Jefferson Health has partnered with West Coast venture capital firm General Catalyst to launch a Philadelphia-based company they hope will lead the digital transformation of health care.

“The goal is to try to build a defining software company for health care that has the DNA of an elite health care company like Jefferson and the DNA of an elite technology company like ours,” said Hemant Taneja, managing director of General Catalyst.

Dr. Stephen Klasko, CEO of Jefferson Health and president of Thomas Jefferson University, said while the company has been operating in stealth mode, he has already started getting calls from the leaders of several large health systems who want to be part of, and invest in, the venture.

We have created a digital health company that will be based in Philadelphia and [focus on] health assurance for people across the country,” Klasko said. “The center of the universe for this will not be in the Silicon Valley, it will be in Philadelphia.

“The secret sauce of what we are doing together is [the understanding] that 98 or 99% of the people in Philadelphia are not patients,” he said. “They are people that would love to be able to thrive without health care getting in the way. … At Jefferson we’ve made the long-term decision, and this is where Hemant and I really believe we will be incredibly successful, that Jefferson will be the place for people — while they are well — to get help to thrive without health care getting in the way. That way, when they are sick, they are not going to go up and down the Schuylkill Expressway and decide whether they should go to Penn or Jefferson for care because Jefferson is already their partner in health assurance.”

Taneja defined health assurance as an emerging category of consumer-centric, data-driven health care services that are designed to bend the cost curve of care and help people stay well.

Klasko said supporting that health assurance strategy, for Jefferson, means investing in technological advancements and forming partnerships like the one it has with Palo Alto-based General Catalyst.

Jefferson and General Catalyst intend to provide more details on the project, including the company’s name, early next year. They have recruited Dan Goldsmith — a tech industry veteran with two decades of software and services experience — to lead the initiative. Goldsmith, the former president of Instructure and senior executive at Veeva Systems, will also be part of Klasko’s leadership cabinet at Jefferson.

The new company was launched earlier this month with a staff of about two dozen people, including Jefferson’s 17-person in-house digital innovation team. The number of employees is expected to grow into the thousands over time, Taneja said.
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Neither Jefferson nor General Catalyst disclosed their initial investment to launch the new company.

Taneja said businesses across different sectorshave focused on organizing content, communities and commerce online in the last two decades.

“The opportunity in front of us, which frankly has been accelerated by Covid and the pandemic, is to intentionally organize care online,” he said. “Our belief is the secret to that foundationally is a true partnership between technology and health care. That is what Steve and my work together, and what our organizations are doing together, symbolizes.

“What we are doing [at General Catalyst] is putting a team together and locking arms with the team at Jefferson and putting together new models for how technology and digital transformation of health care is actually going to happen,” Taneja said. “Rather than having a typical Silicon Valley mindset of ‘Let’s go disrupt an industry,’ it’s been about ‘Let’s be partners first.’ The goal is to help technology provide operating leverage, true operating leverage, for Steve’s business and then as a model for the rest of the industry.”

Klasko said an important part of the initiative will be using technology to address disparities in access to health care that continue to be a problem in Philadelphia and the rest of the country.

Taneja said the process for achieving their goal will involve putting together a continuum of care from virtual to physical, which will require a “fundamentally different way” of thinking about technology, infrastructure and consumer experiences. He noted most major health systems have innovation arms. “Steve and I have talked about how you have to infuse innovation into the entire organization,” Taneja said.

Klasko and Taneja first met about three years ago when Taneja invited Klasko to a dinner he was hosting with a group of health system leaders during the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference.

Healthcare insurer Bupa is working with Well.Me, creators of a digital healthcare tool that monitors the health and wellbeing of employees while they’re in the workplace.

As a result of the collaboration, UK workplaces that are business customers of Bupa Health Service will be provided with health monitoring stations. These Wellpoint health stations will give employees the ability to actively monitor their health measurements, including details of their exercise regime, nutrition and sleep patterns.

This data is then fed into Be.Me, an app containing health tracking software available to individuals who have attended a health assessment at a Bupa Health Clinic.

This tool will allow them to record metrics such as blood pressure, resting heart rate and BMI, so they can identify potential issues and make lifestyle changes if necessary.

Looking ahead, Bupa is planning to introduce the monitoring app to insurance customers too.

“The provision of health monitoring and tracking by Bupa Health Services for its business clients opens up a new world of health management for employees” explained Keith Lewis, CEO of Well.Me.

“The COVID-19 crisis has shown us the importance of maintaining optimal health and the need to manage conditions such as obesity and high blood pressure. Through the Be.Me app, users will have the tools to monitor and track their key health metrics and we are delighted that Well.Me has been able to play a major role in delivering this service.”

Sarah Melia, Managing Director at Bupa Health Clinics, added: “There has never been a time when the monitoring and management of health has been more important.

“Well.Me has been an integral partner in the delivery of the Be.Me app and together with the deployment of Wellpoints we hope to make a real impact in improving the health of the nation’s workforce.”

