcare challenges and delivers clinical and data science leadership, insight, and advanced artificial intelligence approaches. The cell’s team includes physicians, data scientists, and informaticists, as well as experts in digital health, clinical research trials, and AI with a goal to fundamentally change how we perform clinical trials in the U.S., making our health systems more responsive and resilient.

“Harnessing the research potential of medical data creates infinite opportunities to build a safer, healthier, and more resilient society,” said Dr. Brian Anderson, MITRE’s chief digital health physician and senior manager for the innovation cell. “We look forward to collaborating with public and private sector innovators to develop the platforms and solutions that tackle today’s most critical health challenges.”

About MITRE

MITRE’s mission-driven teams are dedicated to solving problems for a safer world. Through our public-private partnerships and federally funded R&D centers, we work across government and in partnership with industry to tackle challenges to the safety, stability, and well-being of our nation.

Giving patients a sense of control over their ENT care could be more important than ever during this time of continuing COVID-19 uncertainty. The many shifting priorities for ENT practices—such as keeping up with the demands of the digital patient, automating solutions for staff, and keeping up with regulatory changes—has made it more difficult to engage and reassure patients to continue to seek care when necessary and follow-up accordingly to ensure good outcomes.

“From before the patient arrives until after the bill is paid, the right ENT software can make it easier for ENTs and their staff to promote patient satisfaction.”

Today at the AAO-HNSF 2021 Annual Meeting & OTO Experience, healthcare technology leader ModMed® is showcasing its latest patient engagement solutions that are delivering high value to ENTs and patients.

Practice Manager Lynn Schultz of Cass Street Ear, Nose & Throat shared, “Patient Reminders is a great feature that saves us time because we call fewer people and patients really like it. We can search for unconfirmed appointments and follow up with those patients—it takes the guesswork out.”

“The patient engagement tools offered by Modernizing Medicine have helped improve the patient experience,” said Crystal Johnson, Operations Director of The Ear, Nose & Throat & Facial Plastic Surgery Center. “The ability to sign forms electronically saves paper, expenses and time. The Patient Portal has completely enhanced our office flow. We also use Patient Reminders that are compatible with PM. I love this variable because it’s helped to decrease our no-show rate and increase communication with our patients.”

Patient Engagement tools including advanced online check-in, waiting room kiosk sign-in, patient portal access and follow-up care reminders can help make patients feel more connected to their healthcare and alleviate strain on practitioners.

“Engaging patients at clinic check-ins and follow-ups can naturally fall to the wayside when practices are focusing on acute challenges like staff and patient safety, lower revenue and patient retention during a pandemic,” said Dr. David Lehman, MD and Senior Medical Director of Otolaryngology at ModMed. “From before the patient arrives until after the bill is paid, the right ENT software can make it easier for ENTs and their staff to promote patient satisfaction.”

There are measurable benefits of using Patient Engagement tools:

• The Pocket Patient™ app – Provides patients a convenient way to launch telehealth appointments with high-resolution video chat capability. Over 100,000 apps were downloaded within the first month post-launch and it received a 4.3/5 rating from 21,631 patients surveyed via the in-app survey.
• Patient Reminders – Automated appointment confirmation system that reminds patients about appointments and empowers them to reschedule through text. Using text messages to confirm appointments has been shown to be 295% more effective than phone calls, and some practices are seeing a reduction in their patient no-show rates by 40-50% (source: Relatient).
• ModMed?Kiosk – Allows patients to complete forms online which helps streamline patient check-ins and cut down staff’s data entry. Patients complete their forms using an iPad making it so staff only needs to review and accept that data.
• Patient Portal – Through a secure online portal, patients can access certified health information, schedule appointments, review and update medical records, access lab results and make payments.

Additionally, ModMed launched its Premium Patient Connect service to practices using its EHR, EMA® and patient engagement tools. Premium Patient Connect adds an extra layer of efficiency for both patients and staff by streamlining the intake process and giving patients online and mobile access to review and manage their accounts.

For ENT practices that adopt patient engagement technology, it presents a natural opportunity to educate and communicate with patients. It also provides a chance to remind patients that care is still available and to reinforce that best practices for safety remain paramount during the COVID-19 pandemic.

About ModMed

ModMed is transforming healthcare by placing doctors and patients at the center of care through an intelligent, specialty-specific cloud platform. With our electronic health records (EHR) and practice management (PM) systems, and our revenue cycle management (RCM) services, our all-in-one solution empowers specialty medical practices to do their best work by providing them clinical, financial and operational software solutions designed to enable better, more personalized patient care. Our staff physicians help to develop products and services for dermatology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, otolaryngology, pain management, plastic surgery, podiatry, urology practices and ambulatory surgery centers. For more information, visit www.modmed.com. Connect with ModMed via its blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

The Indonesian Hospital Association or PERSI has entered into a two-year collaborative agreement with HIMSS to work on capacity building, workforce development and IT awareness projects by engaging stakeholders across Indonesia’s health ecosystem. The partnership will be in effect until July 2023.

