A Florida-based developer of clinical communications solutions is launching three new projects designed to improve care coordination – including a partnership with Uber and a social media "wall" for care teams.

Sarasota-based Voalte is enlisting the ride-sharing platform to help the Sarasota Memorial Health Care System arrange rides for follow-up care for patients discharged from the hospital. The Voalte Platform pilot app enables the hospital to arrange rides for patients through Uber for rehabilitation, physician visits, lab work and other post-discharge care services.

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"Transportation can be a challenge for older patients who no longer drive and don't have a family member or caregiver immediately available to take them to their appointments," David Verinder, the health system's president and CEO, said in a press release. "Voalte has been a reliable partner in other health communication endeavors, and we appreciate Uber's national focus on health, quality and convenience. Our goal is to work with them to develop a solution that breaks down one of the barriers we know prevents patients from important follow-up care."

Voalte is also partnering with a West Coast health system, the University of California, San Francisco, to develop Voalte Story, a social media-based message board for acute care and ambulatory settings. Based on the CareWeb platform, the interactive wall uses "enterprise, social-based communication" (ESBC) to enable clinicians and other caregivers to post and link texts and alarms to specific patients. It will also allow caregivers to see all messages related to a patient, streamline communication between the care team and enable multiple caregivers to access information around a certain patient, topic or task.

"In an active hospital setting, fast and accurate communications can truly be the difference between life or death, and yet our communications systems remain slow and fragmented," Michael Blum, MD, CDHI, director and chief medical information officer at UCSF Medical Center, said in a release. "Our goal is to tap into the huge advances in consumer communications to create an efficient and secure shorthand system for sharing information within healthcare teams and between caregivers."

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Developed with help from UCSF's Center for Digital Health Innovation, Voalte Story will be made available next year with the company's One, Me and Messages products.

Finally, Voalte will roll out a reporting and analytics tool designed to help administrators measure communication flow, system use, events and other metrics. Called Voalte Insight, the workflow tool will be made available in the first quarter of 2016.

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