Calvary Adelaide Hospital has become the largest smart hospital in South Australia thanks to new building automation technology.

The $345 million 12-story private hospital has 5 levels of patient wards, and capacity for 344 overnight beds with 16 operating theatres. Specialties include orthopaedic, cardiac, neurosurgical and rehabilitation services, along with a custom-designed Hybrid Theatre that combines an operating theatre with a radiology suite to diagnose and treat patients faster.

Technology firm ABB has partnered with automation specialists mySmart to equip the hospital with ABB’s i-bus® KNX system, an automation solution that controls all the building’s lighting and monitoring.

The system gives hospital personnel and maintenance staff full command of lighting functions, which can be managed automatically according to a schedule, sunset or sunrise, the presence of people, or by pushing a button.

The hospital is now equipped with more than 1200 KNX devices, making it the largest KNX healthcare project in the Southern Hemisphere. It is expected the technology will deliver substantial cost savings, given the countless number of lighting points in the hospital, including patient rooms, research facilities, hallways, waiting rooms, laboratories and lobbies. ABB say their system can help make energy savings of up to 60 per cent.

“Hospitals always need light, regardless of the time of day or the day of the week” Christian Schiemann, Building Automation Manager at ABB Australia said. “Lighting must be reliable and well-designed to not only guarantee the best conditions for medical and nursing staff, but also provide optimal conditions for the well-being of patients.”

The i-bus® KNX system integrates the hospital’s lighting and energy metering with the building management system (BMS) and Nurse Call system. This allows the lighting system to work in unison with heating and cooling systems, so as lighting sensors detect the movement of people and turn lights on, it triggers the heating/cooling system to respond accordingly.

It also allows devices to communicate with one another via a single cable which is installed alongside normal power lines. This means that all electrical functions are connected with one another via the bus system.

“Calvary Adelaide Hospital is a great technical solution for a truly modern facility” said Peter Garrett, Managing Director of mySmart. “We are very proud to have partnered with ABB to provide a real world-class building automation solution, that ultimately will deliver critical support to hospital staff and patients.”

A new digital outpatients service is being rolled out in England in partnership with the National Health Service, to help reduce unnecessary in-person hospital appointments.

NHS partnership Health Call is launching the service to connect clinicians with patients at home, reducing the need to attend hospital appointments in person during the pandemic. Health Call is a collaboration between seven NHS Foundation Trusts, and delivers digital health services across England.

The service will be powered by Inhealthcare, a digital healthcare and remote monitoring provider. Their video conferencing platform that will enable better communications between healthcare professionals and people living with long-term conditions.

Inhealthcare enables patients to self-test and self-report questionnaires, blood tests and vital sign measurements without meeting clinicians face-to-face. It currently supports more than 500,000 patients across the UK.

The service has been created to help hospitals build capacity in outpatient services, as well as reduce the number of unnecessary nurse visits to care homes, to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

It integrates directly with hospital administration systems to book appointments, deliver reminders, record attendance, distribute and gather patient questionnaires and share outcome forms with electronic patient records.

Patients can choose to communicate via a mobile app, web browser, text message or telephone landline, depending on preference.

“The NHS embraced video conferencing at the onset of coronavirus but early services lacked functions to make life easier for users, whether patients or professionals” said Andrew Izon, director of Health Call and chief information officer at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.

“The digital outpatients service builds on the success of video conferencing with an all-encompassing approach to help hospitals meet outpatient demand and catch up on the growing backlog of cancelled or delayed appointments.

“Our team of digital health specialists have created a service which is intuitive to use, enables the sharing of real-time data and improves quality of life by helping patients to manage their health, their way.”

The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) has kicked off a program aimed at modernising the national digital health infrastructure, aiming to better connect Australia’s healthcare system and deliver improvements in the quality and efficiency of healthcare.

The National Infrastructure Modernisation (NIM) program is centred on what a digital health ecosystem could be over the next decade, ADHA said. It sits alongside Australia’s National Digital Health Strategy, published in August 2017, and the connections between state and territory government services.

ADHA hopes the program will deliver three outcomes for Australian healthcare providers and patients: A secure and sustainable digital infrastructure with improved ability to innovate and expand future capabilities and services nationally; ensure that digital health needs for all users are further progressed through a modern, future-proofed seamless digital platform; and ensure that the benefits of digital health technologies and services supported by the national infrastructure are realised for consumers and clinicians, leading to improved health and wellbeing for all Australians.

“2020 has demonstrated the tangible benefits of a better connected healthcare system,” ADHA CEO Amanda Cattermole said.

“In addition to the benefits from telehealth and electronic prescriptions, healthcare providers are in increasing numbers using My Health Record as a safe and secure way to upload and access documents to support patient care. The modernisation of the national digital health infrastructure will provide the framework for future innovation.”

