Humana and Salesforce have signed on for a multiyear partnership to build a more connected, integrated experience for members.
Humana will deploy Salesforce’s Health Cloud platform as part of its new Enterprise Clinical Operating Model, which aims to boost care coordination between members, care teams and providers.
The platform is designed to streamline collaboration, Humana said, by allowing care teams access to the member’s complete clinical history and insights on social, environmental and lifestyle factors that may impact their care.
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William Fleming, president of clinical and pharmacy solutions at Humana, told Fierce Healthcare that the goal is to free up time providers can spend providing care more directly instead of needing to be a “historian” for each patient every time they visit.
He said that the platform is also designed to recognize that people live their lives “more horizontally,” and that includes interacting with the healthcare system in myriad ways beyond the physician’s office.
“We can bring that type of thinking alive,” Fleming said. “We’re going to get better clinical quality and ultimately better health outcomes for the people we serve.”
Ashwini Zenooz, M.D., chief medical officer and senior vice president of healthcare and life sciences at Salesforce, told Fierce Healthcare that though the platform includes a slew of individual health data, that information can be adapted to a population health strategy as well.
For example, members with the same disease states can be stratified by risk, allowing for a coordinated approach for a population of patients, she said.
“I think you’re optimizing not only for the single member but for the population of that entire segment,” Zenooz said.
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The two companies intend to continue collaborating moving forward as well, with plans to establish a joint Healthcare Innovation Lab as part of Humana’s Studio H digital tech hub.
While they weren’t ready to say specifically what’s next, Fleming said that Humana and Salesforce are aligned in driving for greater interoperability. Zenooz said it was also important for the partnership to continue in the long term, because solving challenges in healthcare doesn’t work with a “one and done” approach.
“We’re really excited about also signing up with one another to really take it to another level,” Fleming said.