AiCure, an AI and data analytics company focused on improving clinical trials, and OncoBay Clinical, a full-service boutique contract research organization (CRO) specializing in the simplification of complex oncology programs, announced a strategic partnership to provide oncology sponsors with scalable, AI-powered insights to improve patient care and optimize drug development. A subsidiary of the Moffitt Cancer Center, OncoBay will make AiCure’s proprietary AI platform available for oncology trials, providing sponsors and sites with a more holistic understanding of patient health and site optimization.

“Cancer treatment – particularly during clinical trials – is a complex experience for patients both physically and emotionally. By partnering with OncoBay, we hope increased access to technology will help improve the quality of life for these patients and make their treatment journey as simple as possible,” said Ed Ikeguchi, M.D., CEO of AiCure. “Through their own smartphones, patients are able to get much needed support without leaving their homes. Enhancing the quality of trial data collected in between clinic visits will also help sites with decision-making to create meaningful, data-driven trials.”

The oncology drug pipeline has grown by 63% since 2013, but the average success rate of oncology drugs is only 3.4%. To address this discrepancy and the unique challenges of oncology trials, particularly given the complex treatment regimens, AiCure and OncoBay aim to improve patient support and trial retention, while also providing sponsors and sites with greater visibility into patient behavior. Through AiCure’s patient engagement solution, Patient Connect, oncology sites can remotely monitor patients and use real-time communication tools to guide them through complex treatment protocols, including which medication to take and when, as well as allow direct access to a clinician. Verified patient compliance information makes pharmacokinetic data instantly more robust, and these actionable insights into trial and site performance empower sponsors to make proactive, data-driven decisions, ultimately accelerating trial timelines and lowering costs of high-quality drugs.

“With oncology’s data landscape growing in complexity, we need to arm our sponsors with the tools to drive informed decisions that will improve study outcomes,” said Krystyna Kowalczyk, President and CEO of Oncobay Clinical. “By partnering with AiCure and leveraging their unique AI-powered insights, our sponsors will gain a deeper understanding of patient behavior through high-quality data capture and develop comprehensive views of the impact of study drug administration and compliance on other data points. We’re excited to further our overall mission of collaborating with innovative, forward-thinking companies to make a difference for our customers and their patients.”

Apervita, a growth-stage healthcare collaboration startup, and Diameter Health, a provider of software for health information exchanges (HIEs), announced a partnership earlier this week that will speed up data quality measurement for value-based care.

Apervita’s collaboration platform will now incorporate Diameter’s clinical data optimization software to normalize health system data and improve data interoperability. Diameter offers automated, scalable technology to enable real-time transactions, better analytics and improved care outcomes. The alliance between Apervita and Diameter Health will boost the quality of data used to determine the amount of reimbursement in value-based contracts between providers and payers, according to the companies.

Those quality measures get submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

“[Diameter] gets all of the information in an organized structured fashion so that then we can execute the quality measures to provide feedback to health plans and providers on how the providers are performing against the quality measures,” Rick Ratliff, chief commercial officer at Apervita, told Fierce Healthcare.

There has been a push over the last several years to switch from a fee-for-service model to one in which providers get paid based on the value of care. Physicians with high-quality data measurements above a certain threshold could get paid more, Ratliff said.

“If for some reason the cost was much higher and the quality was not what was expected, they might actually get penalized,” Ratliff said.

A quality measurement could include whether a patient’s blood pressure is under control, noted Eric Rosow, CEO and co-founder of Diameter Health.

For a person with diabetes, the criteria could include measurement of blood sugar levels and whether a patient received an eye or foot exam, Ratliff said. If among 1,000 diabetes patients, 500 got a foot exam, the measurement would be 50% for the exam category, he said.

“That diagnosis is captured inside of the electronic medical record. Then you have to know did each one of these steps that were necessary to properly care for a patient with diabetes actually happen,” Ratliff explained. “Each one of those is a quality measure.”

A key challenge in healthcare is to address healthcare data that comes from different sources and formats and is often not compatible.

“There are four million clinicians entering data differently into more than 100 certified EHRs, which store data differently even in instances of the same EHR brand,” Rosow told Fierce Healthcare. “That means the digital data formats and code systems coming out of EHRs vary greatly.”

Diameter is focused on standardizing the various types of clinical data. “Diameter has some advanced capabilities to be able to pull that data in from a wide variety of resources, and then get it into a standard format on the other side,” Rosow said.

Healthcare organizations are also aiming for clean clinical data, which means codes or units of measure could be missing.

