The company’s mission statement underscores its commitment to superior and smarter diagnostics for improved health outcomes. QuidelOrtho was the first to receive approval from the US FDA for an antigen-based test to aid in the detection of the coronavirus!

In 2024 and beyond, QuidelOrtho is exploring opportunities to add new tests to diagnose other health conditions and diseases to its Savanna® Real-Time PCR Testing Platform. This addition would address a critical need and open new avenues for building intelligent solutions. 

QuidelOrtho’s robust and integrated platforms provide comprehensive diagnostic insights beyond simple test results. These platforms enable healthcare providers to deliver more personalized care and make optimal patient-care decisions.

Start of the Innovation Journey

QuidelOrtho was born from the merger of two great industry pioneers, Quidel Corporation and Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, in 2022. Both companies embarked on a shared vision of serving patients fully by transforming diagnostic data into actionable insights. They shared a common legacy of innovation and excellence and combined these strengths to redefine possibilities in diagnostics.

Today, QuidelOrtho offers solutions that help serve the healthcare ecosystem, from small- to medium-volume/high-complexity hospitals to point-of-care settings in clinics and home use. As a unified company, QuidelOrtho boasts stronger innovation capabilities and leverages decades of expertise in the in-vitro diagnostics industry. Since healthcare diagnostics is the cornerstone of adequate healthcare, the company strives to keep up with the demand for patient- and customer-centric solutions. Their leadership and teams of dedicated researchers and scientists, with their unique experiences, build strategies and direction to advance as diagnostics innovators.

Being at the forefront of innovation in diagnostics allows us to contribute to a future where every individual has access to the best possible care.

Brian J. Blaser, the President and CEO of QuidelOrtho, also spoke about his role in driving a meaningful change in healthcare. He says, “Being at the forefront of innovation in diagnostics allows us to contribute to a future where every individual has access to the best possible care.” He believes the journey has been enriching, seeing how QuidelOrtho’s solutions positively impact lives around the globe and across the healthcare continuum.

QuidelOrtho’s innovation strategy is built on three core pillars: Cutting-Edge Technology, Collaborative Research, and Continuous Improvement. The company invests in advanced diagnostic technologies, such as molecular diagnostics and immunoassays, to develop products at the forefront of innovation. Its collaborative research with leading academic institutions and healthcare providers helps address emerging trends and clinical needs with relevant and practical solutions.

Solutions Impacting the Entire Care Continuum

When asked to talk about a flagship solution, Brian added that it is not about having just a single solution. QuidelOrtho’s innovations span centralized to decentralized areas, reference labs, regional reference labs, and up to at-home testing. Brian mentioned that the Sofia® 2 Platform is one of QuidelOrtho’s most recognizable solutions. It is a rapid immunoassay platform that epitomizes their commitment to impact the entire healthcare value chain.

The Sofia 2 platform is designed to provide rapid, accurate diagnostic results at the point of care using advanced fluorescence technology. This enables healthcare providers to make informed, timely decisions across the healthcare continuum – from large hospitals to physician office labs or pharmacies.

QuidelOrtho’s high-volume clinical laboratory solution delivers quality and efficiency when labs need them most. The Vitros® XT 7600 Integrated System and assays lead the industry in Six-Sigma-defined world-class or excellent quality. The Six Sigma classification on Vitros XT 7600 system creates quality assurance, enabling labs to deliver the right result the first time.

The system leverages Vitros MicroSlides, which incorporate dry-slide technology with no requirement for water and drains, making our solution flexible and easy to install.

Hospitals, especially small- to medium-volume ones, are segments where QuidelOrtho has successfully established its robust presence and value-add. This is a strategic position, as hospitals and hospital systems increasingly become the central hubs of healthcare delivery, responsible for a broader spectrum of care. They now own physician groups, urgent cares, and retail pharmacies, serving the entire continuum of care. Their solutions are integral in supporting these expanding needs, providing the right intelligence at the right time.

Beyond Diagnostic Results

Additionally, QuidelOrtho’s expertise is beyond delivering diagnostic results. The company also provides the intelligence that labs and doctors need to support their communities. QuidelOrtho’s solutions for lab professionals are designed to enhance workflow efficiency, reduce errors, and improve overall lab performance. By integrating advanced analytics and automation, these products help lab professionals deliver the highest levels of care with accuracy and speed, as demonstrated by our Vitros Systems, which can increase testing volume and improve turnaround times.

Staffing and labor shortages are significant challenges in the healthcare industry. QuidelOrtho’s products, designed for ease of use, reliability, and efficiency, help address these issues by reducing the need for highly technical labor. This allows existing staff to focus on tasks utilizing their expertise, knowledge, and skills, optimizing workforce productivity and enhancing overall healthcare delivery.

A Dependable Way of Infectious Disease Management

When asked about a notable use case, Brian mentioned an incident where the client needed help enhancing infectious disease management.

In a world still feeling the effects of the pandemic, a prominent healthcare provider network faced ongoing challenges with infectious disease outbreaks. They needed a swift and dependable way to identify and manage these cases to protect their patients and staff.

The Sofia 2 rapid testing platform provided an ideal solution. Its quick and accurate diagnostic results available at the point of care enabled the healthcare provider to swiftly identify and isolate affected individuals, preventing further spread within their facilities.

The Sofia 2 platform delivered the speed the provider needed to make prompt decisions with diagnostic results in minutes, not hours. It also provided accurate and reliable patient management results and offered the precision to effectively contain and treat infections. The platform’s flexibility helped the provider adapt to different settings, from emergency rooms to clinics. Also, the Sofia 2 platform was easy to integrate and use across various environments.

