Teva Respiratory, an affiliate of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, completed its digital inhaler portfolio today with the launch of two new products: the AirDuo Digihaler and the ArmonAir Digihaler.

Both of the new inhalers are prescription inhalation powders designed to treat people with asthma 12 years and older. The AirDuo can be used to control symptoms of asthma and to prevent symptoms such as wheezing, while the ArmonAir is designed for the long-term treatment of asthma.

Neither inhaler should not be used to relieve sudden breathing problems and won’t replace a rescue inhaler, Teva said.  The new inhalers join Teva’s ProAir DigiHaler to round out the company’s digital maintenance inhaler portfolio for treating people with asthma.

“The full Digihaler family is a major step forward for digital health technologies in helping to transform patient care, and we hope it will enable patients and their healthcare providers to better inform treatment decisions,” said Sven Dethlefs, the executive vice president of global marketing and portfolio at Teva Pharmaceuticals, in a statement. “For Teva, the Digihaler launch is the starting point for new software-based innovations in respiratory, moving treatment options beyond new therapeutic entities.”

WHAT’S THE IMPACT?

The Digihaler line is equipped with Bluetooth wireless technology that automatically records inhaler-use data every time the cap is opened or a user inhales.

The data connects with a companion app that can remind users how often the device has been used, measure inspiratory flow rates, determine if the inhalation technique needs improvement and share patient data with their doctor. The company is pitching this as a way to better keep track of this data.

“Until now, I have had to rely on my patients’ memory to share the details of their inhaler use habits with me – which, despite their best efforts, can be difficult and confusing,” said Dr. J. Allen Meadows, a clinical faculty member at Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine, in a statement. “Being able to see my patients’ rescue and maintenance inhaler use data can help me assess if they are using their inhalers as prescribed.”

The wholesale acquisition price of the AirDuo is between $399 and $449 depending on the dosage size. For the ArmonAir, the WAC is between $239 and $299.

THE LARGER TREND

Teva’s original digital inhaler, the ProAir, was launched in the U.S. in July. It is a digital rescue inhaler designed for people four years or older with reversible obstructive airway diseases such as asthma and COPD, as well as for the prevention of exercise-induced bronchospasm (EIB) among this same group.

Propeller Health has been a longtime figure in the digital inhaler space. This year, it received 510(k) clearance for a sensor and app to be used with AstraZeneca’s Symbicort inhaler for asthma and COPD. Propeller also entered a new market in Japan this year through a partnership with Novartis.

AireHealth, another respiratory health company, recently acquired BreathResearch and its IP, research and patents. The merger supports the virtual care platform’s capabilities so that it can support the early detection of respiratory decline.

ON THE RECORD
“Being able to now offer AirDuo Digihaler and ArmonAir Digihaler to patients is an exciting step forward for Teva, and one that we are extremely proud of,” said Brendan O’Grady, the executive vice president of North America commercial at Teva Pharmaceuticals, in a statement. “With the launch of these two maintenance products, we’re now able to offer the full Digihaler portfolio to patients, potentially allowing them to gain an even deeper understanding of their overall asthma treatment regimen, due in part to the data collection capabilities of the Digihaler portfolio of products.”

RapidAI, a startup developing a Cerebrovascular Imaging Product using AI, recently closed a $25 million Series B funding round led by Lennertz & Co. Family Equity Fund. The company will use these funds towards strategic growth initiatives, licensing, and acquisitions.

RapidAI claims to be the worldwide leader in advanced imaging for stroke. Its platform uses artificial intelligence to create high quality, advanced images from non-contrast CT, CT angiography, CT perfusion, and MRI diffusion and perfusion scans. The Rapid imaging platform includes Rapid CTA, Rapid LVO, Rapid ICH, Rapid ASPECTS, Rapid CTP, and Rapid MRI. RapidAI also offers a comprehensive aneurysm management platform called SurgicalPreview. All of these products feed into RapidAI Insights, which combines operational, clinical, and imaging data, offering reports on patient care decisions and treatment effectiveness through logs covering scan errors, processing times, patient volumes and demographics, logins by the user, training participation, and more.