“Clean, normalized data is complete and syntactically correct so that computers and humans can ‘process’ them without extraordinary effort or rework,” Rosow said.

Apervita streamlines reimbursement and provides insight on clinical and claims data using a clinical quality language (CQL) cloud platform. The insights help boost clinical workflows and provide the information needed to form value-based contracts.

“The better the quality of care provided, the better the provider’s and payer’s financial results,” Rosow said. “Such agreements are important because they drive the need for improved quality, accurate measurement and clean data.”

In addition to data-quality efforts, Apervita has recently taken critical steps to secure health data. Last year, Apervita introduced an advanced encryption feature to protect health plan and provider data from data breaches. The technology scrambles data as it travels across the internet and only shows the information to a sender and recipient.

The partnership between Apervita and Diameter will lead to more effective healthcare software overall, according to Rosow. “Better data quality improves the effectiveness of all healthcare applications,” Rosow said.

Home-based care companies, including Amazon Care and two health systems, are lobbying Congress to make permanent changes to home health care reimbursement policies.

Intermountain Healthcare and Ascension are two of the founding members of the Moving Health Home coalition, which aims to change the way policymakers think about the home as a site of clinical service.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the untapped potential of home-based clinical care and the opportunity for a more robust set of services ranging from primary care to hospital-level treatment, the coalition said in a press release.

“The advent of telehealth, remote monitoring, digital therapeutics, provider home visiting, medical records sharing, and other technology has shown that care in the home can be at least equivalent to, if not better than, care offered in facilities,” the organizations said.

Other members of the coalition are home-based providers Amazon Care, Landmark Health, Signify Health, Dispatch Health, Elara Caring and Home Instead.

In 2019, Amazon announced it was piloting a new virtual health service benefit for employees and their families in the Seattle region called Amazon Care. The tech giant said the service combines “the best of both virtual and in-person care” by offering virtual visits, in-person primary care visits at patients’ homes or offices and prescription delivery.

Moving Health Home says it has five policy priorities, and top of the list is pushing for Medicare coverage of higher-acuity home-based services, such as emergency services. The group also wants policymakers to create an extended care benefit that would serve as a home-based alternative for skilled nursing facility care.

The coalition also is advocating for permanent “Hospital without Walls” site of care flexibility to support home-based hospital services.

The coalition also wants home-based evaluation and monitoring services to be reimbursed at the same rate as the 2022 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for what primary care office visits are paid.

“Over 17% of Medicare beneficiaries are living with 6 or more chronic conditions. In-home, patient-centered care is critical to managing the complex health needs of our nation’s older adults. We need a public policy agenda that ensures access to innovative in-home care,” said Nick Loporcaro, CEO at Landmark Health.

Different types of home health services have existed for decades, but these services are short-term and designed to help patients—mainly seniors—prevent or recover from an illness, injury or hospital stay. Making the home part of the regular options available to patients will allow for primary care, behavioral health, chronic disease management and even hospital-level care in the home, the coalition said.

Technology and regulatory changes have made at-home care offerings more available than ever.

In March 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the Hospitals Without Walls program, which provides broad regulatory flexibility that allowed hospitals to provide services in locations beyond their existing walls. Under this temporary policy, hospitals can transfer patients to outside facilities such as ambulatory surgery centers, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, hotels and dormitories, while still receiving hospital payments under Medicare.

CMS expanded that policy in November when it launched the Acute Hospital Care At Home program. These new regulatory flexibilities allow hospitals to provide acute care services at home for Medicare beneficiaries for conditions that would otherwise require hospitalization, such as congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

CMS’s Advanced Hospital Care at Home only covers patients admitted directly from hospitals. There are currently 48 systems and 109 hospitals in 29 states participating in CMS’ hospital-at-home program.

Some health systems, like Mount Sinai and Intermountain, have built their own hospital-at-home programs. Other providers such as Mayo Clinic and UNC Health have partnered with company Medically Home to provide hospital-level, high-acuity care to patients.

There also are companies such as DispatchHealth that provide hospital care without the hospitals and tend to focus on low acuity health issues.

The CMS waivers for home-based care announced in March and November represented a watershed moment that the home is being recognized as an important site of care, Medically Home CEO Rami Karjian told Fierce Healthcare.

Health systems including Mayo Clinic and Adventist Health, enabled by Medically Home, have treated more than 1,000 patients at home to date in six states. Medically Home, which is not a part of the coalition, works with hospitals to provide high-acuity care to high-complexity patients who would otherwise be hospitalized for over 100 serious illnesses, including exacerbation of chronic diseases, such as heart failure and COPD), infections, such as pneumonia and cellulitis, and post-surgical hospitalizations.

