Philadelphia regional payer Independence Blue Cross Blue Shield has become a minority investor in a digital health startup led by serial entrepreneur Hal Rosenbluth, according to a company statement. The amount was not disclosed, but the deal is part of a strategic partnership with CareCam Health Systems to apply its adherence platform to chronic conditions, starting with diabetes and asthma.
The company refers to its mobile telehealth platform, which combines health literacy, interventions and patient engagement led by a care manager as vHealth. In a phone interview with MedCity News, Rosenbluth said although Independence Blue Cross is the first payer to deploy its technology, it’s in discussions with 12 other insurers.
The deal fits in with another big trend in healthcare — the adoption of hospitality industry practices, like online scheduling . That’s something Rosenbluth knows a lot about as the former head of a travel industry business sold to American Express in 2003.
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Shannon Pierce, a Registered Nurse, founded the company in the mid 2000s in Greenville, South Carolina before the company later relocated to Conshohocken, a Philadelphia suburb. Rosenbluth, who led Walgreens’ Health and Wellness division for a little over three years, became CEO and chairman of CareCam in 2012.
The platform uses a series of interventions for people wavering from their care plan. The idea is for interventions to be customized depending on the member’s needs. A health plan’s members might be directed to an online library that includes the kind of information about their disease state that’s likely to be forgotten following a doctor’s appointment. If a member’s blood glucose level rises or falls beyond a certain level,for example, it may trigger an alert from a care manager. Part of those interventions could involve letting a diabetic know the longterm consequences of not taking their medication or failing to follow their care plan, like blindness or a foot amputation. That’s the kind of thing that a lot of patient advocates might argue could stress out diabetics.
Rosenbluth emphasized that the interventions used in the platform were developed in consultation with behavioral health scientists. They had to balance the challenge of getting users to understand what they need to do to manage their chronic condition without overwhelming or scaring them so they give up.
“We don’t want to scare people so they do nothing, but you want to enlighten them to the point where they do something. That’s very important because people do need to know what the implications [of not following their care plan] are.”
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The company’s mobile health tools also help users take video “selfies” to verify, validate, and document compliance with their care plan. Rosenbluth said it has been working with Independence Blue Cross to look at their patient populations, subsets of diseases and collaborating with them on how best to engage with these patients. It evaluated how user friendly the program is with people aged 45-65 and had positive results.
Rosenbluth said many of its backers are angel investors who date back to his previous company Take Care Health Systems, which Walgreens acquired in 2007. In addition to Independence Blue Cross, it has another corporate investor — South Carolina’s Blue Cross Blue Shield chapter.
