Northwell Health, New York’s large integrated health system with 22 hospitals and 550+ outpatient facilities, recognizes the importance of leveraging technology to extend the care team and personalize the patient journey.

With the launch Northwell Health Chats (powered by Conversa Health), patients are empowered to connect, communicate and collaborate with their care team, while their clinicians closely monitor the patient’s evolving needs. 

Think about a patient’s journey today.  Pamela, a 78 year old Medicare patient has just been discharged from a Northwell Hospital for a heart failure episode.

Fortunately for Pamela, Northwell’s Health Chats, a new conversational AI platform will help support her during her recovery. With this text based chatbot, Pamela receives many more outreaches from her care team, a three- fold increase from about five times to fifteen during the 30 days post discharge period. 

When she returns home, Pamela starts receiving notifications through SMS text message and clicks on the link to begin her chat about how she is doing. These chats continue to support Pamela through her recovery.

Pamela is asked to confirm her weight uploaded automatically from her Withings scale. She sees her weight trending map with an educational message about working towards her goal. Next, Pamela responds how she is doing with her leg swelling and then about any difficulty breathing.

Finally, the chat asks Pamela to indicate any side effects of her new medication. Based on her responses, she may be connected with her nurse to discuss any medication adjustments.  All of the information that Pamela provided to the chatbot is shared with her nurse for their discussion.

Since this patient engagement solution is seamlessly integrated into Northwell’s work flow (e.g. care management tool/HIE), Pamela receives these personalized chats from her specific Nurse Navigator at Northwell and the chat content is tailored for her specific care journey. Pamela trusts the information that she receives and can respond with questions and concerns at any time. Pamela’s Nurse Navigator will determine if she needs to come right in to the office or if they can address her issues through a text, email, call or telehealth visit.

Northwell is leveraging their Health Chats for population health. For example, the chat support patients as they prepare for a colonoscopy in their own language, ensuring the patient understands the instructions and knows how important this screening is to their health. This chat helps increase the patient’s health literacy and confirms that the patient knows how to prepare, reducing delays in diagnosis and additional health costs.

Positive Results with Northwell Health Chats

Sabina Zak, VP Northwell Community Health believes this chatbot is a “way to engage patients, by embedding information that is accurate, actionable and enables them to make more informed decisions which leads to better outcomes”.  

As Northwell rolls out their Health Chats across the enterprise, they will be monitoring care quality, care cost and patient satisfaction measures.   With Northwell Health Chats, they are seeing a 97% patient satisfaction rate and lower post-acute care expenses in some of its hospitals. Northwell management is particularity interested in the reduced costs from fewer outreach calls since the bot engages patients and brings back needed information.

Patient Comment:

“These conversations were great and supportive emotionally as well as medically”.  

Nurse Leader Comment:   

“Conversa gives me reassurance that my patients are ok because I can see that they are responding to the health chats. It gives me piece of mind knowing that they are alright without having to always call them.”

 Clinical Leader Comment:

“Innovative technologies like Northwell Health Chats are critical assets in our journey towards providing excellent clinical care and an outstanding personalized patient experience”, explains Northwell Health physician Dr. Zenobia Brown, VP Population Health. 

Expanding Conversational Chat at Northwell Health

In addition to supporting patients through procedures such as Colonoscopies, Northwell will be using this conversational chatbot to gather social determinants of health before the patient’s annual office visit. This information will be shared with their care team for their appointment.  

Beyond population health, Northwell is expanding their Health Chats into Oncology, starting with head and neck and expanding to breast and prostate cancer patients. Northwell’s Health Chats will help patients prepare for the treatment, manage symptoms and check in once the treatment has concluded.

In the future, Northwell is planning to use their Health Chats in the areas of bundled payments for patients with Coronary Artery bypass, Acute MI, Pneumonia, Stroke and Heart Failure.

“Conversa’s conversational AI powering Northwell Health Chats enables us to improve care coordination, patient satisfaction and our ongoing patient relationship, resulting in the improved well-being of our customers while reducing costs. This high-tech, high touch, scalable approach benefits our patients, our nurses and our health system”, concludes Joseph Schulman, SVP Regional Executive Director at Northwell Health.

It all started with a simple question one day, and grew into a trusted health relationship a few short months later. Sarah was very busy at work that crisp fall morning and had only a few minutes to log in and ask about her daughter’s diabetes medication. Sarah was comforted by the response and a bit intrigued when her Health Assistant Harriet introduced herself and explained that she is a resource to help her and her family with any of her health questions or concerns. They began a conversation about her daughter’s condition and a trusted relationship began.

