Article originally posted here.

---

The two biggest challenges for digital health today

As most health systems have added digital tools in hospitals and clinics, and offered patients the convenience of digital front doors and patient engagement apps, why are we not seeing massive changes yet? Instead, there are more frustrated patients, more burned out clinicians and rising costs.  

While it’s easy to get excited that AI will save the day, it is set to join the long list of innovations that many thought were going to be THE solution – from telehealth to gamification, and instead they became another valuable tool in the healthcare toolkit, once experience helped confirm when and how to use them.

With almost three decades of experience leading the development and implementation of digital health solutions to hundreds of thousands of users, the team of digital health experts at Careteam did in-depth analysis and followed health providers and patients to learn what actually happens in real life. They identified two main two factors that are behind the issues faced by most health organizations adopting digital health solutions:

1. Increased fragmentation and lack of connection between the new digital tools
   When it’s easier, faster and cheaper than ever to put together an app, there is a massive proliferation of options that add confusion. Even when these solutions meet integration standards in theory, in practice the challenge is that the information exchange is just a passive exchange on what has happened (the R for Record in Electronic Health Record (EHR)).
2. Digital health solutions not designed for the real, messy, healthcare world
   Healthcare has many variations between who and how delivers care, and also constant changes in the health team and patient journey. Most teams building digital health only know what they can learn from focus groups and interviews, and the products that are built simply don’t work for the complex real world of healthcare.  

What they discovered was needed was an integrated proactive evidence-based real-time locally adapted guidance system that works across organizations to guide the patient to where they need to go next and help them take the right actions at the right time, like a Waze for healthcare. This matched the call for change from the father of modern EHRs, John Glaser, who described  a new kind of EHR, a “plan-centric” EHR in a 2020 Harvard Business Review article.

These reasons are why the Careteam platform was created, and after reviewing the impact across 15,000 care plans delivered, it is clear that this is what the digital transformation of healthcare has needed to see more impact and success.

It takes deep healthcare and digital health experience to build the right solution

Built by an expert team of clinicians and patients using human-centered design, Careteam works with leading healthcare organizations to simplify the care journeys for any complex chronic health condition in pediatrics, adult and aging adult care, by connecting across the silos and integrating with EHRs and devices already in use.

The Careteam platform makes it easy for health teams to create their own care workflows with no code and from templates. They can better automate the management of patients before and after visits, and for remote patient monitoring and hospital at home. This incredible flexibility makes adoption easy for clinicians and for patients.

Delivered over 15,000 care plans –  from diabetes to cancer to mental health

By using Careteam’s platform, health providers, patients and their support teams are able to collaborate along the care journey, ensuring that everyone involved is on the same page. This reduces duplication of efforts and improves the efficiency and quality of care delivered. Health providers treating complex care patients can manage 2 to 6 times the patient population and report increased satisfaction with their work as they can see the massive improvement in their patients.

Unique Privacy by Patient^TM approach enables easy and compliant data sharing

Privacy and security are paramount in healthcare, and Careteam not only meets the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) requirements, but has added unique architecture to enable seamless and secure data sharing across health settings without the need to sign business associate agreements (BAA).

As Careteam puts patients at the center of their healthcare journey, they can actively participate in their care plans, set goals, and communicate with their healthcare providers. They can also share relevant information with role-based access with healthcare providers and organizations in the community, with full audit of who has shared what and who has seen what information.

This way, every individual involved along the care journey who needs to be connected can be connected, and can easily reach out between appointments and health updates, seamlessly ensuring that patients get the right care, at the right time – between health care providers, patients, caregivers and other team members.

Empowering the health team to deliver on their vision of how to make health better

In a wave of AI technology all too often seeking to automate and bypass the care providers, Careteam’s technology and predictive capabilities are at the service of the health team, enabling them to intelligently simplify their efforts and better guide with expertise and empathy their patients on the right path. This is technology enabling the automation in a way to reinforce human connection and to increase patient and family’s ability to be independent.

Careteam puts the power of data insights, quality improvement and population health into the hands of the health team managing the patients, and also into the hands of decision makers who can then better plan resources and operations.

This is the all-in-one solution healthcare leaders and innovators have been asking for and a game changer for today’s complex healthcare landscape.

Careteam’s innovative digital health platform creates massive efficiencies for healthcare providers and better experience for patients. To learn more, visit getcareteam.com.