It helped deliver faster results with 80% reduced diagnostic turnaround time, allowing quicker interventions. The healthcare provider experienced improved accuracy rates, which led to fewer false results, facilitating proper patient management. Moreover, rapid, precise diagnostics meant timely treatments, reducing the impact and spread of infections. Overall, the improved efficiency allowed better resource use and eased the burden on the medical staff.

By utilizing QuidelOrtho’s advanced diagnostic tools, the healthcare provider improved its approach to managing infectious diseases, resulting in better patient care and a healthier community overall. This use case highlights how QuidelOrtho’s solutions empower healthcare providers to deliver top-tier care, making a tangible difference in public health.

The Way Forward

For the rest of 2024 and beyond, QuidelOrtho is focused on bringing forward several key assays that it believes can be game-changers in the industry. The company is expecting the launch of a new respiratory assay that could broaden the placement and accessibility of its molecular diagnostic tools. QuidelOrtho is also prioritizing the launch of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and gastrointestinal (GI) panels. The company sees a substantial opportunity to make a difference and drive growth in these areas.

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Since the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first identified in December 2019, the world has been forever changed. The COVID-19 pandemic took the world by surprise as, seemingly, no one was prepared for the magnitude of change that the COVID-19 pandemic would bring. In the United States, an already strained healthcare system became overwhelmed with the breadth of the unique struggles that accompanied the pandemic. One such problem, that is often attributed to the pandemic, became known as the Great Resignation.

The dynamic of the Great Resignation is an epidemic in its own rite, but there’s no denying that the healthcare industry was devastated by the loss of skilled and competent healthcare workers. The medical imaging community was hit especially hard as many hospitals and imaging departments struggled to have enough employees to provide quality services without interruption. The problem seemed to have a cascading effect with what many believed there to be no end in sight.

During every conversation, I made a point to treat my employees as people instead of human capital. I let them know how important they are and seek to develop more leaders with the same qualities.

As a leader, I knew I had to face this problem head on, and rather than focus on the complexities of the situation, I was determined to find a solution. Every analysis and evaluation concluded with the same strategy; to focus on recruitment and retention. But how could I set my department and organization apart from the thousands of other medical imaging departments facing the same problem? My experience has been that servant leadership was the most effective method for retention. I set out to build a culture and create an environment that people would enjoy working in, as much as one could enjoy work, and ultimately believe this is sound advice for any leader in any profession.

My first realization was that no matter my aptitude for the business, I could not be a leader if I didn’t have a team to lead. I always struggled even to take a day off since I had a feeling that my department couldn’t run without me. That couldn’t have been further from the truth as the harsh reality that set in was my department didn’t need me at all! I could be replaced in an instant and they would all be just fine. The second realization was that even though they could make it without me, I could not make it without them. I set out to let them know how important they were to me, our patients, and our organization.

The Great Resignation has shown that people seem to have no problem leaving jobs or companies behind, and throughout my career, there had been jobs and companies that I had no trouble leaving. By the same token, there had been jobs that I could almost never imagine leaving. What differentiated the two? The bonds that were created between leaders and co-workers make up the difference. People have a much harder time leaving, families, friends, and mentors. I set out to create that environment by initiating team-building exercises and creating relationships between myself, my employees, and amongst themselves.

Before long, as the culture shifted, my team was working to recruit people into the organization. As they gave testament to the work environment, more applicants started flowing in because we were developing the reputation that our department was a great place to work! I tried to take time out of my busy days to chat with students, and my teams, one on one, to establish myself as an approachable leader. For the longest time, when I would summon people to my office, the response was always, “Oh no! What did I do wrong?” That always bothered me. I wanted to dispel the negative connotations related to coming to my office for a chat.

During every conversation, I made a point to treat my employees as people instead of human capital. I let them know how important they are and seek to develop more leaders with the same qualities. Today, I can confidently say that I feel that I have the best team around! I am honored to have the opportunity to work with them and be someone they trust and respect. I am extremely thankful for those leaders who believed in me, motivated me, and allowed me to serve. Even more so, I value the lessons I’ve learned from the bad leaders, as they’ve taught me what leadership styles to avoid. 

To be a servant leader is to take the organizational chart, turn it upside-down, and place yourself at the bottom. We must remember that our role is to be supportive, to create an environment in which people can grow, to create a culture in which people can thrive, and to be a leader that you would want to follow. The job market, at the moment, is wide open and there are multitude of opportunities available. Many offer better pay, larger bonuses, and other superficial attractions. I ask everyone who is reading this to ask themselves, “Why would people want to work for us?” It is no longer a question of “Why do you want this job?” but, rather, “Why wouldn’t you want this job?” Only when you can ask that question, you created the right environment to attract and retain the best of talent.

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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare consumers sought convenient, more affordable ways to access healthcare. The pandemic rapidly accelerated this trend, encouraging healthcare organizations to develop and deploy patient-centered telemedicine services that gave consumers what they wanted. Due to its versatility, accessibility and cost-effectiveness, I believe consumer demand for telemedicine will only continue to increase.

After witnessing the need for more telemedicine in the early pandemic, Envision increased its investment in and deployment of virtual services to include teleneurology, maternal-fetal medicine, transitional care, neonatology and direct-to-consumer occupational medicine, among many others.

To effectively deliver virtual care, organizations must collaborate with technology companies to create platforms that are easy for both patients and clinicians to use.

One of the programs we’re proudest of is our ET3 virtual emergency medicine program, which launched in January 2021 with our strategic partner, Global Medical Response (GMR) and other EMS agencies. We are now active with the program in 17 states across the U.S. ET3, or Emergency Triage, Treat and Transport, is a voluntary initiative in partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that incentivizes appropriate utilization of emergency medical services. Coupled with Community Paramedicine (CP), which dispatches a caregiver following non-emergent 911 calls, these programs deliver a patient-centered emergency response by supporting the right care at the right time in the right place.