Later that week Harriet made a follow up call to see if Sarah was able to pick up her daughter’s medication and asked how everything was going. Sarah mentioned that she finally got her daughter’s pills and confided that she was completely overwhelmed. Sarah shared that she was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and that her husband was often unavailable as he traveled constantly for work. She explained that she had a hard time getting to her treatments. After their call, Harriet explored and evaluated resources, and scheduled transportation to help Sarah get to her next appointment. Harriet put the appointment confirmation into Sarah’s patient portal and set up a reminder, including date and time, about the ride to her next treatment.

This may sound like fiction in the current healthcare environment, where services are siloed and patients are burdened with making their own decisions around healthcare – often complex and costly. Sarah is relieved to have this service today. She first learned from her employer about the Accolade platform and health advisor service last summer. It wasn’t until she reached out with a simple question to her health assistant that Sarah experienced the true value of having a healthcare advisor on her side.

A 2016 Harris Poll reveals that 84% of working families placed a value on having a single, trusted resource to help support their healthcare needs. Busy families have limited time and resources so they appreciate having one place to go to help them understand their options and sort through their healthcare decisions. 

Personalized Patient Experience

With the Accolade Health Assistant as the single point of contact for her family, Sarah is able to reach out to Harriet for guidance all along her and her family’s healthcare journeys.  Accolade integrates high tech and high touch to deliver a superior patient experience with lower healthcare costs. 

Accolade Health Assistant Harriet accesses the Accolade platform to interact with and personalize her support for Sarah:

Preferred Communication: Harriet engages with Sarah and her family based on their communication preferences. Sarah likes phone calls and email through the Accolade online portal. Sarah’s husband Sam prefers secure text messages since he can send quick messages and follow up later during his business trips.  

Personalized & Proactive Experience: Harriet’s interactions with Sarah are driven by rich patient profile information, which contains contextual information, social determinants of health and service utilization. Sarah and her family’s profiles are updated with data collected over time and more than 150 data feeds integrated into the Accolade platform. The HIPAA-certified approach creates profiles that are continuously analyzed through sophisticated algorithms and health assistant reviews, which allow for personalized conversations around individual health needs, care gaps and obstacles.

A recent Accolade platform trigger prompts Harriet to reach out to Sarah’s husband Sam when she notices that he is still refilling this pain medication many weeks after his knee surgery.  Harriet sent a text to Sam to inquire about his knee surgery. After a text exchange, Harriett suggested that he see his doctor to discuss his persistent pain.

Patient Education & Connected Health: Sarah and her family can access educational information and recommended health apps. Before Sarah’s husband knee operation, Health Assistant Harriet texted Sam with a link to a video and suggested questions to prepare for his surgery and provider discussion. 

When Harriett spoke with Sarah about her daughter’s diabetes appointment and care plan, Harriet informed Sarah about the Livongo mobile diabetes application available through her employer’s health plan. Together, they review the Livongo app, which can help Sarah and her daughter better track and manage her diabetes. With Accolade and Livongo, Sarah is able to share information from the mobile app with her daughter’s doctor, giving him insight into her problems with controlling her A1C levels.

Continuous Connection to Clinical Resources and Support:  Harriett asked Sarah if she would like to speak with an oncology nurse to help prepare her for her upcoming oncologist appointment. Margaret, an Accolade Clinical Health Assistant and RN, joined them on the line and offered empathetic support by asking more about Sarah’s diagnosis, where she was in her care plan with her doctor, whether she had a support network and what was planned for her next appointment. Margaret provided Sarah with questions to ask her oncologist and recommended a follow-up discussion.

Intelligent Engagement: Harriet and her Health Assistant team are continuously alerted by the Accolade platform. On an ongoing basis Accolade gathers, aggregates and models de-identified data to trigger alerts and guide Health Assistants in further personalizing their interactions with their clients.  Health Assistants are prompted to ask questions about health behaviors and emerging symptoms, applying specialized training and skillset. 

Patient Experience Success Measures:

Paul Csigi, Director of Benefits at Philadelphia- based Temple University Health System (TUHS), rolled out the Accolade solution in 2015 and has over 7,000 employees on the platform today.  “So much of healthcare is getting people to the right place at the right time. Accolade has created an experience where our employees build a relationship with an assistant that gives them what they need, when they need it. Accolade takes a single problem that the patient has called in about and creates a relationship to support the family on an ongoing basis. With all of the information about our employees, Accolade addresses the whole person, connects the patient with clinical resources, and continues to reach out. This helps treat our employees sooner, which is less expensive for our organization.”

