Park Associates successfully pulled together thought leaders from across the healthcare ecosystem to collaborate at this year’s Connected Health Summit. There were several compelling keynote presentations and panels, built upon the already bubbling excitement about healthy living and healthcare at home. San Diego’s ideal climate and beautiful ocean views were the perfect backdrop to deliver United Health Group’s view that “Walking is the new Medicine.” The Connected Health Summit touched on topics that seem to resonate with the first timer to the veteran attendee – Remote Patient Engagement (RPE), Aging In Place (AIP), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Big Medical Tech. No matter their role in the healthcare ecosystem, the audience was there, yearning to learn or confirm their hypothesis on “how to engage the patient” and “how do they get paid.” United Healthcare did a great job at doing both. Mark Smith, United Health Group’s SVP of Emerging Products captured the audience’s attention with details about UHG’s Motion program that deposits monies into participants’ healthcare savings accounts (HSA) for walking daily to promote healthy outcomes that save the insurer hard dollars on healthcare costs. UHG has been developing their Motion program over the past 6-7 years. After proving to themselves the value of walking, they delved into finding the right way to change social behavior with financial and other social incentives. The program has a 35-40% retention rate after a participant has been enrolled for a few years. While this isn’t the 70% that would be a passing grade in school, this adoption and retention is much higher than the typical 5% for wellness programs, and it’s paying big financial dividends to United Healthcare and its employer customers. And, the employees are in a much better position to enjoy life with better health. One of my favorite sessions at the conference was “AI in Health.” AI is at the center of every healthcare provider buzzword Bingo card today. The panel participants did a fantastic job unpacking this often overused and little-understood term. At its roots, AI is a field of study like data science. Sometimes called machine learning, it mimics what we think of as human cognitive functions like learning and problem solving. Real AI isn’t a decision tree. It is dynamically assessing data. A true AI project is run like a scientific process with a hypothesis and outcomes. Optum IQ’s Technology Fellow, Kerrie Holley cautioned that we need to be diligent with how we create our hypothesis not to inadvertently introduce bias and thus guide ourselves to the wrong conclusion. This is also a concept of precision in AI, which is: How often is the same result reached?. And the term recall in AI, which is: Could the result also be the result of something else? There are endless use cases for AI but I liked the panel’s advice surrounding applying the results of AI. Ask yourself: To what degree does it impact the patient if the AI is incorrect? Use common sense if you should apply the results given the seriousness of the situation. One AI provider that was at the conference was Ada Health. Ada enables people to directly manage their health with meaningful outcomes versus leaning on “Doctor Google” advice. They are the digital front door for Sutter Health in San Francisco. Most patients engage after hours. This solution helps keep patients from possibly going to the ER for a non-critical event. Ada has provided 22,000 assessments since being live at Sutter since April. Another interesting company in the space was Cirrus MD. They are a telehealth platform that uses chat technology staff by real doctors. Cirrus MD leverages natural language processing (NLP) and AI to drive their clinical decision supports. The telemedicine panel with MD Live, Hey Doctor, Higi, and American Well was well attended. At first, Providers were worried about telemedicine’s E-Visits disintermediating their relationships with the patients. Since new reimbursement models have been implemented by CMS, more Providers are leveraging E-Visits as a primary care visit. Most see “follow up care” use cases, like E-Visits for surgery and chronic care management, as critical to enable more timely access to Providers as the number of physicians in the US shrinks. The Summit had several traditional consumer services companies such as Cox, Comcast, Best Buy, ADT, and Duke Energy looking at extending their services. Some have already dipped a toe into AIP and telemedicine. The big box stores like Best Buy have loaded up their shelves with smart home devices focused on the average Joe but more importantly, the growing senior market for aging in place safety. Best Buy has made two acquisitions in the past year of Great Call (PERS Solution Provider) and Critical Signals Technologies (Disease Management Platform). It’s clear they aren’t done. I would expect other retailers to make similar moves into healthcare as Amazon continues to disrupt retail. Retailers need to think “beyond the shelf” (BTS). Since healthcare is 19% of the US GDP, it’s natural for them to want a piece. Aging in place (AIP) took center stage when HP, AARP, Papa, and SmaartHouse assembled in the comfy seats up front. The stories shared led to two themes. First, 90% of seniors want to live independently as they age. Second, they are concerned about the invasion of privacy that typically comes with AIP technology. The biggest buyers of AIP solutions are the roughly 40M family caregivers in US. They spend $37 billion giving care and are looking for education and tools to help. The average caregiver spends $7-10k a year assisting their loved one. The focus of AIP solutions should not be about the tech but about the benefit. An example is the Roomba robot vacuum. Focus on the fact that it cleans for you, ot that it is a robot. One great example is Reemo Health, offering remote patient monitoring solutions. The company’s origin was a Personal Emergency Response (PERS) solution. Think, “I have fallen and can’t get up.” The company expanded their patient engagement wearable to give insightful longitudinal data into the patients wearing their intuitive smartwatch. While they do have a B2C channel, Reemo is focused on marketing their solutions to providers, pharma, CROs and payers. They offer a simple per member, per month fee that is typically reimbursable for chronic care management. As I packed up my laptop at the conference close, one suggestion from an unknown audience member stuck in my head:
“Payers should penalize solutions providers if they are not fully interoperable with the ecosystem that has a reasonable need to access their system for the patient’s benefit.”
Power of the purse! Not much rings louder.