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HomeMORETECH & STARTUPIntegrating Digital Health: Uniting Care Settings, Clinicians, and Evidence

Integrating Digital Health: Uniting Care Settings, Clinicians, and Evidence


Beyond virtual care, digital health tech companies are building solutions designed to improve efficiency and outcomes. Maintaining connectivity and consistency for patients and providers becomes essential in a more systems-focused healthcare landscape.

Digital health tech is woven into the fabric of the modern healthcare ecosystem, creating tools that are designed to be used in real-time in every sector of care delivery. From large, multisite provider organizations to urgent care centers, to retail clinics and pharmacies and health plan care management programs, digital tools are being implemented to support clinical decision-making and help streamline clinical workflows. But with that clear benefit, there also comes the inherent challenge that always arises when more and disparate solutions are introduced into a healthcare setting – how to maintain connectivity and consistency for professionals and patients?

“We think about how the healthcare landscape really has evolved in recent years: Patients have more choices than ever before. They no longer go to one provider down the street or the one hospital in their community. They might interface with a number of different care settings across a number of different technology platforms and throughout a number of different communities,” said Matt Sullivan, a virtual care and digital health solution thought leader at Wolters Kluwer, Health, in a recent webinar co-presented with Fierce Healthcare. “With that kind of disparate care setting, one of the things that we’re trying to focus on is understanding how we can approach healthcare as an entire system. What are the types of innovations and type of infrastructure that we would need to create a connected patient experience as well as supporting providers, clinicians, nurses, and pharmacists with the right information at the right time, so that, ultimately, the best care can be delivered to the patients?”

Aligning digital health tech beyond virtual care

Although the Wolters Kluwer-Fierce Healthcare webinar focused on the vital role of telehealth in omnichannel, connected care, Sullivan noted it was important to acknowledge that virtual care “goes beyond just that video conferencing or phone call with a healthcare provider. The digital health technology segment doing video conferencing is really only the tip of the iceberg.”

In order for virtual patient interactions to be successful, Sullivan said there are a multitude of technologies at play, including electronic health record (EHR) overlays that help mine EHR data to surface new insights for practicing clinicians or solutions to help streamline operations, like ambient listening technology to automatically capture and document clinical encounters. There are also value-based care and population health platforms implementing shared risk models to help drive improved outcomes.

“It just speaks to the entire ecosystem where digital health tech is really coming into its own, where telehealth was an acknowledged first entry point, but it’s a growing ecosystem,” Sullivan said. The challenge as he sees it is that every technology company has specific needs to meet unique to its area of focus while still wanting to “deliver on the promise of interoperable, interconnected care.”

How can technology drive connected care?

Sullivan said he views digital health technology as “an emerging connective tissue within the healthcare ecosystem.”

As patients follow the trend toward more consumerism, they are more likely to move between different care settings, particularly for what Sullivan calls “pulse check moments of care,” like urgent care needs, vaccines, or chronic condition management, that don’t require them to make standard primary care appointments in a health system setting.

While it is not the purview of every digital health technology developer, Sullivan said that many emerging solutions are designed to “look at the patient in their holistic journey, trying through their care platforms to bring a holistic patient viewpoint to the clinician. So even if the patient went to an urgent care clinic or the pharmacy, the data they have access to is able to help stitch that whole experience together.”

It is more common in brick-and-mortar care centers for the insights surfaced by various decision support solutions to be available health system-wide to help inform clinicians’ decisions as a patient moves between providers within a hospital, he explained. “Digital health companies beyond the virtual care companies are serving an increased role in ensuring that no matter where you’re receiving care information, the experience and ability to answer questions is always at the fingertips and in service [of clinicians] and as that connective tissue.”

Sullivan predicts that an increasing number of digital health technologies will implement more of this type of “intelligent information gathering” to serve a more interconnected approach to care regardless of the setting or solution involved. “I think we’re going to see a lot more technologies that come into play that can look in the environments, collect the information, and then recommend in the right moment to the folks giving the care.”

Supporting clinicians with digital technology enhancements

For Sullivan, this industry-wide momentum toward digital connectivity through clinician support resonates on a daily basis through his work with the UpToDate® suite of solutions and its enhancements for virtual care and digital health tech.

“What we’re really trying to do is look at ways to surface different questions, key questions about patients with conditions typically present in virtual visits,” he said. “Really providing more actionable guidance to ensure that, whatever the care setting is, clinicians have the right information for that setting and really can look out for rising risk factors to help them.”

Digital health tech operates under a mandate to provide smart solutions that accelerate efficiency and help professionals provide better care. But switching contexts between various solutions and workflows erodes that efficiency and contributes to clinician frustration and burnout. When those evidence-based guidance and decision support resources within tech solutions are consistent with health systems and aligned to care protocols and best practices, it helps providers standardize and improve outcomes across all channels of interaction.

Webinar: The critical role of telehealth in omnichannel care

Telehealth plays a key role in the more systems-based approach being seen in healthcare today. Watch Sullivan, along with Scott Wilson of Teladoc and Dr. Tahir Haque of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, discuss how telehealth supports more integrated care, how to leverage it to drive operational efficiencies, and more in the on-demand webinar, “The Critical Role of Telehealth in Omni-channel, Patient-Focused, Connected Care.”



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