Wellframe, a health IT company that’s developed a cloud-based platform to personalize care plans for people with chronic conditions, won an innovation challenge set down by Merck and Heritage Provider Network. It bested Sense Health, the other finalist, to win $100,000.
Wellframe’s approach to improve care plan management involves giving physicians a better way to track how the patient fares between visits. It developed a daily to-do list that combines mobile technology and artificial intelligence. The idea is that offering clinicians a clearer understanding of the patient’s attitude, co-morbidities and other underlying problems could make a big difference in improving adherence and potentially reduce the likelihood of re-admission.
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In its presentation for the challenge, it described how its platform was used with South Shore Hospital for the rehabilitation programs cardiac care patients are supposed to take part in. It shared insights gleaned from its work with the hospital, which is now a commercial partner. Generally, patient adherence for these programs tends to be disappointing. Even when patients attend the initial meeting, there tends to be a big drop-off as the 12-week program progresses. The goal is to keep patients engaged in the program by sending gentle nudges to encourage patients to take their medications, track their physical activities and record their symptoms.
In an interview with MedCity News, Dr. Trishan Panch, Wellframe, co-founder and chief medical officer, talked about plans for expanding the cloud -based platform.
“We wanted to develop a platform that would work in context of clinical care, and care delivery and we wanted to hold ourselves to that.”
Panch highlighted a few areas in which it’s collaborating with hospitals and providers to apply the platform. The areas include behavioral health, Spanish-speaking patients with multiple chronic conditions and accountable care organizations.
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It has been working with McLean Hospital — a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital — to apply its platform to patients with schizophrenia, clinical depression and bipolar disorders, particularly when they are discharged. The rehabilitation platform it’s built with McLean is based on a recovery model but one that is scalable and deals with areas such as social life and employment.
Toward the end of the summer, it’s planning to deploy a version of its patient engagement platform for Spanish-speaking people with heart disease and diabetes that’s culturally relevant in collaboration with a health plan partner.
It is also working with a healthcare technology channel partner to customize its platform for ACOs.
Panch added “It’s a really exciting time to be working with a publicly traded big pharma company. That’s really cool and I couldn’t imagine that happening 10 years ago. I’m really grateful . We are having some really interesting discussions and this prize will help advance those conversations to the next level.”
The company has matured quite a bit since its Rock Health class. Last month it raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Among the investors were athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, former Accenture managing director Russ Nash, Fidelity Biosciences partner Carl Byers, president of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, and other angel investors.
