NowPow, a community referral network seeking to address social determinants of health, has partnered with the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) to strengthen its local digital infrastructure and extend the department's contact tracing reach.

In addition to using NowPow's platform to understand which resources a quarantined individual may need and connecting them to supportive services, CDPH has also tapped NowPow to back its ongoing maternal-child and HIV programs. It plans to expand the service to the department's mental health program as well.

“We know, now more than ever, that most of what each of us does to stay healthy and manage with illness happens outside the doctor's office, at home and in our communities," Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, founder and chief innovation officer of NowPow, said in a statement.

"We know that every community has vital resources to support wellness, independence and living with illness, but these resources are only as good as the ability of Chicagoans to access them. Our platform will foster vital connections in and across our communities. It will also yield powerful new data to help the city of Chicago identify real-time resource gaps and opportunities to expand resource capacity, quality and accessibility.”

Remote monitoring platform-maker Blue Marble Health has partnered with the COPD Foundation to build a virtual, in-home program for pulmonary rehabilitation. The offering will allow clinicians to build and monitor their rehabilitating patients at the individual and population level, according to an announcement, and will connect patients to peer coaches via the COPD Foundation's COPD360coach platform.

“We hope to enable participation and maximize the benefits of virtual pulmonary rehabilitation by providing a community that encourages participants to adhere to the [pulmonary rehabilitation] program and maintain a healthy lifestyle”, COPD Foundation president and Chief Scientific Officer Ruth Tal-Singer said in a statement.

Thanks to a new exclusivity deal, musculoskeletal care company Zimmer Biomet will be deploying and commercializing materials from the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) on its Apple Watch-based digital care management tool. Called mymobility, the platform guides patients through orthopedic and musculoskeletal programs, such as pre- and post-operative exercises, while disseminating educational materials and collecting patient-reported outcomes.

In addition to rolling out mymobility for providers and patients in HSS's network, the platform as a whole will be gaining new orthopedic care pathways developed by HSS professionals. These will be introduced in the earlier part of 2021, according to the companies, and become commercially available during the first half of the year.

“We’re proud to partner with Hospital for Special Surgery to deploy these state-of-the-art surgical care pathways and offer them through our innovative mymobility with Apple Watch remote care-management platform,” Ivan Tornos, group president for global businesses and the Americas at Zimmer Biomet, said in a statement.

“During a time when it’s critical for healthcare professionals to find virtual approaches to safely care for and connect with patients, partnership from hospitals like HSS will help make virtual care a new standard for orthopedic patients across the globe.”

Digital health messaging software company OptimizeRx has inked a new deal with healthcare analytics and insights platform Komodo Health. By integrating their systems, OptimizeRx said that it will be able to deliver richer insights and seamless point-of-care messaging through its recently launched real-world evidence tool.

“As our digital health footprint expands with more manufacturers coming onto our platform, we continue working relentlessly to steward health data in ways that can efficiently yield better outcomes, as well as provide savings for patients,” Steve Silvestro, CCO at OptimizeRx, said in a statement.

“Our partnership with Komodo Health enables us to augment the physician workflow with actionable insights. By providing additional real-time critical information for clinicians dealing with complex healthcare scenarios, we can improve the patient and physician experience and ultimately treatment outcomes.”

Telehealth provider Doctor On Demand expanded its deal with supply chain logistics company ArcBest yesterday, and will now be providing virtual primary care services alongside the urgent care and behavioral health benefits that have been available to ArcBest's employees since 2017.

The deal brings Doctor On Demand's primary care to 8,000 lives enrolled in ArcBest's medical plan. These services include virtual preventive-wellness check-ups, referrals and chronic condition management.

“At Doctor On Demand, we’ve reimagined the primary care experience to fit our members’ unique lifestyles and health needs, delivering much of the traditional brick-and-mortar primary care services from the comfort and safety of home or wherever their work takes them,” Robin Glass, president of Doctor On Demand, said in a statement.

“We’re thrilled to extend our partnership with ArcBest to support frontline workers with a holistic Virtual Primary Care offering of integrated services during this challenging time."