Digital chronic disease management company Livongo Health announced a partnership today with VSP Vision Care that will blend each service for the companies’ mutual clients. More specifically, Livongo members with diabetes who are also under “most” VSP plans will be offered retinal screenings from VSP network doctors, and receive messages through the digital program prompting them to seek eye care through a VSP tool. Additionally, Livongo will be providing its programs for diabetes, hypertension and behavioral to VSP employees and their dependents.
“Livongo’s partnership with VSP Vision Care is another important step for us as we continue to enhance our Applied Health Signals platform and shows how Livongo’s consumer-first mindset leads to innovations that improve our overall Member experience,” Livongo President Dr. Jennifer Schneider said in a statement. “Vision is an important piece of the healthcare experience for people living with chronic conditions, and especially diabetes. By seamlessly offering resources and insights to manage chronic conditions and vision care on one platform, we can better address the whole person and make it easier to stay healthy.”
Altais, a recently formed company backed by Blue Shield of California that’s focused on providing services and tech to providers, is partnering with startup Notable Health’s to bring the latter’s AI notation tool to Blue Shield of California network physicians. Housed in an Apple Watch, the technology patient-clinician discussion recordings and information provided by the patient prior to the visit to automatically fill out an EHR with relevant information. According to the companies, this approach reduces the time physicians need to spend on administrative tasks and frees them to make meaningful connections with each patient.
“Our goal is to help physicians seamlessly leverage technology to improve the health and well-being of their patients — all while reducing administrative hassles and enhancing their professional gratification,” Dr. Jeff Bailet, president and CEO of Altais, said in a statement. “Notable Health will help us get there with its digital assistant technology that automates manual tasks across any electronic health record.”
Coastal Medical of Rhode Island, a 125 provider-strong ACO, is deploying PatientWisdom’s digital tool to help patients communicate core issues to their physician.
Using the tool, patients fill out a secure questionnaire before a visit that outlines their priorities and background. Summaries of these answers are surfaced during the physician’s normal workflow so that they can be referenced during an encounter.
“Coastal Medical has been an ideal innovation partner, and we are grateful to collaborate on this first-ever pediatric application of PatientWisdom,” Dr. Gregory Makoul, founder and CEO of PatientWisdom, said in a statement. “The clinical team is highly engaged in incorporating PatientWisdom into their workflow to transform the experience and delivery of care for their patients and families.”
The University of California, San Francisco is tapping Nvidia technology to develop several artificial intelligence-powered tools for clinical radiology. Nvidia will be contributing its Clara tools — which include Clara Medical Imaging and Clara Genomics — while leveraging its DGX-2 system of interconnected graphical processing units (GPUs). The partners hope these tools will help UCSF’s researchers cut down on the time it takes to train AI models.
"We're hoping to use AI to help radiologists better navigate and interact with data, to derive more meaning out of images, and to improve the value of medical imaging for the individual patient," Christopher Hess, head of the department of radiology and biomedical imaging at UCSF, said in a statement. "We're interested in integrating data from not only imaging, but also from medical records, genetics and other information sources in the healthcare system."
Med tech giant Abbott announced a new deal with chronic care management company Omada Health that will integrate Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitor (CGM) with Omada's health coaching platform.
Going forward, eligible users with Type 2 diabetes will have the option to integrate data from their FreeStyle Libre, including glucose reading, trends and patterns, with Omada’s platform. When users enroll in the program, they can access a virtual physician, who can prescribe them the CGM.
"The biggest barriers to success for T2D participants has always been immediate access to a diabetes educator when they need it most and a lack of accurate glucose and nutrition data so that we can personalize treatment," Sean Duffy, CEO of Omada, wrote in an email to MobiHealthNews. "With this collaboration, participants will now be able to track progress and receive proactive, tailored recommendations from their assigned certified diabetes educator (CDE) coaches."