In addition to financial measures, TUHS monitors qualitative feedback from employees. With the Accolade platform outreach (phone or online), TUHS is able to capture the patient’s experience engaging with their Accolade Health Assistant:

“I'd like to thank Temple for the Accolade program. We have been going through some really tough times…..my health assistants have been a big support and a big help to my family in helping to guide us to the right doctors to help with family issues and illnesses. I really appreciate this program. Without it, I'd really be lost.”

With two years of the Accolade solution under their belt, Paul Csigi and his team are considering new ways to support TUHS employees. “I have an employee population with diabetes and heart disease. I am interested in learning more about Accolade’s partnerships to bring patient data into the platform to support these populations.”  Csigi sees the benefit of bringing in data from patient devices and smart applications. Integrating this data with the patient’s medical record gives new insights to Accolade Health Assistants, empowering them to deliver even better support and drive improved outcomes.

OMADA HEALTH CONSUMER VIEW

OMADA HEALTH COACH VIEWTeammates and their coach collaborate via the Omada Health platform. The coach monitors progress and gives real-time feedback via private messaging, group discussion board, text messaging or by phone. Teammates use food and activity trackers to capture high level daily eating, drinking and movement and engage in “healthy competition” messaging with other group members. Cohorts keep them motivated and accountable. Teammates can see the cohort member’s progress towards the weight goal displayed on the group dashboard by a green circle around their profile picture. Only the coach can view each teammate’s detailed progress page with tracked weight, food and activity information.

In January 2015, Stanford Medicine launched ClickWell Care, a new type of Primary Care clinic which leverages technology to allow patients to virtually connect with their own Stanford primary care clinicians and wellness coaches via video or phone visits.  Patients use the MyHealth mobile app to schedule and conduct a video visit and share home health device data with the care team. Through this model, patients can choose to receive all of their primary care including integrated wellness coaching virtually, unless the physician indicates the need to come into the clinic for vaccinations, pap smears, procedures, or other physical exam needs.

“Initially we created this virtual model for our ACO. We knew that 18-30 year olds were not interacting with primary care and were choosing to go to the Emergency Department or urgent care for their needs. During focus groups with this patient population, we learned they were so busy and didn’t have time to come into the office but really valued the relationship with their doctor. They wanted to receive care from their doctor but it wasn’t available in a way that was convenient to them.  We knew that we needed to use technology to help support this relationship and not replace it”, explains Sumbul Desai, Medical Director ClickWell Care and Vice Chair of Strategy and Innovation in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.

ClickWell clinicians and coaches support healthy patients and the ‘rising risk’ (e.g. up to 2 conditions), who are employees of Stanford University, Stanford Adult and Children’s Hospitals. With this highly educated, tech savvy patient population, there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage mobile tools to enhance the patient experience.

Patients see a doctor for primary care visits and engage with a wellness coach on health goals (i.e. weight loss, stress, activity, and nutrition) and to receive support for chronic conditions (i.e. diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia).  “The average age of a ClickWell patient is 36 years old.  However, we have a growing group of 40-65 year olds, part of the ‘rising risk’ population, who prefer to do the majority of their visits virtually. These patients feel comfortable interacting by phone or video because they have a better understanding of the healthcare system and their health goals than our younger patients”, Desai shares.

The ClickWell Care program is designed to give patients complete control over how they want to access and interact with their doctor/coach and convenience of extended hours. Although patients have the option of scheduling a face to face appointment, they are incentivized to participate in a “no fee” virtual phone or video visit. Patients simply log into the MyHealth portal for their virtual appointment. 

To date in the ClickWell program, there have been 2,142 visits; 43% conducted in-person, 32% through phone visits and 25% via video visits. ClickWell staff have seen 1,223 patients. Although 30% of new patients start off with a virtual visit, most prefer to meet their doctor first in-person. After an initial face to face visit, 60% opt to see their doctor virtually for their return visits via phone or video.