Our Virtual Health Services team uses two-way, real-time audio/video on mobile devices to bring local emergency medical services (EMS) responders together with Envision’s national network of more than 60 EMS medical directors and 3,500 board-certified emergency medicine clinicians. We serve more than 100 U.S. counties and 20 million patients in the ET3 program.

Challenges transitioning from brick-and-mortar to virtual

With the numerous virtual health technology platforms available, it can be challenging to find the right platform that meets the exact functionality required for a given service while having the right level of configuration to match the needs of Envision’s virtual health programs.  

Using our ET3 care program as an example, Envision’s leading team of clinical and operational experts worked closely with our platform vendor to develop functionality beyond “out-of-the-box” features. The results were new technology features and workflows that allowed for streamlined platform functionality while focusing on the patient-clinician experience. Partnering with a high-quality technology vendor that is willing to collaborate with your organization and take an innovative approach to their platform’s features is critical.

In addition to being functionally flexible, virtual health platforms must be easy for providers to use. The technology must work as intended. Otherwise, the platform may create challenges that can lead to underutilization. I often find myself saying that we have to make the virtual “front door” easy for patients to walk through. We have a responsibility to provide them with a positive care experience. Any virtual service must be easy to access and use. Complex registration and login processes or connectivity issues related to audio and video functionality will only create user frustration and, over time, a lack of patient utilization.

Embracing emerging healthcare technologies

To ensure our virtual health platforms like the one used for ET3 provide a positive experience, we routinely ask patients for their feedback. A patient recently explained that they were hesitant to call 911 as they did not want to go to their local emergency department. The EMS team, in partnership with an Envision emergency physician, assessed and treated the patient via a virtual emergency visit. With the patient’s health and safety top of mind, the care team determined the patient’s condition was not high risk and it was not clinically necessary for the patient to go to the ED. The patient told us, “I can’t believe I was able to speak to an ER physician from my living room couch. My family and I are so grateful we didn’t have to go to the emergency room.”

When I think about the positive benefits of emerging virtual health capabilities, I think about the real impact we have on patients’ lives. With the help of technology, we are helping patients access the most appropriate care when and where they need it most.

Naturally, embracing and implementing emerging technologies comes with a learning curve. Telemedicine regulations at the federal and state levels were expanded dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the need for permanent legislation still exists for everything from interstate licensure compacts to telemedicine reimbursement dynamics. Public and commercial health insurers must also keep up with the demand from consumers and the need to reimburse clinicians.

While virtual healthcare expands patients’ access to care, improves patient outcomes and drives healthcare costs down, how quickly and to what extent this takes place will be influenced by regulatory and insurer dynamics.

I am confident that virtual care is the future of healthcare delivery. Consumer demand for more convenient, low-cost service models is here to stay and will only increase with time as consumers become more selective in how they access care. To effectively deliver virtual care, organizations must collaborate with technology companies to create platforms that are easy for both patients and clinicians to use.

As the healthcare system continues to evolve, more providers will likely adopt or expand virtual health capabilities. Those providers that are open to embracing innovative changes and virtual services are better suited to meet patients’ unique and ever-changing needs.

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Technological disruption is transforming every aspect of the future of healthcare. COVID-19 emphasized the need for this digital world much more than ever. Social distancing and hygiene requirements forced hospitals and other providers to speed up their adoption of transformative technologies. Whether they were ready or not, organizations spanning every industry and size were forced over the last two years to fully embrace digital transformation. Virtual care delivery is persisting at exponentially higher adoption rates than pre-pandemic levels, and remote monitoring as well as digital diagnostics and therapeutics continue to gain attention and investment. As a consequence of the world’s digitalization, customer behavior is changing which also highlights why organizations need to evolve and adapt to this digital environment.

To compete and succeed amid ongoing uncertainty and rapid change, provide an enhanced patient/consumer experience, and bring added value, healthcare organizations are focused on building “digital-first” business models. In addition, CEOs across healthcare sectors are evangelizing digital and innovative initiatives as strategic imperatives to seize the opportunities of disruption, create added value, and deliver new growth.

Cloud Computing has become the catalyst for digital transformation.

The Cloud-enabled business model helps organizations simplify IT infrastructure and focus more on digital transformation. It gives access to the ‘Everything-as-a-service’ model, utilizing multiple automation processes to build a customer-centric system. As these models become more prevalent, humans will work alongside automation to boost their cognitive abilities and skills.

Quick, on-demand access to reliable, scalable, and flexible technologies and IT infrastructure are the imperative requirements for digitization in any organization. Self-hosted on-prem solutions can be considered organization-controlled but involve time and money to scale up for business growth.

Implementing Cloud Computing solutions may be pretty straightforward. However, migrating without proper planning, preparation and governance can be disastrous.

Integrating new forms of technologies fast tracks automation and improves patient care. AI, ML, Big Data Analytics, and IoT are key components of such new solutions. Considering that these technologies require heavy computational power and storage space, Cloud Computing is the ideal solution to integrate and optimize these technologies and make them more scalable.

Benefits of Cloud Computing which empowers digital transformation

1. Agility, Flexibility, Scalability and Efficiency
   
   Healthcare is in constant need of continuous innovation, testing, and implementation to drive digital transformation.
   
   Cloud Computing is a key enabler for agile innovation. It offers agility by providing platforms and Computing resources where we can rapidly build, test, and deploy apps throughout the transformation phase to enable business growth and meet patient care and access needs, without a need for complex on-premise infrastructure that requires investment, time and IT resources to set up. It further helps to eliminate the need to maintain and upgrade systems and also solves compatibility issues between different types of infrastructure.
   
   Cloud Computing enables enterprises to quickly respond to customer needs, eliminating the problem of IT systems overload or over-provisioning.
   
