Industry Insight

AT&T Selects WellDoc Mobile Health Solution for Chronic Disease Management

AT&T and WellDoc, a healthcare company that develops technology solutions to improve the lives of people with chronic diseases, have announced a strategic alliance to market and sell WellDoc’s mobile health (mHealth) solution in the United States to facilitate improved patient outcomes and reduce the costs of managing chronic diseases.
 
AT&T plans to deploy the WellDoc technology through an internal initiative with a select number of employees using WellDoc DiabetesManager System in 2011. AT&T will potentially expand to other disease areas (upon FDA clearance), including heart disease, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and oncology.

“Chronic diseases account for $1.4 trillion of our nation’s healthcare spending,” according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. “We believe that the use of mobile technologies and smart networks can contribute to a healthier world, and disease management is an area where mobility can facilitate improved patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs,” says Dan Walsh, senior vice president of marketing services for AT&T Business Solutions. “By embedding tools on one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous technologies, the mobile phone, we hope to quickly unlock the enormous potential of mHealth.”
 
AT&T’s strategy is to extend its core communications capabilities to provide mHealth solutions, and as part of the multifaceted relationship with WellDoc, AT&T will jointly market and sell AT&T-WellDoc mHealth chronic disease solutions across the entire healthcare ecosystem, including payers, self-insured employers, and disease management organizations. The WellDoc solution complements AT&T’s portfolio of technology solutions for healthcare customers and gives enterprises a new mobile toolset to help manage populations. Operationally, AT&T will expand and scale WellDoc’s solution by utilizing AT&T’s mobility expertise, providing application hosting and creating a secure infrastructure to host critical health data. Commercially, AT&T will also support the solution with sales and marketing, customer care, provisioning and billing.
 
— Source: WellDoc

 

Hielix, MEDNET Selected to Support Financial Sustainability Plans for Iowa HIE

Hielix, which specializes in creating operationally sustainable open solutions to exchange health information, and MEDNET, a provider of nationwide health information network (NHIN) connectivity and health information exchange (HIE) solutions, have been selected by the state of Iowa to develop a strategic business and financial sustainability plan to support a statewide HIE.

The contract, facilitated by Iowa e-Health, a collaboration created by the Iowa Department of Public Health to plan and promote the adoption and use of HIT across the state, commences a critical first step in the HIE planning phase, as detailed in the 2010 Iowa e-Health Strategic and Operational Plan submitted to Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).

In March, the ONC awarded Iowa $8,375,000 to establish a statewide HIE by 2014 as part of the HITECH Act. Iowa’s Strategic and Operational Plan describes the strategies and activities that will be necessary to advance EHR adoption and establish a statewide HIE. Although the plan is pending approval, Iowa e-Health moved quickly to engage Hielix and MEDNET to create a financial sustainability plan for the HIE.

In addition to Iowa, Hielix is currently providing HIT solutions for Nebraska, North Dakota, Mississippi, Nevada, and the U.S. island territory of Guam. The company also was responsible for designing and constructing the regional health information organizations for rural Arizona and various counties in Florida.

The Hielix-MEDNET partnership incorporates Hielix’s ability to integrate HIT solutions into new and existing health delivery models with MEDNET’s technical expertise in achieving data interoperability and NHIN connectivity between healthcare providers and HIEs.

— Source: Hielix