The coalition’s efforts to change reimbursement polices underpins the growing interest in shifting more care to patients’ homes, he said.

“My read is on this alliance is they are focused on home as a site of care more broadly, while we are focused on high-acuity hospital care at the home,” he said.

As New Yorkers remain sheltered in place and hospitals battle overwhelming COVID-19 patient numbers, Babylon announces a comprehensive care solution aimed to quickly put 24/7 digital healthcare services into the hands of millions of New Yorkers, right where they are.

Starting today, every eligible New Yorker can access digital healthcare services through the Babylon app, such as telemedicine, covered normally by their insurance policy. Serving patients straight from their phones, key tools through the Babylon app include a new COVID-19 Care Assistant that provides up-to-date information about COVID-19, with the hopes of easing patient anxiety and helping individuals make informed next steps toward wellness. The Babylon app can be accessed 24/7 and combines updated health information, a symptom checker, live chat with real Babylon team members, symptom logging, and virtual doctor consultations with New York Telemedicine Associates.

With an option to speak to clinicians by video, the service will take pressure off of New York emergency rooms, doctor’s offices, and other medical services at a time when so many in the state are at capacity.

As demands on medical professionals, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities grow day by day across the United States, there has never been a greater need to protect and reduce the overall strain on our healthcare professionals. By utilizing AI-powered technology to keep patients informed, and a virtual care model to support the most vulnerable, Babylon can continue to drive forward its mission of increasing access to quality healthcare around the world.

Dr Ali Parsa, CEO & Founder, Babylon, said:

“Babylon is joining with Mount Sinai Health Partners to put a doctor in the pocket of all eligible New Yorkers, 24/7, covered as normal by their insurance policy. At a time that one of the greatest cities in the world is going through one of its worst public health crises, our relationship brings the brilliant services of Mount Sinai Health Partners together with the unique global expertise of Babylon, to give eligible insurance plan members in the city access for their primary healthcare needs, wherever they are and whenever they need it. Together, we will revolutionize healthcare for all in New York City, while freeing up space and time for health workers inside health systems to do their life saving work.”

Robert W. Fields, MD, MHA, Chief Medical Officer, Mount Sinai Health Partners said:

“Babylon, a leader in convenient and accessible digital health care services, is a valuable addition to our high-performing primary care network. New York is the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic and more than ever the need to engage with our patients in their homes has become an essential part of healthcare. Having Babylon in our network also strengthens our capacity in this area to serve our patients at the highest level.”

The Babylon app provides access to a digital-first healthcare solution that makes available a variety of healthcare services, with aims of fully integrating into secondary healthcare. The relationship between Babylon and Mount Sinai Health Partners illustrates a quality, digital-first care model – underlined by a focus on prevention – that Babylon aims to replicate with other impactful healthcare organizations across the U.S. and worldwide.

As part of Babylon’s move into the United States, it has already been providing access to services through the Babylon app to members of certain health plans in Missouri, New York and California, building toward a 50 state network.

This news marks a major announcement for Babylon in the US, after the company announced its $550M funding round last year and looked to quick U.S. expansion in an effort to continue fulfilling its global mission of putting accessible and affordable healthcare into the hands of everyone, everywhere.

About Babylon

Babylon is a globally-leading technology company with the ambitious mission to put an accessible and affordable health service in the hands of every person on Earth.

We combine technology and medical expertise to bring doctors and people closer together, with digital healthcare tools designed to empower people with knowledge about their health. Through a range of digital health services – such as AI-backed digital health tools and video doctor appointments – we give people round-the-clock access to affordable, holistic healthcare services. We work with governments, health providers and insurers across the globe, and support healthcare facilities from small local practices to large hospitals.

With a $2B valuation, Babylon has over 4 million registered patients and has completed nearly 2 million consultations globally. We have teamed up with 170 impactful worldwide partners — including the NHS, Telus Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Government of Rwanda — to fulfill our vision of accessible and affordable healthcare, for all. For more information, visit https://www.babylonhealth.com/us.

About Mount Sinai Health Partners

Mount Sinai Health Partners is a clinically integrated network, comprised of Mount Sinai’s full-time faculty physicians, associated community physicians, and eight hospitals spanning Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. Our doctors work closely together and hold each other accountable to deliver high-quality health care to people that is rooted in the best practices of current evidence-based medicine.