Founded in 1978, PERSI is an independent, non-profit umbrella organisation of 18 hospital associations in Indonesia.

Under the partnership, HIMSS and PERSI will assess the digital maturity of hospitals across the country. A pilot project will see PERSI choosing a participant hospital; HIMSS will then conduct a comprehensive assessment of the hospital’s current state of digital maturity using its Maturity Models and Digital Health Indicator.

The organisations will also jointly develop localised speciality workshops for healthcare professionals. HIMSS will impart international learnings and benchmarks while PERSI will share its expertise in the local market. The former will also provide access to its international content for broader learning.

PERSI is the first organisation from Indonesia to join HIMSS’ global member network of more than 100,000 individual members, 650 corporate members, 480 organisational affiliates and 470 non-profit partners.

PERSI noted that one of the objectives of the digital maturity assessment project is to identify key priorities for inpatient digital action in the short term for hospitals; it will also help them design an inpatient digital hospital roadmap.

Additionally, PERSI’s collaboration with HIMSS provides them with an opportunity to participate in regional dialogues around healthcare policy where they can share their expertise and insights to provide perspectives from Indonesia.

To mark their partnership, HIMSS will be holding its annual HIMSS APAC conference in Jakarta for the first time in 2022.

“We are confident that this collaboration will actively support the hospital community in widely performing quality information technology for hospital care improvement. With increased capacity, PERSI and the hospital community can contribute greater input for the formulation of best standard development within the national policy framework,” said Dr Widyastuti Wibisana, head of the Institute of International Relations at PERSI.

“Recently, significant investments have been made by global tech giants and investors into digital tech in Indonesia and this is supported by the government’s efforts to make its investment environment favourable through strong regulatory form. With these developments, the nation’s health system is poised now more than ever for digital transformation to enable better healthcare delivery and improved patient outcomes. HIMSS is honoured to be able to partner with PERSI to advance the digitisation of the nation’s health system and their key role in the Indonesian health ecosystem will be critical to this partnership,” HIMSS Asia-Pacific VP Simon Lin also said.

RedCliffe Life Diagnostics, a leading new-age diagnostics company, stated that the company is working on three strategies such as awareness, accessibility and affordability.

The company added that there is an evident need for creating a positive mindset among people with respect to preventive healthcare and aim to make healthcare available to everyone irrespective of region.

In terms of affordability, people are unaware of the expenses of diagnostic and laboratory tests, and findings show that more education is needed in this area and more study should be done to see if cost knowledge interventions actually influence ordering behavior.

The company added that it is planning to launch 10 labs in various cities, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 towns in next 12 months to offer last mile service delivery.

The company added that it is working towards ensuring a widespread network of diagnostic services across the country.

“Ever since the healthcare providers have started embracing e-media records by enabling artificial intelligence (AI), the extraction of patient data has become easier and convenient and health care providers are able to provide patients with better treatment and care. The tele-consultation services delivered over mobile phones has made it easier for patients to get instant remedies for their health-related concerns and queries,” stated Dheeraj Jain, Founder, Redcliffe Life Diagnostics.

Jain added, “Promoting the ideology of preventive healthcare enhances human health, family, community, state, and nation health. Promoting health boosts everyone’s quality of life. Promoting health minimizes premature mortality. Programmes that advocate the mindset among people to choose healthy and lower their disease and disability risks should be promoted. At the population level, health inequities can be eliminated, life quality improved and healthcare and related services focused upon.”

The company is also developing first of kind tests based on research publications and have nearly 10 publications under its belt in larger collaboration. It is pioneering new tests in reproductive health space too.

The company recently introduced mucormycosis multiplex RT-PCR test to diagnose rapidly spreading mucormycosis (black fungus). This is an important step towards the timely diagnosis and treatment of this fast-spreading health challenge.

Redcliffe Life Diagnostics offers diagnostics with a complete portfolio approach of both advanced testing including in-house gene sequencing portfolio like non-invasive reproductive screening, cancer tumor gene tests, rare diseases exome and also in routine clinical pathology tests across all possible parameters. Its home collection unit is fastest growing in India built on its network of trusted labs across many states. It aims to be best in precision and personalized testing. It offers more than 3,500+ tests with accurate results and fast turnaround time.