   Enterprise storage solutions impose limits on the data capacity. Expansion is expensive, both for infrastructure and IT resources. However, Cloud-based storage in healthcare provides greater flexibility. It is a pay-as-you-go subscription-based model. It allows organizations to scale up or down quickly to meet demand.
   
   
2. Integrated Solution
   
   Cloud Computing enables organizations to access, retrieve, and process information at any time, from any place, ensuring efficient collaboration and improved productivity without restrictions and geographical boundaries.
   
   
3. Security
   
   Healthcare may constantly face the risk of losing critical information (including PHI) due to unexpected system shutdowns, data breaches, etc. Furthermore, in the case of AI-driven big data analysis, the chances of system failure increase considerably due to Computing and storage constraints.

Cloud solutions are built to comply with the increasing high level of privacy standards and threat protection postures, including compliance to HIPAA and GDPR. This enables organizations to create multiple defenses for data protection. It can be as good as on-premises solutions and sometimes when properly configured, it might even provide better security.

Despite Cloud Computing’s advantage and its enablement of digitization, significant challenges of Cloud Computing in healthcare include user misunderstanding or distrust of provided security and privacy, organizational barriers, loss of data governance, and poor safety standards. The use of Cloud Computing raises many legal issues such as local contract laws, IP rights, data jurisdiction, and privacy.

Migrating to Cloud for the organization is not a one-off decision that should be made in isolation. Cloud migration has company-wide, short-term and long-term implications. Implementing Cloud Computing solutions may be pretty straightforward. However, migrating without proper planning, preparation and  governance can be disastrous. 

Any organization can speed up their digital transformation by adopting Cloud solutions if they consider the following:

Business Goals

When considering Cloud solutions, organizations need to have a clear understanding of the business goals they will achieve and the alignment with strategic growth. For example, they should know whether technologies supported by the Cloud are compatible with systems and applications already being used in the organization, including legacy solutions.

Cloud Computing Security Concerns

Every organization is responsible for its patients, payers and their own confidential and valuable data. Therefore, they must be confident that their data is secure and know where and how it is being shared. PHI and PII data security is the primary concern for healthcare. Therefore, before adopting Cloud solutions, organizations must prepare their security and firewalls to guarantee the safety of their data. Cloud is secure, but it must be used correctly.

Governance

Different Cloud solutions like IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS provide ease of use, cost savings, and innovative features. Typically, they offer users a free trial account. Due to this flexibility, any organization may buy Cloud solutions without centralized IT control. Moving to the Cloud can save money, but this is not automatic. Therefore, strong governance in the organization is key for the selection and use of Cloud applications to avoid having siloed systems and risks.

In summary, one thing we can count on is that the Cloud has proven itself as a valuable tool and will be integral to all modern healthcare must-dos.

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The healthcare industry is at the forefront of digital innovation and evolution. Advancing digital technology adoption has the potential to improve the health care consumer and patient experience and also transform care delivery. While these advancements enable efficiencies that benefit both patient and provider, the methods in which these technologies are utilized can tip the scale on their impact.

Patient care journeys through the healthcare system vary widely. Therefore, there is no single approach in improving experience. Patients access the health system for different types of medical care. They have different communication preferences based on digital literacy and/or access to digital devices. While many patients who live on their computers day to day enjoy the speed and convenience of digital medicine, a large portion of patients find these tech-enabled interactions to be cold and emotionless. Without consideration of each individuals’ exclusive needs, blanket technological solutions are bound to further the digital divide experienced by wide swoth of healthcare consumers.

Despite the inherent challenges associated with infusing digital technology into current care operations, communicating the “why” can help with change management. One “why,” is that digital technology has the ability to improve the patient experience in a seamless, efficient manner.  For example, creating an experience that includes robotic process automation and artificial intelligence offers benefits like expedited completion of documentation, simplified coverage validation, streamlining bill payment, as well as automated prescription refills, to name a few.  These technologies have a two fold benefit of making the experience more simple for the patient, and more cost-efficient for the health system.

Digital technology can also improve provider experience and patient care. Simplified interactions through recording, automated patient outreach, and using artificial intelligence to detect disease more quickly in diagnostic testing are just a few tools helping to lighten the load and prevent burnout of our healthcare professionals.   

COVID-19 created an optimal case study that exemplified the opportunity technology brought to bare. Organizations saw the use of automation, chatbots, conversational AI and application program interfaces (API) leveraged on a coordinated, large scale for testing, vaccination, and communication processes. COVID-19 required massive scalability with limited human resources, which only technology could sustain across the world. Learnings were derived from each organizations’ approach and adaptability was required as demand ebbed and flowed. The ultimate challenge to maintaining a positive technology implementation experience was predicting and creating a sustainable patient journey through a rapidly changing environment. One of the greatest examples of this principle was the finding that virtual visits between patients and providers can be an efficient and effective way to render health care. Needless to say, out of necessity, technology was catalyzed in medicine through the COVID-19 pandemic.

In order to realize the benefits of digital technology in healthcare the design process is critical. It is necessary to engage patients and providers continually throughout the process.  Understanding critical aspects of our patient and provider needs will lead to successful solutions.  For patients, it is imperative to understand social health as well as physicial health. Access to devices, broadband and digital literacy will all impact the experience. It will be necessary to design digital strategies with these factors in mind. Not including these factors in the design will lead to a divide among our most vulnerable patients who need help accessing care. For providers, it is important to create solutions that actually improve their workflow and ability to produce better outcomes. Digital solutions that add more work or are difficult to use will ultimatily fail.

The manner in which we deploy digital technology will determine its utility. Technology is a part of a solution to a problem but is not the solution. In order to be successful, it will be necessary to keep the patient in the center of the design.  Understanding inherent complexities will allow us to truly transform patient and provider experience and redesign care delivery, all while lowering the total cost of care. All laudible goals that have been elusive, on a larger scale, until now.