Mount Sinai Health Partners builds relationships – with community organizations, health plans and employers – to give our patients a more effective and seamlessly connected health care experience. We embrace population health management and new payment models that reward accountability for cost and quality, participating in managed care agreements with health insurers that foster ongoing health improvement across various patient populations.

Elekta announced that its latest solution for proton therapy, Monaco®* treatment planning for protons, has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Monaco brings robust functionality for proton therapy, featuring fast optimization and calculation via the Monte Carlo algorithm and user-configurable templates for different body sites to enable rapid proton plan creation. Monaco is a component of Elekta’s Treatment Management Solution, which provides a full-featured environment for delivering proton therapy.

“Adding new technology to a department can be a complex task, and especially so for a highly advanced technique like proton therapy,” says Maurits Wolleswinkel, President Linac Solutions. “In partnership with IBA, however, Elekta’s Treatment Management solution, which includes Monaco, ProKnow and MOSAIQ Plaza digital tools – including MOSAIQ Oncology Information System – provides the ideal ecosystem to integrate proton therapy, helping centers expand their capabilities to choose the best care for their patients.”

Elekta was among the first companies to support proton therapy with treatment planning and oncology information systems. The company has built on this proven history to bring high quality planning, combined with intelligent, automated oncology workflows.

The partnership with IBA, a world leader in proton therapy, provides a very strong foundation with an unmatched track record of over 100,000 patients treated by IBA’s clinical partners.

“We are excited to continue expanding our successful partnership with Elekta. As proton therapy becomes an essential treatment modality for an increasing number of indications, it is critical to seamlessly integrate our solutions into the clinic and optimize workflows. Thanks to the joint in-house expertise of Elekta and IBA, and leveraging on the largest and most knowledgeable community of clinical partners in Proton Therapy, IBA is ideally positioned to complement Elekta’s integrated software solutions,” says Jeroen Cammeraat, Chief Commercial Officer at IBA.

“Our ecosystem of digital tools will not only simplify and automate the oncology department, but will also enable clinicians to continuously improve, treat more patients and reduce operational costs,” Wolleswinkel says.

By harnessing Elekta’s oncology informatics infrastructure, users can benefit from department-wide integration and standardized workflows. All radiotherapy machines, including linear accelerators and proton systems, will be connected, thus optimizing efficiency. This infrastructure also gives clinicians powerful analytics tools to go beyond standard efficiency improvements, using the wealth of data that the department generates to pinpoint improvements within processes. Overall, this contributes to higher productivity and cost reduction, and enables value-based healthcare.

Elekta and IBA have been collaborating for the last 20 years to help oncology centers integrate the cancer treatment modality into their patient care environment.

Quibim, a global leader in whole-body medical imaging analysis, announced the launch of qp-Prostate, its latest and most advanced prostate AI based Magnetic Resonance (MR) solution, after receiving 510(k) clearance by the US Food and Drug Administration. The solution aids in the process of prostate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reporting from visualization to quantification with the aim of increasing diagnostic accuracy and, potentially, early prostate cancer detection, which may contribute to long term survival.

This groundbreaking solution will more efficiently provide information to aid in the diagnose of prostate cancer, the second most common cancer in men annually effecting 1.4 million globally. With nearly 1 in 8 men diagnosed with the disease during a lifetime, early detection is important but a challenge for oncologists as early-stage prostate cancer is asymptomatic. Current diagnostic tools like measuring prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in blood have known limitations and may result in patients undergoing invasive biopsies or even unnecessary surgeries.

Quibim set out to transform prostate diagnosis and monitoring by developing a new non-invasive imaging tool using MRI data and advanced computer models to investigate the prostate anatomy in extreme detail. Quibim’s new qp-Prostate is the only tool on the market providing automated regional organ segmentation, a process that may reduce interpretation time and helps define diagnosis per region. “We challenged ourselves to build the world’s finest AI platform for prostate imaging, to help increase diagnostic precision as a tireless companion to the clinician, helping transform the men’s care journey,” said Dr. Angel Alberich Bayarri, CEO Quibim. “Instead of analyzing the prostate as a whole, the solution can segment the prostate’s transitional zone, peripheral zone and seminal vesicles, as well as other regions defined in the Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) v2.1 guidelines to extract clinically meaningful quantitative information from the MRI examination as a potential aid for early and accurate clinicians’ diagnosis.”

