Samsung Electronics and b.well Connected Health have expanded their collaboration to replace traditional patient intake clipboards with smartphone-enabled digital access to health records. Through the Samsung Health app, Samsung Galaxy users can now access their longitudinal health history and share their medical records with participating providers via a QR code, reducing the need for repetitive paperwork and multiple patient portal log-ins.
The initiative builds on a two-year partnership focused on creating a connected consumer health experience. B.well aggregates longitudinal clinical records from across its network of more than 2.2 million providers and 320 health plans, laboratories and other data sources. Samsung complements this with data collected from wearables and sensors tracking sleep, exercise and nutrition, consolidating clinical and wellness information within a single mobile interface.
"Your health information moves with you," Kristen Valdes, CEO and founder of b.well, said in an interview. Through mobile technology, individuals can carry their electronic health record data with them.
Secure data exchange is enabled through CLEAR1, CLEAR’s secure identity platform, which verifies users and issues a reusable digital IAL2 credential that b.well relies on across interactions. Samsung’s open ecosystem connects consumer devices directly into clinical workflows using national standards, allowing health data to move securely into electronic medical records without manual entry.
"We feel this is an important and much-needed step to start to get at eliminating some of this fragmentation in healthcare," said Ricky Choi, M.D., head of digital health at Samsung.
B.well is also working with OpenAI to connect its AI chatbot, ChatGPT Health, to users' medical records and wellness apps. Its conversational AI assistant, bailey, enables patients to query their records and interpret clinical data. “Our conversational AI allows consumers to interact and ask questions of their health record, and they can see visualized trend lines for things like, ‘What was my average A1C over the last six to 12 months?’ and then get education and information around that,” Valdes said.
The collaboration aligns with the federal “kill the clipboard” initiative led by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which aims to replace paper intake forms with digital check-ins and accelerate adoption of modern interoperability standards.
"The standards have existed for a very long time, and you simply need to adopt them. Getting from a document exchange or CCDA on to FHIR, getting away from portal log-ins and passwords. 'Portalitis' is the diagnosis we can eradicate in our lifetimes. We are getting very close thanks to this [CMS] pledge," Valdes said.
"I've never seen this kind of momentum," said Amy Gleason, acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service and strategic advisor to CMS, adding that awareness campaigns are planned to educate providers and patients about the broader health technology ecosystem efforts.
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