The current state of the national digital health “ecosystem” comprises a number of clinical systems with numerous connections to other systems and a variety of interface styles and authentication credentials.

ADHA, in a request for tender (RFT), said the technical complexity of the systems currently in use creates an administrative and financial burden on healthcare organisations. Additionally, while national provider and consumer portals connect to the My Health Record System, they can only view data stored in the government’s contentious digital medical file.

The new ecosystem concept for the NIM project consists of healthcare recipients and carers, healthcare providers, researchers, clinical information systems, government health and financial services, health information intermediaries, healthcare applications, artificial intelligence and machine learning services, and information analytics.

In the RFT, ADHA said at the core of this ecosystem is the My Health Record System and the Health API Gateway.

“The ecosystem concept will support the interconnection of information systems outside of the current My Health Record System boundary such as national repositories and data exchanges,” it wrote.

“The ecosystem concept will be underpinned by robust cybersecurity and trust frameworks. The ecosystem will adopt the most appropriate security and privacy-preserving technologies to address security and privacy risks in different trust domains.”

A leading digital healthcare company in India has partnered with Shakti Foundation, an organisation that works for the financial inclusion and empowerment of women, to increase access to healthcare for women from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Shakti Foundation supports almost half a million women with micro and SME financing, as well as healthcare and other services. Their partnership with Bangladesh-based Digital Healthcare Solutions (DH) aims to bring new healthcare tech solutions to the women they work with, and their surrounding communities.

DH and Shakti have installed new technology at 11 Shakti Medical Care Centres, upgrading them to Digital Women’s Health Centers. Overall DH intends to evolve more services providing support to more than 70 clinics.

Shakti borrowers and their families can now access free unlimited physician consultations via call, chat or video call, as well as specialist physicians such gynecologists, pediatricians, skin and medicine specialists.

All consultations are provided via video. Test results, referrals and prescriptions will now be provided digitally making them easy to share with other healthcare organisations, before being printed locally.

The partnership has also launched a free helpline for Shakti members, who can now call doctors toll-free over the phone or make a video call via the Digital Hospital” app.

In a press release, Imran Ahmed, deputy executive director of Shakti Foundation, said: “Our partnership with Digital Health to bring quality health services and online consultation with specialists to marginalised women and their families even in remote areas, is yet another example of Shakti leveraging technology to disrupt the status-quo and reiterating its commitment to ensure good health and overall empowerment of women.”

As well as its key project helping ultra-poor urban women in Bangladesh with micro loans to start businesses, Shakti Foundation have been supporting low income families with relief packages throughout the pandemic.

ZOLL® Medical Corporation, an Asahi Kasei company that manufactures medical devices and related software solutions, announced that its software-as-a-service division is expanding its solutions portfolio into new markets to provide data interoperability and accounts receivable (AR) optimization to the healthcare industry.

While expanding its offerings into billing operations solutions for hospitals, health systems, and billing companies, the newly rebranded ZOLL Data Systems division unites ZOLL’s revenue cycle management (RCM) expertise and intelligent software systems under a single brand. Meanwhile, ZOLL Data Systems continues its strong commitment to its established emergency medical services (EMS) and Fire markets.

“Successful healthcare delivery relies as much on sound business practices as it does on high-quality medical care,” said Alex N. Moghadam, President of ZOLL Data Systems. “Significant expansion of our market category to that of a healthcare software solutions provider is built around our core message: Deliver more. ZOLL Data Systems empowers healthcare organizations to perform at a higher level, delivering everything from better patient outcomes to greater revenue capture.”

ZOLL Data Systems encompasses communications, operations, and billing solutions under one umbrella, bringing a consistent, unified presence to every customer interaction. To further unify the customer experience, ZOLL Data Systems is redesigning its website, consolidating revenue cycle and billing solutions into a unified portfolio.
About ZOLL Medical Corporation

ZOLL Medical Corporation, an Asahi Kasei company, develops and markets medical devices and software solutions that help advance emergency care and save lives, while increasing clinical and operational efficiencies. With products for defibrillation and monitoring, circulation and CPR feedback, data management, supersaturated oxygen therapy, therapeutic temperature management, and ventilation, ZOLL provides a comprehensive set of technologies that help clinicians, EMS and fire professionals, the military, as well as lay rescuers, treat victims needing resuscitation and acute critical care. For more information, visit www.zoll.com.

About Asahi Kasei

The Asahi Kasei Group contributes to life and living for people around the world. Since its foundation in 1922 with ammonia and cellulose fiber business, Asahi Kasei has consistently grown through the proactive transformation of its business portfolio to meet the evolving needs of every age. With more than 40,000 employees around the world, the company contributes to sustainable society by providing solutions to the world’s challenges through its three business sectors of Material, Homes, and Health Care. Its health care operations include devices and systems for acute critical care, dialysis, therapeutic apheresis, transfusion, and manufacture of biotherapeutics, as well as pharmaceuticals and diagnostic reagents.