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Connected health has been a target without focus for more than twenty years, that is up until two years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated connected health adoption around five years, but the 21^st Century Cures Act came into place, payers adopted reimbursement strategies that embrace connected health. As a result, we are seeing development in technology solutions that are more refined and user-friendly.  

Pre-COVID, Luminis Health was piloting video telemedicine visits. Our goal then was to have greater than 100 video telemedicine visits in a month. Two of the problems faced at that time were structuring a telemedicine program that ensured reimbursement for telemedicine encounters and finding ways to encourage providers to change their business approach when things were working just fine.  

Luminis Health was also piloting take-home wearables for expectant mothers that would automatically populate the patient’s chart. The appeal of this program was to control pre-eclampsia in expectant mothers. The barrier here was finding blood pressure cuffs that our development team could integrate with. Many of the cuffs used proprietary protocols or had limited ways to integrate their data.  

Looking toward the horizon, connected health technologies are here to stay and each healthcare organization will have to maintain and expand their footprint in these spaces.

After the emergence of COVID-19 in the United States, our telemedicine adoption numbers raced past what just a month earlier was a lofty goal. Instead of discussing how the team could drum up support for 100 video telemedicine visits per month, we were looking to scale our support and architecture to support 13,000+ video telemedicine visits in a month.  

Our remote patient monitoring program also grew dramatically. In May of 2020, we were awarded an

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) telemedicine grant that allowed us to procure single-use low acuity monitors. These monitors were distributed to two groups of patients. The first group was returning home after an inpatient hospitalization for COVID-19 and met a specific set of criteria. The second group was referred to the program by their primary care provider with the goal of preventing emergency department admissions. Patients would then use their personal smartphone, or one that we provided, to integrate to the monitoring device and transmit the data to our clinical care coordination teams and primary care providers. Using this solution, we were able to have 549 patients either recover from COVID-19 at home or monitor patients that were at risk of needing emergency services and proactively provide care before the need for the emergency department presented.  

What changed? In that brief period of time, we found payers remove barriers to reimbursement, we were fortunate enough to receive a grant to help shoulder the cost of the single-use low acuity monitors, a market had been established for cost-effective connected health devices, and perhaps most importantly, patients and clinicians have embraced this shift in care delivery and saw the value to care it provided.  

Pre-COVID, numerous concerns were elevated around patient hesitancy or access to technology, and to a lesser degree, the level of trust for data not captured in the exam room. Now, most will agree that patients have less of a technology barrier as we once thought, and that wearable data or remote patient monitoring is reliable data that can positively impact patient care.  

Luminis Health was better positioned to respond to all of these changes due to active deployment of controlled pilots such as telemedicine and remote patient monitoring. Several years earlier, we made the active decision to have a dedicated software development team that we could leverage to accelerate changes to software systems. We also have executive support from the CEO down to run these pilots in a risk-controlled and patient-centric way. These factors allowed Luminis Health to pilot the operationalization of connected health technologies. Once conditions were right, we were able to rapidly scale both the technology and operationalization footprints.  

Looking toward the horizon, connected health technologies are here to stay and each healthcare organization will have to maintain and expand their footprint in these spaces. The reasons are simple: healthcare organization next door will be, patients are going to continue to expect it, and healthcare disruptors will be capitalizing in this area. 21^st Century Cures Act mandates data exchange, which will empower patient choice. Consequently, healthcare disruptors that offer such healthcare products have significant room to grow. 

At Luminis Health, we are tackling many of these strategies with our new digital front door experience that prioritizes patient access while minimizing the need for staff access. For example, we are focusing on expanding and allowing patients to schedule a broader number of types of visits directly on the provider’s schedule without having to place calls or wait for callbacks. We are also investing in technologies that allow for more seamless sharing of information and data from the patient to the provider and the provider to the patient. Lastly, we are exploring how we can leverage our technologies and operational experience to provide telemedicine visits on-demand without having to wait for a scheduled slot with a caregiver.  

Wearables, telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and other connected health technologies are truly exciting, but this also presents a new way of operating. The sheer amount of data and expectation for immediacy is causing transformation. These technologies create new and different workloads for our caregivers at a point in time when we are at crisis levels in terms of provider and nurse satisfaction. All of this data needs to be assessed by the care teams, and actions will need to be taken. This is where I personally hope to see more technology focus. Advanced surveillance algorithms and mechanisms are needed for the next evolution of connected health.  

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In today’s climate, healthcare constituents are readily implementing robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML), process mining, and artificial intelligence (AI) to offer a top-notch, tech-enabled experience for all—enter the Appian Low-Code Platform. Appian uses low-code technology to speed application development, automate workflows, and ease integrations to empower healthcare teams and other stakeholders to function seamlessly in the virtual world. Appian has been demonstrating its unique ability to bridge the technical, clinical, and financial dimensions of healthcare since long before the pandemic, and it will continue to do so into the future.

Over the last 30 years, innumerable healthcare IT platforms and system implementations have emerged, creating the ‘accidental architecture’ of today. For our clients and partners, being able to stitch together the various aspects of their ecosystem through Appian is a major benefit.

“Pre-pandemic . . . dealing with workflows around revenue cycle optimization, biomedical device asset management, and physician quality assessments was the norm,” recalls Fritz Haimberger, Global Industry Lead for Healthcare at Appian. “Post-crisis level of the pandemic and beyond, there have been significant increases in magnitude for these same use cases, however, the patient journey management and care coordination applications are coming into their own.” Not surprisingly, the backbone of patient engagement applications is a robust technology platform that is easily accessible to all patients. The Appian Low-Code Platform is a great tool to simplify the process—for both patient and clinician—of bringing together disparate technologies like EMRs, 3rd party adjuncts, IoT wearables, and remote patient monitoring devices. Appian is a global leader within the enterprise technology market, including digital process automation (DPA), intelligent business process management (iBPM) and dynamic case management. Appian has extensive experience transitioning from legacy systems to cutting-edge, electronic medical records with low-code. “Over the last 30 years, innumerable healthcare IT platforms and system implementations have emerged, creating the ‘accidental architecture’ of today. For our clients and partners, being able to stitch together the various aspects of their ecosystem through Appian is a major benefit,” explains Haimberger.

