In the New England Journal of Medicine this month, Dr. Ken Mandl and Dr. Zak Kohane shared how “intersecting trends have set the stage for a fresh start” in health technology. Their commentary comes several years after the three of us co-founded a digital health company together, and the intersection they described feels like a new inflection point in the industry. It’s an exciting time to be helping healthcare embrace the digital era. In my previous article, I recapped the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference and shared my key takeaways. In this article, I want to talk in more detail about the year ahead for digital health.
Take behavioral health, for example. The National Alliance on Mental Illness says that the majority of people suffer in silence and, in any given year, approximately 60% of individuals with mental health issues don’t get the treatment they need. Collectively, one of our biggest questions this year will continue to be around how we can more effectively integrate behavioral and medical services, and how digital can play a role. I’m encouraged by the commitment to innovation shown by one of the largest regional payers in the Northeast (a partner with ACT.md) which is in the process of scaling a nurse-led, tech-enabled coaching program designed to reduce costs and improve resiliency among members facing serious medical diagnoses (think cancer and heart disease) and mental health comorbidities.
It’s important to look at the “tech-enablement” of these interventions in the right light. Technology like a mobile-enabled Care Coordination Record can amplify an intervention’s impact – not by replacing the human touch of a coach or a coordinator, but by enlivening and inspiring those coaching interactions in ways that fully leverage the digital revolution. In the year ahead, I’ll be asking healthcare organizations and health plans to prioritize telemedicine and digital health investments for the patients who need it most: the highest-need, highest-risk cases. We have to do a better job of serving people with multiple chronic conditions who also experience mental, functional and socioeconomic challenges. The key to improving care and outcomes with these populations is the combination of efficient delivery of services and technology.
This is similar to what Dan Gebremedhin of Mass General and Flare Capital Partners suggested recently, and he rightly noted that in 2016 “vulnerable populations will become a prime focus as a way to improve the overall health and cost of populations.” We have no other choice but to prioritize complex care programs because vulnerable populations drive “medical costs that are two to three times that of the broader population.” By tech-enabling the most successful complex care coordination and complex care management interventions with appropriate services, we’ll begin to change the trajectory for these populations and, by doing so, make a lasting difference across the system.
I know payers are getting on-board with this approach. CMS just launched the Accountable Health Communities Model, a five-year demonstration to test scalable approaches to linking clinical and community services and incorporating social determinants of health into practice. Earlier this month, Mark Bertolini at Aetna told a roomful of businesspeople that “social services, such as a ride to a social event for a lonely elderly person, will ultimately be more effective at reducing healthcare costs than traditional approaches.” To pull this off, healthcare organizations need technology that breaks down silos and enables collaboration across a person’s care team.
The patient-centered approach to medical care is valuable, but a person-centered approach that incorporates non-medical social and community services may be just what we need. These examples give me hope that 2016 will be the year we successfully do something about it. Who else is on-board with this approach? Come join us!
Photo: Flickr user Ilmicrofono Oggiono
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.
