Novo Nordisk and San Francisco-based Sempre Health have announced their collaboration on a pilot program that will offer diabetes medications through the latter company’s monetary incentive and SMS-driven prescription refill platform. The partnership is hoping to engage 10,000 diabetes patients on Sempre’s platform within 2018.

“Looking at some of the metrics that Sempre has been able to provide in terms of how they reach patients, how many patients enroll, how many patients engage with their technology is what made them an attractive partner,” Chris Leggett, director of commercial innovation, told MobiHealthNews. “This space is quite complex, and sometimes it’s not easy to convey the information, but the platform and the ability that they have to engage those patients that opt into the program and doing it in a succinct manner and maintaining that engagement over time is one of the reasons that we’re looking to potentially pilot a solution with them.”

Sempre works with pharmacy benefit managers to inform patients about discounts on their prescriptions through text messages — and then those discounts change to incentivize healthy behaviors. Along with rewards for consistently refilling, Sempre works with payers and manufacturers and uses an algorithm to craft discounts that incentivize patients without extra cost to payers.

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WellDoc has announced a pilot program of its FDA-cleared digital therapeutic, BlueStar, to be conducted at Providence Health & Services’ Oregon and Southwest Washington Region. The pilot will include patients within the system with Type 2 diabetes, and measure the therapeutic’s effectiveness when used alongside a dedicated diabetes educator.

“We’re pleased to announce this pilot program with Providence Health & Services,” WellDoc President and CEO Kevin McRaith said in a statement. “We expect great outcomes from this initial engagement and look forward to expanding our partnership to scale to meet the needs of all Providence patients living with Type 2 diabetes.”

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Chicago-based Outcome Health has announced an initiative with WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease that will bring new educational information to cardiology, primary care, and obstetrics and gynecology providers within the former’s network.

"Nearly one in three Hispanic women have cardiovascular disease and more than 48,000 African American women die from heart disease each year," Mary McGowan, WomenHeart CEO, said in a statement. "By partnering with Outcome Health, we can make more women aware of this disproportionate reality in accordance with our mission of ensuring that every woman has access to prevention and early detection, accurate diagnosis and proper treatment."

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The American Academy of Family Physicians and virtual care technology vendor Zipnosis have launched a partnership that will offer a virtual healthcare platform to AAFP's 129,000 members.

AAFP will offer the telehealth platform to a select group of physicians as part of a pilot designed to help further tailor it to the specific needs of family physicians. The service then will be available to all AAFP members later in 2018.

"Patients today want quick and easy access to healthcare, but that convenience shouldn't come at the cost of the relationship they have with their family physician," Dr. Steven Waldren, director of the AAFP's Alliance for eHealth Innovation, said in a statement. "Offering this new telemedicine platform gives our family physician members another tool through which they can care for patients."

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Telehealth company Doctor On Demand is using the Intelligent Healthcare Network developed by Change Healthcare to offer patients more convenient and cost-effective access to laboratories for tests physicians order.

With the new tool, when a Doctor On Demand provider does a video consult and decides to order lab work, he or she can order the tests and refer the patient to nearby labs for testing. The patient can choose the most conveniently-located and affordable lab, and when the tests are complete, the clinician can send the results directly to the patient, all within the Doctor On Demand app.

"In the past, when a consumer needed a lab test, they had to go offline and wait to be told where to go," Steve Aylward, senior vice president, partner enablement at Change Healthcare, said in a statement. "Now, this entire process can be managed within the Doctor On Demand application, with lab orders electronically routed to testing centers based on a patient's geographic location.”

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Mobile EHR company DrChrono has partnered with patient experience platform BirdEye, allowing the former’s medical practice customers the ability to automatically send patients a review request following an appointment. These requests can be sent via email or text, and include highly customizable branding, content, and scheduling, according to a statement.

“Medical practices are increasingly relying on online reviews to better engage with patients and drive new patient sign-ups,” Daniel Kivatinos, COO and cofounder of DrChrono, said in a statement.  “Our customers are tech-savvy practices that use mobile devices for patient documentation and to keep their practices running smoothly; having our EHR integrated with an online reputation management platform will ensure they stay on top of customer feedback and provide the best care possible.”

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Clinical trial platform company TriNetX has announced a partnership with Tufts Medical Center that aims to improve the provider's clinical trial protocols through data-driven participant recruitment. With the agreement, Tufts Medical Center will bring an additional 1 million patients onto TriNetX's global health research network.

“We look forward to using TriNetX’s query and analytics capabilities to dig deeper into our clinical data both to recruit eligible patients into clinical trials and to generate new hypotheses for investigation,” Dr. Will Harvey, medical director at Tufts Medical Center, said in a statement. “Additionally, we hope to attract more sponsored research studies that seek to take advantage of our unique patient populations.”

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Utah-based Collective Medical, a platform for care collaboration and coordination, has received a program-related investment from the California Heath Care Foundation's Health Innovation Fund.

"We have also made grant funding available to safety-net entities that want to use Collective but need assistance with one-time implementation costs. We have done so to ensure that cost barriers do not inadvertently create information deserts, such as rural or low-income areas where clinics may have limited IT budgets," CHCF wrote in a blog post. "As Collective’s expansion into California’s safety net takes shape and evaluation data emerge, we will share new insights."

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Mobile Heartbeat has completed Zebra Technologies' Validated Program for the the former's MH-CURE clinical communications platform. By receiving Zebra's designation, Mobile Heartbeat's platform is confirmed to perform well on Zebra's Android devices — specifically the Zebra TC51-HC mobile computer.

"Supporting the TC51-HC is a key strategy for us, as it is one of the leading enterprise-class mobile devices in healthcare,” Ron Remy, CEO at Mobile Heartbeat, said in a statement. “By combining the TC51-HC’s ability to stand up to the harsh healthcare environment with our MH-CURE software, we are providing clinicians with a powerful communications platform.”