RapidAI empowers clinicians to make faster, more accurate diagnostic and treatment decisions for stroke and aneurysm patients using clinically- proven, data-driven technology. Using their products developed by medical experts, they aim to improve patient care and outcomes every day. RapidAI claims to have analyzed over one million scans from over 1600 hospitals in over 50 countries. The company’s annual revenue is estimated to be between $25 million and $50 million.

Computer vision in medicine is gaining more and more popularity over time with many companies in the race. For example, Zebra Medical Vision uses a computer vision system for diagnosing breast cancer and cardiovascular diseases. MedyMatch is using AI for medical imaging scans from acute stroke victims. Google’s DeepMind, Google AI, and Arterys use AI to detect the presence of diseases like cancer or degenerative eye conditions, etc.

DeepMind is also trying to engineer an algorithm to search for early signs of blindness.

Ouva, a San Francisco-based startup, has created a solution using the NVIDIA Clara Guardian application framework. Their hospital intelligence platform monitors patient safety via optical sensors allowing many monitoring tasks without the need to touch anything. One such example includes the ability of the AI-based system to direct a safe and smooth path for assisting patients, visitors, and other hospital interactions.

One of the first use cases to deploy Ouva voice assistant is Medical City Healthcare in Dallas, for the smooth and contact-free functioning for their Heart and Spine facilities at the start of COVID-19.

Features of Ouva voice assistant: 

• WayFinding Experience: Unlike the regular asking around for directions, patients and visitors will be guided by Ouva that displays 3D maps, prominent landmarks, and directions with visual representations.
• Private Guidance by Design: Ouva will use the optical sensor installed in it to identify visitors and remember their questions for future reference. This information will be sent to all the stations around the facility so that the visitor can get the next set of instructions from any station without having to ask again.
• Safe and Contact- free signage: The widespread infection of COVID-19 has instilled a fear of contracting anything. The interface is entirely touch-free, which eliminates the risk of infection.
• It generates actionable insights with appropriate course corrections to improve the efficiency of care and patient satisfaction.
• Any messaging, such as the hospital’s COVID-19 guidelines, can be displayed on stations to improve patient communication.
• Personalized private messaging via EHR integration: Patients can send messages to Ouva assistant, including their queries.

RWJBarnabas Health is the largest health system in New Jersey. It serves more than five million patients annually across nine counties and employing 33,000 people – making it the state’s largest private employer. As a national health system leader, RWJBH recognizes clinician burnout as a complex workplace syndrome affecting not only physicians, nurses and staff who deliver care to patients, but also patients and their families.

THE PROBLEM

The health system’s clinicians are the lifeblood of the organization and help it deliver the best possible care to its patients. They should be empowered with the right tools and technologies that allow them to do their jobs as efficiently as possible.

But electronic health record systems require clinicians to click through dozens of screens to find the information they need to make treatment decisions for patients. Clinician burnout is a national problem, and the EHR has been shown in many studies to be a significant contributor.

PROPOSAL

“EHR systems are largely static, displaying information in the same way to every healthcare provider for each patient,” said Dr. Stephen O’Mahony, vice president and chief health information officer at RWJBarnabas Health. “This contributes to frustration and inefficiency, because users are required to search across many screens with numerous clicks to find the information they need.”

So the health system went with health IT vendor Wellsheet to help with the problem.

“Wellsheet is powered by an intelligence that knows who the provider is and the patient being treated, and is able to anticipate the most relevant information to display to the clinician,” O’Mahony said. “These capabilities deliver a better experience for our physician users, reducing the burden of the EHR and increasing their productivity.”

Beyond efficiency and provider satisfaction, the ability to surface and highlight key information to providers at the point of care enables the health system to deploy key quality improvement initiatives. For example, the vendor’s technology is able to mine key information from echocardiogram reports in order to highlight cardiovascular gaps in care that need to be addressed for patients. By making it easier for clinicians to do the right thing for patients, the health system can ensure the best quality of care possible, O’Mahony added.