MyHealth Mobile AppAll patient information from the virtual visit is transmitted to the Epic EMR and is accessible through the MyHealth portal. Patients can ask follow up questions through the portal.  When patients need to have blood work done, they are directed to the lab without having to come into the doctor’s office, and lab results are incorporated into the EMR with portal access. “Stanford was the first to use Epic’s integrated telemedicine service because we wanted this visit information available to patients in the portal and clinicians in their daily workflow”, confirms Lauren Cheung, Physician, ClickWell Care, and Medical Director, Strategic Innovations at Stanford University School of Medicine.

“One myth about telemedicine is that many patients choose to do video visits over phone visits. The truth is that it is an extra effort for the patient to participate in a video visit since the patient needs to be in front of a computer or mobile screen versus the phone visit which can be done while walking around”,  Cheung adds.

“Back in 2013, we rolled out video visits as part of our primary care practice but we didn’t see a strong uptake. When we conceived the ClickWell Care program, we knew that we needed to introduce wellness coaching to provide a complete overall healthcare experience and deliver a higher level of healthcare service to our patients”, describes Desai.

Strong collaboration with IT and Operations have been pivotal in implementing this new care model. Through this collaboration, ClickWell has been able to leverage the new MyHealth app developed internally and has worked closely with IT to improve the platform and video visit capabilities to provide an excellent patient experience.

As part of the ClickWell Care program, the MyHealth mobile app helps strengthen care collaboration. The doctor/coach prescribes the health tracking app to the patient as a way to monitor key measures which may include steps, weight and blood pressure. The patient uses the MyHealth app to upload tracking data from Withings, Fitbit and Apple HealthKit to the EMR, sharing health status between visits. “When I see a patient with blood pressure trending higher, I ask the patient to schedule an online visit so that we can discuss how to address this through diet or medication changes”, Cheung explains.

ClickWell Lessons Learned

The Stanford Medicine team has gained insight into ClickWell Care program usage, the telehealth platform and mobile app to bring the most value to primary care patients and providers. They understand that it is not about the technology but instead about how the technology is put into the care model through a program.

Patients have shared many positive comments about the ClickWell Care program:

“Video visits allowed me to continue with pressing work concerns, instead of taking time off work to travel to a clinic. Video visits allowed me to chat with a Doctor late in the evening, and appointments were very easy to get.  I felt that my virtual care was more personalized and provided a better experience.”

“I have not had many medical issues until recently. It is such a relief being able to ask questions and get answers quickly. My wellness appointments have me watching my diet and exercise regimen. Everything is done efficiently. I cannot say enough about the whole team that has been watching over me.”

“My experience with the ClickWell Clinic has been extremely informative and remarkably efficient. The flexibility they offer works perfect for people with busy schedules, without sacrificing the quality of care. The model of the Clinic makes other forms of healthcare communication feel outdated.”  

“I have never had better communication and quicker responses than I have since becoming part of this program. I travel a lot and therefore keeping up via phone calls is not that practical. Being able to send messages electronically and to have an appointment via video chat is ideal.”

Doctors and wellness coaches have provided mostly positive feedback as well:

“Overall my experience with virtual visits in the clinic has been very positive. Compared to my previous experience with only in-person visits, it seems like the virtual option may make wellness patients more likely to continue with follow-ups. The integration with the doctors is also helpful in learning more about the patients and providing well-rounded care. It is a unique experience to be able to discuss treatments so closely with the patient’s doctors and in such a timely manner.”

“The integration of clinical care with wellness coaching has been phenomenal. I couldn’t imagine going back to health coaching without it. I am able to provide more targeted, individualized, and thorough care to my patients since I have full access to their medical records, provider notes, and work directly with their primary care physicians. Working directly alongside physicians has helped me to expand my knowledge on chronic disease management, stay up to date on clinical guidelines and recommendations.”

“As a provider, the technologies we use in this clinic allow us to quickly connect with our patients and address concerns for our patients proactively. The extended hours also allow for expanded patient access, as well as a flexible schedule for providers who staff the clinic who may desire alternative hours outside of the usual 9-5 business day.” 

“Through our discussions with patients, we have also heard some suggestions for change. In the beginning, we were contacting patients to convince them to switch from in person to virtual visits. This frustrated some patients and most wanted to stay with the modality that they had initially chosen”, Desai shares. 

Future ClickWell Care

As with other healthcare systems across the country, Stanford Medicine sees what is happening with the retail pharmacies increasing care access to patients. However, they believe this only fragments care because the visits are outside of the patient/doctor relationship. ClickWell Care is designed to be “longitudinal” and not episodic.