Reusable components and automation speed app development and streamline complex healthcare workflows.

“When a client purchases Appian, they get the entirety of the platform—reusable components, drag-and-drop process mapping, pre-built smart services, intelligent automation capabilities including RPA and intelligent document processing—all without the need for multiple modules to deliver on a single use case.” The reusability of the components accelerates application development time, allowing healthcare organizations to rapidly build solutions that reduce the burden on clinicians and patients alike.

It is evident that automation solutions really do make a difference. “Taking an enterprise workflow like clinician onboarding, biomedical device asset management, or even home health servicing and bolstering it with intelligent automation truly takes those applications to the next level,” adds Haimberger, citing a customer success story of a healthcare client that continues to realize over $1 million in savings per month after integrating digital capabilities to assist clinicians in call centers, freeing them up to take on an additional 25% patient caseload.

In another instance, a large, academically-renowned, oncology-focused provider approached Appian seeking to improve the onboarding process for newly-affiliated entities. Providing top-notch service to physicians and their patients across the US is paramount for this provider. The more quickly clinicians can be brought into the organization, the faster patients can access world-class cancer care protocols and clinical trials. Within a matter of weeks, Appian helped the client implement a system that automated and increased the throughput with which physician quality assessments were undertaken and completed. To date, multiple weeks have been shaved off the timeline for getting a physician into the organization and operationally viable, and patients are able to get the life-saving care they need more quickly than ever before.

No more working in silos.

Ignyte Group’s Mental Health Management solution is another flagship offering that is built on the Appian platform. The solution helps connect patients readily and rapidly with their caregivers anytime, anywhere. It tracks personal qualitative and quantitative trends through remote patient monitoring tools, allowing patients to be intimately involved in their care continuum. And the solution is automatically mobile-ready. Having access to these tools on a computer or in an Android- or iOS-based mobile environment facilitates instant communication between provider and patient for emergencies.

Even situations as non-acute and simple as medication or appointment adherence can be managed with gentle, automated nudges to the patient through their preferred method of communication. Using intelligent automation (like workflow, RPA, AI, and ML) to stitch together existing EMRs and other clinical adjuncts with the Appian platform gives Ignyte’s Mental Health Management solution a true 360-degree view of a patient. And it presents all this data to a provider in a clean, unified way that allows them to make the best treatment decisions possible and take actions from within a single interface.

Appian is tech-agnostic—giving clients the power of choice.

As an open platform, Appian supports organizations’ freedom to choose the solutions that work best for them. If a health system has made investments in other technologies, Appian can easily integrate with them, extending their value and usable lifespan. Appian does not lock organizations into proprietary data structures and systems. For example, the company has demonstrated exceptional value across clinician onboarding, as the workflows for recruiting, onboarding, licensing, credentialing, and payer contracting necessitate various departments and systems working in harmony. By bringing the siloed entities together for a seamless hiring experience, Appian has enabled many healthcare systems to mitigate the challenge of pandemic-induced employee attrition. “The natural stress of the job was causing early burnout long before anyone had heard of COVID-19; the pandemic has put such added strain on these clinicians that we’re struggling to replace the holes left behind when these valuable employees depart,” says Haimberger.

Creating a patient-first culture through technology.

A significant portion of the success of Appian is attributable to the four founders’ vision and culture. “They have no qualms about jumping in the trenches with the troops on the ground, and I’m proud to be part of the leadership team that is cut from that same cloth,” reminisces Haimberger of his journey since 2015 and his hand in helping to take Appian public in 2017. “The ‘All for one and one for all’ mentality that is so pervasive here is infectious, and I love celebrating the greatest and the smallest of wins with our broader team.” 

Appian emphasizes collaborative relationships among employees and healthcare partners, with the goal of putting patients first. “It humbles me every day to be able to spend time with my fellow Appian employees who truly ‘get it’ when it comes to healthcare—there is a higher calling afoot here, and we’re appreciative of being given the opportunity to be even a small cog in that continuum,” emphasizes Haimberger. Appian is continuously looking for opportunities to invest in technology partnerships that facilitate patient-first outcomes. In fact, the company recently acquired a leading process mining organization, Lana Labs, to help healthcare providers and payers better understand their current processes so they can optimize them or discover new ones to better serve patients and member constituents.

The post The Appian Low-Code Platform: Taking Healthcare to New Heights appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

I have been a CFO in healthcare for 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of revenue cycle issues that are new and a lot that are recurring and never seem to get fully resolved. Healthcare is changing so fast that keeping up is critical and technology can make a significant difference.

Let’s start at the front-end, scheduling a patient. Technology is available that allows patients and physicians to schedule procedures without any assistance from hospital staff. This technology can be a simple as downloading an app on your phone and using it to schedule tests and or procedures. This saves a lot of labor time for the healthcare system and increases patient and physician satisfaction. Not all hospitals have this capability. Many front-end systems don’t interface with each other very well. There are ways to have these systems “talk” to each other.

Hire appropriate leaders, set up the proper structure, provide the necessary technology, and ensure the team members are well trained.

Health systems continue to have challenges with denials. No matter how good a health system is with preventing and overturning denials, the payors will continue to find new ways to deny or recoup payments that have been earned by the providers. Many providers continue to purchase expensive denial management systems to track and trend denials. Some systems have incredible metrics and graphics that help you determine the root cause of these denials and underpayments. I have found that others don’t do a very good job in determining whether a denial really exists. Providers also deal with disparate systems. Many patient accounting and denial systems don’t talk to each other. 

