Qualcomm Life’s acquisition of HealthyCircles was big news at American Telemedicine Association‘s annual conference in Austin this morning–not an event typically associated with headline-grabbing M&A announcements. The deal gives Qualcomm a software-as-a-service company that amps up its 2net hub’s ability to serve chronic care and post-discharge management needs–the kind of tool that accountable care organizations are looking for to improve interoperability and outcomes.
Qualcomm Life manages 2net–the operating platform and hub that connects remote monitoring devices to the cloud and has enabled interoperability. HealthyCircles will be integrated with 2net and provide medication history, labs, care team data entry and patient symptomatic self-assessment to improve the quality of data sets for care transitions. The financial details weren’t disclosed.
In an interview with Healthcare IT News, Qualcomm Life General Manager Rick Valencia noted that as providers are being pushed to extend care management beyond acute care settings, these sorts of tools are critical to improve the way they manage patient care, meet ACA standards and avoid readmission penalties.
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.
Dr. James Mault, the founder of San Diego-based HealthyCircles, will also join Qualcomm Life as its chief medical officer. Prior to HealthyCircles, he was a founding architect for Microsoft HealthVault, a Web-based organizer for families to keep track of personal health records, appointments and medication, which was launched in 2011.
As Mobihealth News pointed out, it marks a move by Qualcomm Life into front-end software–a move that will allow the company to remain “an independent third party supporting the healthcare environment.”
[Photo credit: from flickr user s_falkow]
