eHealth company Intuitive Health Inc. has rounded up $3.4 million but isn’t saying much just yet about its next move.
The Plano, Texas, company has worked with AT&T and nonprofit health system Texas Health Resources to run a pilot of its cloud-based patient monitoring platform. It uses AT&T’s wireless connectivity to send data from patients’ personal health devices (like scales, blood pressure cuffs and pulse oximeters) to their healthcare providers, to help providers identify potential complications before they require readmission.
Focused on reducing heart failure readmissions, the pilot was launched in April 2011 and was scheduled to wrap up in December. Early results showed that using the platform to monitor heart failure patients at home for 90 days after their hospital discharge reduced readmissions by 27 percent, according to the Dallas/Fort Worth Healthcare Daily.
Intuitive Health was founded in 2009 by CEO Eric Rock, who previously started MedHost, the maker of a touchscreen electronic medical record system that was acquired by HealthTech Holdings for an undisclosed amount in 2010.
AT&T isn’t the only telecommunications company leveraging opportunities in telemedicine and health IT – Qualcomm launched Qualcomm Life to develop mobile health solutions, and Sprint and Verizon have both formed partnership to develop similar home monitoring systems.
Rock explains the premise of Intuitive Health in this video from HIMSS last year.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
[Screencap and video from AT&T YouTube channel]