Over 20 years ago, Providers wrote scripts and keystroke emulation to trick computers to think a person was sitting at a keyboard. Today they call it Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and companies charge a lot of money for RPA to interface systems. RPA has been around for quite a long time under other names. Fully integrated systems were difficult to come by years ago, but now are available. However, RPA may help the Providers that can’t afford to replace systems. 

There are newer technologies that are becoming more available. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of them. Most providers are not yet taking advantage of what AI can do. For those providers that embrace AI, this technology can learn and improve processes. Bi-directional interfaces are also more common now. These systems and tools make it possible to have high-performing revenue cycles.  

There are so many other issues to deal with in the revenue cycle, such as upfront collections, payor contracting, and medical necessity, that I have not even mentioned. Each is important and needs attention.

COVID-19 has created turmoil in the healthcare industry, certainly more than ever before in my career. Staffing is extremely difficult and is very expensive due to higher wages, travelers, sign-on bonuses, and more. Social distancing at work has created even more issues since most organizations don’t have as much space as they need. Today, we need almost twice the space for the same number of people. The revenue cycle is not exempt from staffing shortages. 

Unvaccinated team members continue to isolate at home for a couple of weeks when they contract COVID-19 or are exposed to others that may have been infected. Government subsidies have made it increasingly difficult for Providers to hire entry-level staff. 

There is also the issue of team members preferring remote work, whether at home or the beach. Many organizations have worked on improving their culture for many years and they may be finding that their culture is eroding, and customer service is suffering. How do you instill a culture when your team members never interface with the others they work with, except over the phone, or through virtual meetings? 

COVID-19 also impacted collection activity. Some Providers stopped billing patients for their financial portion as a sense of community responsibility, and then at some point had to restart that process. Reimbursement also changed because of COVID-19. Medicare paid for uninsured patients with COVID-19 and also added an additional 20 percent payment for patients with COVID-19. Providers need to ensure that they receive these payments. Many expensive drugs provided to patients with COVID-19, like Remdesivir, are reimbursed by Medicare, in addition to the DRG or APC payment. However, the right “J” codes must be used appropriately. The Charge Description Master must have the appropriate codes, the coding teams need to ensure the codes are on the bill, and the collection teams must ensure these payments are received. The revenue integrity team also should have the responsibility to ensure the appropriate processes and procedures are in place to receive the appropriate revenue.

Let’s not forget about Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI). There is a tremendous amount of revenue that may be left on the table if the clinical documentation in the medical record lacks proper wording. Technology has helped physicians answer queries from the CDI team more efficiently and timely. Now physicians can even respond to the queries on their cell phones. 

As you can see, there is a lot to do in the revenue cycle to ensure your organization is paid appropriately. Things continue to change, and I don’t think this will slow down. Hire appropriate leaders, set up the proper structure, provide the necessary technology, and ensure the team members are well trained. Don’t forget how vital it is to measure and monitor the results on an ongoing basis. With all that in place, you will help to ensure the financial viability of your organization.   

The post How is Technology and COVID-19 Impacting the Healthcare Revenue Cycle? appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

Technology permeates every aspect of health care, from the equipment used in surgery to the way physicians take notes during a patient visit.

But we now have entered an era where digital health is maturing, allowing us to create more meaningful patient care experiences tailored to our patients’ specific needs. It is imperative that healthcare systems embrace this change, to ensure that we stay relevant to a generation of digital natives who welcome and expect these enhancements.

Put simply: technology is not enough. We need to create a great user experience for consumers who can order the exact brand of pickles they like from the grocery store that will show up at their front door later that same day. The expectations are rising, and it is our job to meet them.

At WellSpan Health, a clinically integrated network of about 2,600 healthcare providers, eight hospitals, 200 patient care locations, and 20,000 employees in South Central Pennsylvania, our digital health offerings include a product that we custom-designed for women who value convenience and the connection with a trusted healthcare system.

Called Madeline (more about the name later), it is a convenient online pharmacy service for birth control.

Launched in 2019, Madeline is a stand-alone digital experience, powered by WellSpan Health’s clinicians and pharmacy. Women may go online at any time to order their birth control, choosing their preferred method and having the prescription delivered straight to their door. No appointments are necessary, but WellSpan Health clinicians oversee the process, ensuring the patient receives safe, effective contraception. Patients also can reach out to a clinician if they have questions or concerns, or to arrange follow-up care. Currently, WellSpan is the only southcentral Pennsylvania health system to offer this kind of service.

We need to create a great user experience for consumers who can order the exact brand of pickles they like from the grocery store that will show up at their front door later that same day.

WellSpan launched Madeline because it wanted to prioritize service to young women and attract them as our patients. Studies show that women in the U.S. make about 80 percent of health care decisions for their families, so we know the downstream value of welcoming young women into our system as patients and providing services tailored to their needs.

We created Madeline after conducting our own qualitative design research that involved interviews with and observation of women as they obtained care. This allowed us to see not only the steps in that process but how women felt along the way – their pain points and their joy –  so we could analyze their emotions.

We discovered, to no surprise, that women value convenience in obtaining care, but they also want a relationship with a partner they can trust and turn to, something that we can provide.

Many young women we spoke to compare their desired experience to having a trusted coach when playing on a sports team. You admire that person and value their advice. We wanted to be that coach for them when it came to birth control options and other care down the road.

In fact, we ended up choosing a human name for our product – Madeline – because we wanted to communicate that this was a “human” experience while also offering convenience.

To date, Madeline, which is still in the developmental or beta stage, has served more than 450 patients. Four providers work with the patients and one pharmacy processes mail orders, but patients also can choose to pick them up at any WellSpan pharmacy. Our obstetricians/gynecologists are happy with the service and want to continue to expand it.