Quibim has been at the forefront of the medical imaging industry for years and envisions that non-invasive prostate MRI’s will become a routine screening test, similar to mammography for breast cancer. “MRI is the perfect modality for prostate evaluation, however, only 5% of radiologists are trained to interpret prostate MRI data,” explained Prof. Luis Martí-Bonmatí, Quibim co-founder. “qp-Prostate shortens the learning curve and reduces the workload for radiologists, potentially increasing productivity by reducing image reading time and generates more meaningful insights for patient diagnosis and monitoring.” He added, “We have worked closely with the FDA and are delighted that the device is now available in the US market.”

Reporting is also accelerated with qp-Prostate’s automated rules engine, allowing an end-to-end workflow. Reports can be sent to the Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) instantaneously and synced with a patient’s folder, so that complete medical information is available to radiologists at any time. Users can edit the standard PI-RADS v2.1 templates and re-launch any analysis if deemed necessary.

(1): qp-Prostate is specifically indicated as an image processing software package to be used by trained professionals, including radiologists specialized in prostate imaging, urologists and oncologists. The software runs on a standard “off-the-shelf” workstation and can be used to perform image viewing, processing and analysis of prostate MR images. Data and images are acquired through DICOM compliant imaging devices and modalities. Patient management decisions should not be based solely on the results of qp-Prostate. qp-Prostate does not perform a diagnostic function, but instead allows the users to visualize and analyze DICOM data.”

About Quibim
Quibim, a company with its headquarters in Valencia, Spain, is a global leader in whole-body medical imaging analysis. Quibim products are used worldwide by leading research teams. Partners use Quibim Precision®, a whole-body imaging ecosystem, for a wide range of applications from detecting a disease to tracking the efficacy of novel treatments.

Quibim follows an AI-first approach to help detect pathologies across every body part and imaging modality, using quantitative imaging biomarkers. We understand every body part. We speak human.

It is not secret that eating a healthy and balanced diet can lend itself to benefits like proper organ function and weight management. However, there are some additional perks to healthful eating that do not always get the recognition and attention they deserve. It has long been an argument that healthy eating is more costly than some of the alternatives that are quicker or easier to consume. But what is often left out of that conversation are the long-term side effects that these cheaper options can have on your wallet. Thinking beyond the obvious benefits that healthy eating provides you and shedding light on some of the less common ones can help you push yourself to also think about how your diet and your budget are connected in the present and in the future.

Financial Benefits

Appropriating funds towards healthy eating now can save you money down the road. What we put into our bodies determines everything from how they function, to how they look, to how much it costs us to maintain them. One basic example would be skin care. The foods you eat as well as your water consumption can combat the appearance of wrinkles and aid in the protection against sun damage. Both of which are things that you will spend a lot more money on to cosmetically correct down the line than you would by spending the money now to correct your diet.

You may not think that your diet, and your life insurance policy have anything to do with one another, but they are in fact linked. When you apply for a life insurance policy your terms and premiums will be connected to your overall health and reports from specified doctors’ appointments. If you have been proactive in taking care of yourself via healthy eating, you are likely going to be in a better position to receive more favorable rates. You are going to want a policy that helps you access care when you need it so it will be helpful to review a guide that includes the pros and cons of having long term care insurance on your policy. Knowing that you will likely require less intensive care if you are in better health.

Behavioral Benefits

How you fuel your body impacts not only how it works physically but also how it works mentally and emotionally. There are several hidden behavioral benefits that accompany a health forward diet. Spikes in your blood sugar because of foods that are high in sugar or processed foods can cause you to feel lethargic, moody, and affect your mental retention levels. Using food as medicine to correct these imbalances can help you avoid more expensive or invasive remedies down the line.

Your overall knowledge base will naturally widen as you dedicate yourself to learning more about the benefits of healthy eating. Since this kind of lifestyle requires research and education you will be exposed to new information all the time. This will also help you to create habits by using this mindset to make more informed decisions over time.

Show Thought Leadership, Break News, Secure Your Share of the Future of Healthcare. Reuters Events Healthcare brings together the world’s most senior CEO, Board and Leadership teams ready to set the Healthcare agenda for years to come. You must be a part of this movement, to showcase your latest innovations with an industry who is eager to learn.

This opportunity will allow you to position yourself as a key leader in the business of healthcare. Plus, you have guaranteed exposure to a worldwide audience of 3000+ healthcare leaders.

Global Healthcare Leaders
We bring you healthcare leaders with a Board, C-Suite and VP audience, ensuring you get your solutions in front of key decision makers

Generate New Leads & Book Meetings
With our B2B networking app, pre-book meetings with our high-level leadership audience, giving you access to hundreds of new business leads

Become a Thought Leader
Lead decision makers through some of their toughest technology and business model challenges and become their go-to solution provider