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Wellsheet is integrated directly into RWJBarnabas Health’s Cerner EHR to make it a seamless part of the clinician workflow. For clinicians, it feels like a feature within the EHR. Because the vendor’s integration with Cerner is entirely API-based, it did not require a significant investment in time and resources by the health system’s technical team to integrate, and was ready for use by providers in production in less than six weeks.

“It’s really incredible how such a lightweight integration process was able to give Wellsheet access to all of the pertinent clinical information required to make informed treatment decisions for patients,” O’Mahony remarked. “We initially deployed the technology into our inpatient setting, and it is now in active use by more than 1,000 physicians of many specialties across all seven of our Cerner hospitals.”

Some of the heaviest users of Wellsheet are hospitalists, cardiologists, pulmonologists and endocrinologists, to name a few. RWJBarnabas Health is now piloting the new technology in the outpatient setting.

RESULTS

“We studied Wellsheet’s impact closely and the results are the reason we signed an enterprise contract to expand across the health system,” O’Mahony stated. “Our study involved both a quantitative data analysis from Cerner’s reporting module, called Lights On, and a multiple hospital survey. Our analysis focused around three main dimensions of value.”

The first was provider satisfaction, which the health system gauged based on opt-in usage, which grew rapidly to more than 500 users in about eight months, as well as a survey based on the industry standard System Usability Scale. In this survey, on a five-point Likert scale, physicians rated the EHR with Wellsheet at an average of 4.55 compared to 3.27 before the introduction of Wellsheet.

“The second dimension of value that we studied was provider efficiency and productivity,” O’Mahony recalled. “For this, we looked at the number of minutes per patient the physician needed to spend in the EHR, a number tracked by the Cerner EHR system itself. This dropped from approximately 24 minutes with the EHR alone to only approximately 13 minutes after the introduction of Wellsheet, an over 40% drop and meaningful time back for providers to spend with patients. We also saw the number of patients a provider was able to see grow by more than 20% as a result of these efficiency gains.”

The final dimension of value was quality of care. For study purposes, RWJBarnabas Health focused on the TAVR procedure. Wellsheet was able to uncover hundreds of patients who met criteria for this procedure based on unstructured text in echocardiogram reports and surface these candidates to the cardiology team to consider for further evaluation while they were still in the hospital.

ADVICE FOR OTHERS

“We are now able to integrate technology partners who are complementary to the EHR vendor for solving problems for their providers,” O’Mahony noted. “With the API connectivity that the vendors have opened up, it is possible to deliver a better clinician experience when accessing clinical information without large integration, build and maintenance effort. Not only can this lead to improved quality of care, we can now use technology to contribute to wellness instead of adding to the burden.”

Global solutions healthcare ICT provider, Ascom, will deliver its software solution, Digistat, for all 14 Welsh hospitals to develop a national Critical Care Information system.

Ascom will deliver the service for a period of seven years. The initial contract volume amounts to around GBP 13.0 million in total.

The long-term partnership will provide Digistat for 14 hospitals with 198 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds in total. Digistat for ICUs is designed to automate the documentation of patient care across the hospital’s intensive care units. Digistat can help clinicians and nurses to streamline care processes and improve efficiency.

Clinicians will have access to manually entered data and information acquired in real-time from connected medical devices and systems.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Earlier this week, a launch date was announced for England and Wales’ contact tracing app.

HealthcareITNews spoke to the director of technology, digital transformation, Welsh Government Health and Social Services, Ifan Evans, about the digital strategy that Wales has adopted during the pandemic.

ON THE RECORD

Jeannine Pilloud, Ascom CEO, said: “Winning this extraordinary contract for the Wales National Health Service hospitals is an accomplishment we are very proud of. Not just because of the size of the deal, the national impact on the Welsh healthcare infrastructure and the strong competition we’ve beaten in the process, but also because of the biggest ever roll out of our software solution Digistat. We are looking forward to having a strong long-term business relationship with NWIS.”

