Working Toward Seamless Care Delivery with Real-Time Data

January 11, 2021 - Current care delivery is, for the most part, conducted on an episodic basis. Patients generally see their doctors when they don’t feel well, limiting clinicians’ ability to provide holistic, comprehensive care.

“There's a fair amount of fragmentation in healthcare today, and it can be a frustrating process to navigate. It's more reactive than it is proactive, and it's generally focused on treating sickness – not necessarily on promoting health or early detection,” Karen Hanlon, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Highmark Health, told HealthITAnalytics.

This method of care delivery has dire consequences for the medical industry as a whole, according to Tony Farah, MD, executive vice president and chief medical and clinical transformation officer of Highmark Health.

“Fragmentation leads to about 30 percent of waste in the healthcare system, which is quite a bit. Thirty percent of several trillion dollars – you can do the math,” Farah said.

In addition to healthcare waste, current care delivery approaches have left providers with little time to see their patients, much less get ahead of any illnesses they may have.

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“Over 50 percent of clinicians across the country experience burnout, mainly because of the administrative burdens we’ve been adding onto their plates over the last couple of decades. The amount of time providers spend with patients has shrunk to just several minutes at a time, while delays have gotten more prolonged,” said Farah.

With these challenges in mind, Highmark Health designed its Living Health model, a tool that aims to eliminate fragmentation in healthcare and free clinicians from time-consuming administrative tasks.

“We envisioned a model that is much more seamless in its interactions with the healthcare system, and a lot simpler for the clinician and consumer to navigate,” Hanlon said.

To further enhance the care experience and improve the relationship between patients and clinicians, Highmark Health recently announced a six-year partnership with Google Cloud to build and maintain the innovation engine behind the Living Health model.

The agreement includes the development of the Living Health Dynamic Platform, which will work to overcome complexities and fragmentation in the healthcare industry.

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“Our work with Google Cloud will focus on the development of an engine that will power the Living Health model. In addition, we'll focus on constructing a highly secure and scalable platform that builds in all the knowledge of our clinicians and technologists, but also takes advantage of Google’s expertise,” said Hanlon.  

The platform will apply Google Cloud’s advanced analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities, as well as use specific solutions like the Google Cloud Healthcare API for enhanced interoperability.

Through this partnership, Highmark Health will enable patients and providers to analyze real-time data and monitor health conditions as they’re changing and progressing, Farah said.

“Take, for instance, high blood pressure or congestive heart failure. High blood pressure is one of the most common causes of stroke, and it’s pretty hard to recover from a stroke once you’ve had one. But people don’t have any symptoms of high blood pressure – we refer to it as the silent killer,” he explained.

“There are many Bluetooth-enabled, wearable devices that measure blood pressure. A patient could have a blood pressure cuff on their arm or a ring around their finger, and that information is transmitted to the cloud. Through the algorithm, that data is then transmitted back to the patient and their physician, or anyone on the clinical team.”

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Highmark Health is seeking to provide clinicians with helpful, timely data that will allow patients to receive care before they need it most – paving the way for more proactive care.

“Without inundating the patient and the doctor with information, this type of data is curated at the appropriate time. And instead of having to wait and make an appointment to see the doctor when you’re not feeling well, that level of interaction can happen seamlessly without having to go through the traditional pathway,” said Farah.

“The treatment or next steps are implemented in real-time, 24/7 in some cases. And that's what we mean by proactive and moving care upstream.”

The collaboration between Google Cloud and Highmark Health will drive better healthcare experiences by leveraging the tools and expertise of each organization, Hanlon noted.

“Given that Highmark has a large payer and provider organization, we have the unique ability to disrupt the healthcare industry in ways other entities can’t. Similarly, Google Cloud has focused on disrupting the healthcare industry and finding ways where we can deliver better patient outcomes,” she said.

“Our plan is to take the best of our clinical capabilities, technology capabilities, and disruptive mindset, and build this digital experience platform that will help guide the patient and clinician to the best answers.”

The effort will empower patients to take control of their own health, while helping clinicians provide comprehensive care.

“We want providers to have the ability to understand what's going on with respect to the person as a whole, across the entirety of their conditions, and not just each of their conditions on their own,”

“Being able to look at the whole picture and incorporate that into the understanding of a patient will help clinicians come up with the best possible care plan. That’s one of the most powerful features of the platform that we're seeking to build with Google Cloud.”

The partnership will also strive to eliminate burdensome tasks for physicians, freeing up their time to do what they love: care for their patients.

“Our Living Health strategy and approach is equally focused on eliminating those barriers and giving back time for interactions between patients and their doctors. With the help of Google Cloud, we can accelerate the path on which we’ve already started,” said Farah.