BOSTON – Boston-based American Well and Numera, headquartered in Seattle will collaborate to deliver health monitoring information directly into live online encounters between physicians and patients.
The initiative brings together American Well's Online Care Suite telehealth solution and Numera's Numera|NET gateway.
[See also: Video conferencing: ready for its close-up]Patients being monitored for a range of conditions will be able to track their vitals and other data through widely-available consumer brand glucose meters, blood pressure cuffs, peak flow meters and other devices. Numera's technology makes the information readily available to physicians caring for patients via American Well's system – all without leaving home.
"Much of the transformation in the U.S. healthcare system is focused on providing more effective, comprehensive care for our most vulnerable and challenging patients – many of whom are homebound," says Roy Schoenberg, MD, CEO of American Well Systems. "Our collaboration with Numera is intended to vastly improve the ability of physicians to immediately understand and respond to the needs of those patients, and to truly manage their conditions in real-time."
"Enabling health providers with timely, objective patient information is one of the pillars for effective condition and care management programs," says Tim Smokoff, CEO of Numera. "Through our relationship with American Well, we are now taking critical patient information and bringing it directly into live care encounters, where it can have the greatest impact. Our customers' management of at-risk patients can become much more agile as a result."
[See also: 7 percent of U.S. docs video chat with patients]Numera's FDA-cleared gateway technology allows patients to send information from a wide range of biometric devices directly into other healthcare IT systems. The agreement with American Well will allow real-time data exchange with its Online Care Suite, a telehealth network that connects patients with physicians and other providers for immediate, live online visits using two-way video, secure text chat and/or the phone.
Physicians will be able to review biometric information alongside patient history and other clinical information as part of each visit, then diagnose, prescribe, or track treatment plans as appropriate. Furthermore, the biometric data will be automatically captured as part of a complete record assembled by the system at the conclusion of each visit, supporting continuity of care.
The joint offering will be made commercially available in the fall of 2011, according to company officials.
