Boston Children's Hospital has rolled into phase two of its deployment of GetWellNetwork’s patient engagement and education platform, which is rooted in putting patients at the center of care by equipping them with digital tools and information to be an active participant in their treatment and condition management. By providing tools for both patients and staff, the GetWellNetwork platform is designed to help hospitals guide patients and their families through self-management of their conditions (pre- and post-admission care) and overall health education while also improving hospitals’ outcome goals.

Phase two will expand the deployment from 250 beds to 386, add a new tool for patient-physician communication called the Interactive Patient Whiteboard, and integrate with Boston Children's patient portal.

"To maintain a standard of excellence in pediatric care, we strive to ensure that our patients and their families are engaged throughout their care journey and have access to the best tools along the way," Susan Shaw, vice president and associate chief of Nursing and director of Clinical Operations, said in a statement. "Our care teams use GetWellNetwork to empower patient and family participation and decision-making through interactive education and medication teaching, while also providing an enjoyable experience. We look forward to expanding the impact of IPC on patient and family satisfaction with their care, as well as extending the reach of these tools to the home."

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Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Clinical Research IO, which makes an electronic platform for researchers to quickly capture data during clinical trials, has partnered with drug safety system maker ArisGlobal to integrate their technology and reduce the burdens of source verifaction and double data entry. Data captured in Clinical Research IO's web and tablet-based clinical trial data recording system will be fed into ArisGlobal’s agCapture, an electronic data capture system, to prevent errors.

“This collaboration is an excellent example of the cross-vendor collaboration required to resolve challenges in clinical research,” Phuc Truong, cofounder of CRIO, said in a statement. “With this integration, we can give principal investigators and their staff an extremely user-friendly interface to collect data in way that’s consistent with their workflows, and ArisGlobal can deliver their life science sponsors immediate access to accurate data that does not need source verification.”

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Two Minneapolis-based companies, digital health care management program maker HealthFactors and medical-focused R&D firm Koronis BioMedical Technologies (KBT) are working together to create new smart inhaler products for some undisclosed pharmaceutical partners, the company announced earlier this week.

“Connected health technology, including smart inhalers, has the ability to improve clinical outcomes, increase patient engagement, and lower the total cost of care by capturing real-time data about medication use by patients and seamlessly and securely sharing that data with health care providers,” Dan Spors, chief commercial officer at HealthFactors said in a statement. “Our collaboration with KBT blends decades of expertise in technology, engineering, research, health care delivery and pharmaceuticals to deliver patient-centered solutions.”

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GuideWell Connect, which provides consumer health sales, marketing and engagement solutions to health plans, is teaming up with healthcare cost management analytics platform company NextHealth Technologies to build out its end-to-end member engagement offering, adding medical cost management capabilities from NextHealth to its customer offerings.

"We're excited to partner with this team to bring a deeper level of systematic insight to our engagement platform and, ultimately, drive quality outcomes while reducing costs for our health care clients," Craig Thomas, president of GuideWell Connect, said in a statement. "NextHealth's expertise in determining the health plan's most important use cases and who to target for the best outcomes is critical to the future of consumerism."

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MAP Health Management, which makes a remote monitoring and patient engagement platform focused on people with substance abuse disorder, has partnered with relapse reduction app WeConnect in a pilot to measure risk of relapse for people in MAP’s system. The WeConnect pilot will enroll 200 people who are currently using MAP post-acute engagement and care coordination services. Using data from the WeConnect app, MAP will algorithmically assess each person’s risk of relapse, with the ultimate goal of understanding which patient demographics could best be served by the app. This is the third pilot for MAP in recent months – they recently partnered with remote breathalyzer company Soberlink – and the company has big plans to expand its footprint in population health management for those dealing with substance abuse. As they get more data, MAP plans to expand its ecosystem of treatment providers, payers and digital tools to improve clinical and financial outcomes.

“We believe there is a large demographic out there who will be very responsive to engaging a mobile application as part of their recovery,” MAP Health CEO Jacob Levenson said in a statement. “Understanding who is at risk of relapse is essential to directing resources more efficiently and ultimately improving outcomes for those with Substance Use Disorder.”

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British medical journal and resource hub BMJ – noted for its early foray into online publishing in the mid 90s – is partnering with physician-facing app Figure 1 to bring their research database directly to the app and promote discussion immediately following the publication of new research. BMJ counts over a million doctors, nurses and medical students on the platform, and the publication wants them to use the app to discuss their work with target audiences.