Telemedicine provider American Well has teamed up with Israel-based medical device maker TytoCare to combine video telehealth visits with remote examinations. With the partnership, TytoCare’s examination platform will be integrated into American Well’s telehealth platform. In turn, TytoCare’s customers will have access to the network of healthcare providers who use American Well’s platform. Patients will be able to replicate an in-office visit at home by using TytoCare’s platform to examine the skin, heart, lungs, abdomen, ears, throat and skin. Then, they can share the examination with a clinician prior to or during a telemedicine visit. More

Arianna Huffington's new Thrive Global venture, which officially launched today, has selected Doctor on Demand as its primary partner for telehealth. The partnership will include a place on Thrive Global's curated e-commerce platform for health and wellness products as well as a place in a physical popup store that will exist in New York City from December 1 through January 15, 2017. Announced earlier this year, Thrive Global is a new company that will attempt toaddress issues around health, wellness, and, especially, career burnout through three different businesses. The three businesses are a corporate training and workshop business, a media platform called the Thrive Journal, and an e-commerce platform for products and services, including technology products,that support wellbeing. Doctor on Demand will be a featured service of the e-commerce business, as will Kurbo Health and a number of others. More

Aetna is now using patient engagement company AbleTo’s behavioral health care coordination platform to connect patients with more treatment options and facilitate more efficient communication between care teams and patients. The platform is fully integrated into the health plan’s EHR, and works to provide easy referrals, faster follow-ups thanks to improved visualization of the patient’s treatment progress, and clinical case summaries of each patient to drive better health outcomes. More

Senior care company InnovAge has partnered with on-demand healthcare company DispatchHealth to offer house calls to the more than 2,000 seniors participating in InnovAge’s Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), a federal program for seniors on Medicare and/or Medicaid in the Denver metro area.

"The opportunity to treat our participants in their own homes – rather than sending them unnecessarily to an emergency room – is a natural fit for InnovAge and our commitment to helping seniors age in place," Dr. Lisa Price, chief medical officer of InnovAge said in a statement. "Some medical situations still require a trip to the emergency room. By working with DispatchHealth, we can help our participants and their caregivers avoid the inconvenience, time and expense of unnecessary visits to the ER.” More

The Department of Veterans Affairs has partnered with precision medicine company Flow Health to build an AI-powered database from the records of 22 million veterans. The goal is to amass enough medical knowledge to apply deep learning and customize health plans for vets, and use the system to identify common genetic factors that could increase disease risks. From there, the AI-assisted health care system could potentially improve diagnoses and recommended personalized treatments. More

Chicago-based ContextMedia: Health, which makes a healthcare decision-making platform, has announced it will acquire point-of-care patient education company AccentHealth. The amount of acquisition is undisclosed, but ContextMedia: Health did say it will be an all-cash transaction. Founded in 2006, ContextMedia: Health has been steadily growing in the past year, adding almost one percent of all practices in the US each month. The company’s platform is deployed in clinics, hospitals and health systems around the country via a "digital waiting room" monitor as well as a mobile app, and offers a portfolio of interactive technologies including video-based engagement and assessment tools, tablets, anatomical boards, and 3D anatomical or condition models. With the acquisition of AccentHealth, ContextMedia: Health will reach 55,000 healthcare locations and power 500 million health consultations in US doctor offices each year, which the company says puts them on track to be in 70 percent of all healthcare practices in the country by 2020. More 

ContextMedia:Health also announced a partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association. With the alliance, ContextMedia: Health will have access to content from the Alzheimer’s Association digital library to consultation rooms within relevant practices in the platform’s network of offices. The two organizations will also work together to produce information together including video-based education and digital infographic content. More

ProofPilot, which makes a platform for designing, deploying and managing research studies, has partnered with Montreal-based Veritas IRB as the company introduces new features to facilitate easier creation or replication of randomized, controlled trials. The ProofPilot “Study Template” will enable those outside of pharma and academia to run scientifically valid studies with automatically conducted regulatory and ethic review by Veritas IRB. The feature has ten templates thus far, and aims to add more with participation from some of its academic customers.

“People want to run studies on digital health devices, fitness regimes, dietary changes, altnernative wellness efforts, social service programs…they are frustrated that they can’t point to research studies that prove the efficacy of these tools within the varied communities that make up our society,” ProofPilot CEO Matthew Amsden said in a statement. More

The Ottawa Hospital, one of Canada’s largest learning and research hospitals, has tapped patient engagement platform provider SeamlessMD to help support patients who are enrolled in the hospital’s bariatric surgery program. Patients can have access to the Seamless MD platform on their smartphone, tablet or computer, which will help patients prepare for and recover from surgery. At the same time, their care teams at the Ottawa Hospital and the Bariatric Medical Institute will be able to track their patients’ progress in real-time and intervene with those at-risk. More