Peoria, Illinois-based OSF Ventures, the corporate investment arm of OSF HealthCare, is investing in PatientWisdom.
OSF Ventures cannot disclose the amount of the investment due to an internal policy, Stan Lynall, OSF Ventures’ vice president of venture investments, said in a recent phone interview.
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The progress in artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping patient care, across various dimensions, from facilitating faster discharge to curating treatment plans and suggesting lifestyle changes.
The New Haven, Connecticut-based company has a digital platform that zeroes in on what truly matters to patients. Caregivers, families and patients can use it to share information about themselves, their health and their goals. This information is then shared with their care team, which is able to gain valuable insights about each patient.
“Listening to what matters to patients as people — goals, barriers, perspectives — facilitates communication, connection and collaborative health,” PatientWisdom cofounder Gregory Makoul said in a statement. “This platform was developed to foster healing relationships within and beyond the care setting.”
Lynall said OSF Ventures liked PatientWisdom’s unique approach.
“We feel like [PatientWisdom] will enhance the patient experience and potentially the patient outcome,” he said.
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As part of the new association, the OSF Innovation Partnerships team is working with PatientWisdom to co-develop a new tool: ProviderWisdom, which focuses on collecting data from the provider side of the equation. The platform not only gathers data on providers’ work lives, but also captures their innovative ideas and recommendations for workflow enhancement.
“When our venture group makes an investment in a company, we look to identify collaborative opportunities with that company in order to further their product development or service offering,” Lynall said.
Thus far, OSF piloted the PatientWisdom technology in the Streator, Illinois area, a rural community that’s new to the OSF system. As part of the pilot, the health system used PatientWisdom’s service in a slightly different manner. The primary use in Streator was to gain insight on the best ways to deliver care in rural markets.
“We were very interested in going into that market to get the voice of the consumer,” Lynall noted. “We piloted the PatientWisdom technology, and they helped us design an approach to the community at large to gather key feedback that is informing OSF as it develops its care delivery models.”
However, the system also has the opportunity to apply the technology in its more traditional sense to its other markets. Over the next six to 12 months, OSF will be determining how and where to use PatientWisdom’s platform.
OSF HealthCare launched OSF Ventures in 2016. The $75 million internal venture fund has made investments in companies such as Pieces Technology and Pulse Therapeutics.
Photo: PatientWisdom