In 2016, Stanford Medicine is looking to extend into specialty care. “We are interested in integrating preventative cardiology for our patients since care entails discussing and improving risk factors for cardiovascular disease, which can be done virtually. Preventative cardiology patients would also benefit from wellness coaching to improve their risk factors for disease.

We also want to expand the use of connected health devices. Currently, very few patients upload and share their data with our care team. We are planning to incorporate this health tracking into a program for a  patient population (e.g. specific chronic conditions) and integrate this information into clinical workflow to ensure that these patients receive excellent care. With our Precision Health initiative, we are not just interested in treating illness but rather finding tools to deliver a personalized health and wellness experience to ensure the best outcomes”, Desai concludes.

Twine Health Mobile App Engages Patients with Chronic ConditionsThe story about the health decline of our citizens is being told everywhere. According to the CDC website, “as of 2012, about half of all adults—117 million people—have one or more chronic health conditions. One of four adults has two or more chronic health conditions”.

This negative trend is driving up healthcare costs and putting an ongoing strain on our healthcare system. A 2010 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Report on Chronic Care: Making the Case for Ongoing Care states that eighty-five percent of all health care spending was on people with chronic conditions.

The positive part of the story is where the industry is heading. In the December 2014 PwC Health Research Institute (HRI) Report, two relevant health directions are described. The first is the “Do –It Yourself Healthcare movement” with implications for healthcare organizations to offer new patient engagement tools. The second is that “physician extenders see an expanded role in patient care”, where “doctor delegates” play an increasing role on the care team, which helps address physician shortages.

The real opportunity is at the intersection of the two, where patients use Do- It Yourself (i.e. self- management) tools which collect and communicate patient data (e.g. chronic condition vitals, medication adherence, lifestyle choices) to “doctor delegates”, who deliver guidance and support during the 99% of the time that the patient is living with his chronic condition.  

Innovative healthcare organizations are experimenting with new technology tools and care delivery models to bring better care to their patient populations. 

Care Collaboration for Hypertensive Patients  

Through Twine, patient collaborates with her nurse coach“We were looking for a way to help our Hypertensive patients get their blood pressure under control more quickly”, explains Dr. Katherine Rose, Brigham and Women’s Advanced Primary Care Associates, South Huntington. “When a patient is having trouble managing his blood pressure, we ask him to schedule a follow -up visit. We have found that some patients choose not to come in for another visit. When our nurses call patients to check- in on their blood pressure numbers, many patients don’t have them which limits the support that our nurses can provide”.

The CDC confirms that hypertension is a growing problem in the U.S; “67 million adults (31%) have high blood pressure” and only about “half (47%) have their condition under control”.

Dr. Rose and her colleagues were determined to find a better way to support hypertensive patients through continuous communication and collaboration with their care team. “After evaluating different ways to leverage technology with a strong patient experience, we decided to use the Twine Health platform. In October 2014, we started a 6- month pilot and plan to recruit one hundred patients to participate”.

Twine Health is a spin- off from MIT Media Lab’s New Media Medicine Group. John O. Moore, MD, CEO and his team have designed the Twine solution with the goal of empowering patients to be an “apprentice”, learning to be “active participants in their care, par­ticularly care of chronic disease”.

The Twine Collaborative Care Platform allows people to co-create a personalized care plan that serve as common ground for continuous collaboration with their care team; their own clinicians, family and friends, and a health coach (sometimes staffed by the clinic and sometimes provided on-demand by Twine).

Twine Health was awarded an opportunity to pilot as a winner of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital 2014 Pilot Shark Tank competition. “We are very excited about the Twine pilot,” shares Lesley Solomon, MBA, Executive Director of the Brigham Innovation Hub. “The Brigham is dedicated to providing outstanding patient care and we believe that innovative health IT solutions like Twine will help us to improve patient experience and engagement and better enable our clinicians to address complex clinical challenges. We look forward to seeing the results of this pilot."

Hypertensive Patient Pilot

Dr. Rose explains that initially patients in her practice were recruited during an office visit. After hearing about Twine Health from her doctor, an interested patient worked closely with the Nurse to download the mobile app to her phone, set up her care plan, goals and select daily activities to support self- management.

Patient recruitment efforts are being accelerated through an email campaign with a link to the Twine mobile app and through television promotional messages in the waiting room. These communications show patients how to use the Twine Health mobile app to receive ongoing support and guidance from their nurse at the practice. Patients learn that they do not need to come in for all of their visits and can communicate their blood pressure readings and health behaviors digitally for continuous care.