Madeline demonstrates that technology is not enough, something healthcare systems across the country are seeing played out in the months after the COVID-19 pandemic. We all saw video visits rocket during the height of the shutdowns across the globe. Now, as many of our patients are becoming more comfortable returning to our clinician offices and care sites, we realize that just offering a video visit that “works” (cameras, digital connections, audio) is not enough. If we are going to maintain our level of digital visits, we need to invest in better user experiences everywhere.

What can we do to make that service better and how can we make it more convenient? What can we do to bundle more services and value into that visit?

In the end, we want our patients not just conveniently access our services but also know that we are looking out for them. We don’t expect them to notice or fix their own health problems or challenges. The technology must be married with a human partnership.

As technology matures, we all need to listen to and learn from our patients and allow that to guide the next generation of digital care that we design and create. What do they need? How can we support them in living their healthiest life? That’s what makes us a trusted partner.

The post Bringing a Human Touch to Evolving Digital Health Care appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of healthcare both for clinicians and patients, including in the area of clinical imaging. There is, however, one set of clinical imaging that is still analog for the most part and could be better incorporated into the enterprise imaging strategy – and that is anatomic pathology.

Anatomic pathology has primarily been based on preparing glass slides of tissue samples for analysis under a microscope. It is essentially a manual process requiring co-location or near-location to process tissue samples and perform diagnosis efficiently. A review of slides with another clinician requires sitting across the table with a multiheaded microscope; Collaboration across institutions for research and consults involves couriers and time delays. And, teaching and conference presentations involve physical transportation of slides and the setup of microscopes.

The Digital Pathology Landscape

Digital pathology is the process of digitizing glass slides using a whole slide image scanner and a software viewer on a computer monitor to analyze pathology images.

Unlike digital radiology, digital pathology still has a manual component in that tissues on a glass slide need to be scanned for digitization. Another difference is that radiology has a standardized file format called DICOM instead of the multiple formats used in pathology.

That said, digitizing slides and image availability in the enterprise system offers many benefits, including enhanced multidisciplinary collaboration, research, and teaching to name a few. While the practice of using digital images and workflows for pathology diagnosis is well established in Europe and other parts of the world, we are now seeing digital pathology take off worldwide due to the advent of faster whole slide imaging. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration also approved software and scanner combinations for primary diagnosis, which acts as a catalyst for the increased digitization.

Benefits of Digital Pathology at the Enterprise Level

Digital access to all patient images will lead to more informed analysis and a better clinical diagnosis. Institutions that plan to implement an integrated diagnostics setup will benefit from the correlation of pathology and radiology images. Integrated diagnostics enables all imaging to be housed either in a single PACS system or within the enterprise EMR. At HSS, we utilize Sectra PACS for both radiology and pathology images.

A digital capability also decouples the pathologist’s physical location from the histology lab, especially when providing pathology services to remote and rural areas. Furthermore, enabling pathology services beyond physical proximity is helpful as the overall number of pathologists in the United States decreases over time. It also enables efficient collaboration across institutions and industries for research and multisite studies, eliminating the physical transfer of slides.

The software solution also offers image analysis tools to create efficiency and reduce manual tasks such as cell counting or percentage cancer tissue calculation, providing a standardized image analysis across the institution, thus eliminating the discrepancy between diagnoses.

How to Optimize Infrastructure and Integration?

The software solution and infrastructure should support server-side rendering of large images, the lack of which creates a suboptimal experience for the pathologist. Plan for significant storage capacity as the size of pathology images can range between 500 MB- 2 GB, dependent on the magnification.

Consider integrating pathology imaging as part of enterprise imaging infrastructure to realize maximum benefits. The availability of pathology imaging from the same portal/viewer as other imaging eliminates the need for additional training and helps with clinical adoption. The solution should support the most prevalent file formats (svs, ndpi, etc.) while waiting for the DICOM standard to gain traction in pathology imaging.

If a single vendor solution is an option, institutions can benefit from extending the existing PACS infrastructure, knowledge, and administration for digital pathology. A LIS/EMR integrated solution would not require a separate tool outside of the standard workflow, eliminating a significant change for the pathologist.

After a successful pilot, HSS deployed an FDA-approved Digital Pathology solution with its pioneer integrated diagnostics workflow on Feb 11^th, 2021.

Integrated Diagnostics at HSS

HSS has taken a leadership role in partnering with our digital pathology and enterprise imaging partners, Sectra and Epic EMR, utilizing the Leica Scanner to cut the trail for the integration path for half of the nation’s healthcare systems. We did comprehensive development work that other organizations on Epic can easily leverage to enable integrated workflow.

Intending to enable an efficient diagnostic process while maintaining a familiar workflow for pathologists, we invested in developing the unique integration between Sectra and Epic to allow image launching from the pathologist worklist, which was implemented in February 2020. After a successful pilot, HSS deployed an FDA-approved Digital Pathology solution with its pioneer integrated diagnostics workflow on Feb 11^th, 2021.

How are we doing?

HSS started with a modest target with an incremental increase, but we have already surpassed our initial goal, with 70% of all cases being scanning and diagnosed digitally. Now, clinicians can access digital pathology images using a familiar portal to co-relate with other images while reviewing patient data, which was impossible until a few months ago.

What does the future hold?

The technological evolution of digital pathology is just getting started, and one noticeable advancement includes the use of machine learning for image analysis. Deep learning or AI algorithms can now analyze complex visual features in image data, assisting pathologists by automating the tedious tasks of slide image analysis.

With the advances in image analysis and the ability to provide quantitative information about biological samples, digital pathology will help pathologists make more accurate and consistent diagnoses, leading to improved patient outcomes.

The post Digital Pathology: A Case of Enterprise Imaging and Integrated Diagnosis appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.