Vaughan Gething, Minister for Health and Social Services of the Welsh Government, said: “Our Welsh intensive care services deliver extraordinary services helping people when they are critically ill. The introduction of this innovative technology will enhance the care patients receive and allow doctors and nurses to spend as much time as possible caring for patients. The use of technology to deliver a sustainable NHS is a key part of A Healthier Wales, our long-term strategy for health and social care in Wales.”

Homage, a Singapore-based caregiving and telehealth company, has taken a major step in its global expansion plan. The startup announced that it has received strategic investment from Infocom, the Japanese information and communications technology company that runs one of the largest healthcare IT businesses in the country. Infocom’s solutions are used by more than 13,000 healthcare facilities in Japan.

During an interview with TechCrunch that will air as part of Disrupt tomorrow, Homage co-founder and chief executive Gillian Tee said “Japan has one of the most aging populations in the world, and the problem is that we need to start building infrastructure to enable people to be able to access the kind of care services that they need.” She added that Homage and Infocom’s missions align because the latter is also building a platform for caregivers in Japan, in a bid to help solve the shortage of carers in the country.

Homage raised a Series B earlier this year with the goal of entering new Asian markets. The company, which currently operates in Singapore and Malaysia, focuses on patients who need long-term rehabilitation or care services, especially elderly people. This makes it a good match for Japan, where more than one in five of its population is currently aged 65 or over. In the next decade, that number is expected to increase to about one in three, making the need for caregiving services especially acute.

The deal includes a regional partnership that will enable Homage to launch its services into Japan, and Infocom to expand its reach in Southeast Asia. Homage’s services include a caregiver-client matching platform and a home medical service that includes online consultations and house calls, while Infocom’s technology covers a wide range of verticals, including digital healthcare, radiology, pharmaceuticals, medical imaging and hospital information management.

In a statement about the strategic investment, Mototaka Kuboi, Infocom’s managing executive officer and head of its healthcare business division, said, “We see Homage as an ideal partner given the company’s unique cutting-edge technology and market leadership in the long-term care segment, and we aim to drive business growth not only in Homage’s core and rapidly growing market in Southeast Asia, but also regionally.”

Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Healthcare is rolling-out a sustainable remote healthcare programme for senior citizens with chronic illnesses, it has been confirmed. This comes following a two-month trial that covered 4,351 patients aged 60 and above that’s now set to be extended to include approximately 12,000 patients in the emirate, who have conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

It also comes following the success of its remote care programme for COVID-19 patients in home isolation. This latest initiative is a collaboration between Mubadala Healthcare providers – which include Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Healthpoint, Imperial

College London Diabetes Centre (ICLDC), and Amana Healthcare – and the Department of Health (DoH) Abu Dhabi, which is serving as the custodian of the project. Services offered include home healthcare visits, medication delivery, specialist teleconsultations, and phlebotomy services.

“This partnership with Mubadala Healthcare has benefits for individuals and the Abu Dhabi population as a whole, as it has been designed to further develop the management and treatment of chronic diseases and to minimise the risk of complications,” explained Jamal Mohammed Al Kaabi, Acting Under-Secretary of the DoH. “The remote care programme has the potential to improve population health overall, representing our unwavering determination to transform the way the healthcare services are delivered and take patient experience to the next level.

“It also reflects our efforts to provide easy access to integrated, innovative and high-quality healthcare to all members of the community and those who have difficulty in visiting facilities due to the nature of their illness. This is only possible with the support of our partners and the innovation-driven pathway that Abu Dhabi is taking.”

Omniyat Al Hajri, director of Community Health Division at the Abu Dhabi Public Health Center added that the platform “focuses on spreading awareness using high-quality video and audio conferencing sessions.”

She continued: “The remote healthcare programme limits the spread of COVID-19 by providing senior citizens and residents with remote healthcare services without the need to go to health facilities in order to ensure their safety.”

“The remote care programme for chronic illnesses will allow us to combine and leverage the strengths of our specialised facilities to ensure the highest standards of care,” said Hasan Jasem Al Nowais, senior vice president of Mubadala Healthcare. “Through Amana Healthcare, we have well-established home care services, while Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Healthpoint, and ICLDC have Centres of Excellence in cardiology, musculoskeletal and diabetes.”