Once enrolled in the Twine Health program, patient Patricia can view her daily care plan and check off activities which include completing certain activities (e.g. taking medications, walking, relaxing) and avoiding others (e.g. not eating salty foods, reducing alcohol consumption). Patricia can elect to receive reminders to take her medications, log her blood pressure readings and walk at lunch. She can monitor progress towards her goal and send a secure message to her nurse.

Nurse monitors chronic patients needing motivation and supportNurse Nancy monitors the Twine Health dashboard to see her patient’s care plan progress and identify patients that need support (e.g. missed medications, failed to measure blood pressure, blood pressure measure out of range). Nancy sees patient’s blood pressure readings, number of days adherent and days remaining on the patient’s care plan and quickly answers patient’s questions or concerns (e.g. running out of medication, experiencing medication side effects). She sends congratulatory messages to Patricia and other patients reaching goals and encouraging messages to less engaged patients to come back onto Twine to share information and issues. Nurse Nancy creates new and modifies existing care plans working closely with her patients. She also uses the platform to check in with the patient’s doctor about care plan and medication changes.

Pilot Considerations

Dr. Rose and her colleagues worked closely with the Twine team to plan their pilot.

Participant Selection:

“Not all of our patients have a smart phone which is required to access the Twine Health platform. We also needed to choose patients who would feel comfortable using a smart phone to support and extend their care. Since Twine is currently available in English, we are only offering it to selected patients”, Dr Rose explains.

Nurse Selection:

“As we thought about the role of coaching and motivating our patients to better manage their hypertension, we decided to use our LPNs to support the Twine Health program. Our LPNs interface with our patients all the time and are often on their computers doing triage. At our practice, we also like to have our professional team members operating at their top of license.”

EMR Inclusion:

Dr. Rose wanted to incorporate summarized patient data information into their EMR and appreciated that Twine Health created a note template to capture changes in the care plan, goals and medications. The nurse copies and pastes this information into the EMR so that everyone can access the latest patient care information. 

Pilot Evaluation

At the end of the 6- month pilot, Dr. Rose and her team will review qualitative and quantitative feedback from patients and clinicians. “We will also look at measures to see how often the patient’s blood pressure was controlled, how many blood pressure check visits were avoided, how engaged the patients were (e.g. use the platform, make better lifestyle decisions) and how satisfied patients felt (i.e. their team took better care of them).

Patient Feedback

Patients appreciate encouraging feedback from their nurse, find it motivating and feel a sense of achievement when reaching their goal.  They also like being able to ask the nurse questions through the app that they may not have otherwise asked.

“Our patients are helping us enhance Twine. For example, a patient suggested that we expand the capability to add blood pressure measurements more than once a day” describes Dr. Rose.

Clinician Feedback

The clinicians using Twine value understanding what is happening to the patient outside of the office visit to provide ongoing support. From a clinical perspective, Dr. Rose shares “I am excited that the app gives the patient ownership of their health.  While working with one patient on his care plan, he suggested increasing the time on his stationary bike to avoid adding a medication.  Since extending his exercising will help more than just his blood pressure, I was all for it”.

The Twine platform gives clinicians at the Brigham and Women's practice valuable visibility into the barriers that impact the patient’s adherence. With this insight, nurses are able to better understand and provide more relevant guidance to support the patient holistically for better outcomes.

Dr. Rose explains “there are many reasons why patients are unable to take their medications.  Some are simple—the pharmacy didn’t get the prescription, and others are more complex—the patient has concerns about a possible side effect.  As providers, we sometimes don’t hear about the problem for a couple of months which is lost time. With improved communication tools, we can address problems immediately, hopefully improving compliance and health outcomes”.

With only two months into the Twine Health Pilot, Dr. Rose admits that they are just beginning.

“We will be looking at the financial impact of using the Twine platform. So far we know that our nurses are spending 20- 30 minutes to set up each patient and 25- 30 minutes daily responding to and motivating patients,” confides Dr. Rose.

She appreciates that Twine Health conducts conference calls with other healthcare organizations participating in pilot programs to learn ‘best practices’ together such as incorporating Twine into existing workflows, recruiting patients, engaging patients and trying an approach for a specific patient segment.

“Ultimately we think that patients who are more engaged in their care and mindful of their choices will be healthier. We are excited to use new technologies like Twine to encourage that”, Dr. Rose concludes.

Interested in seeing Twine Health results across all hypertensive patients? Twine displays this on an aggregate level through their online dashboard.