What’s Making Headlines in Digital Health?

Google, Health Systems Develop ‘Accelerators’ to Improve Patient Care

Google Cloud has announced three new Healthcare Data Engine (HDE) accelerators, created in collaboration with Hackensack Meridian Health, Lifepoint Health, and other organizations. The aim is to help improve health equity, patient flow, and value-based care.

The HDE accelerators are designed to improve interoperability and data unification across health systems. The accelerators “offer tailored infrastructure deployment configurations, BigQuery data models, and Looker dashboard templates to support adoption and time-to-value of HDE for these common industry challenges.”

The first accelerator aims to support health equity by providing health systems with tools to connect patients with community resources, leverage social determinants of health (SDOH) datasets, and improve analytics.

The second will help health systems enhance operations and patient experience by focusing on patient flow. It is designed to provide aggregate data and visualizations to illustrate a broad range of patient flow metrics, trends, and bottlenecks within a health system that can be used to inform clinical operations-focused performance initiatives.

The final accelerator is concerned with improving the quality of care by advancing value-based care and interoperability. Through this accelerator, health systems can analyze key population health metrics and combine claims and clinical data to generate insights into care quality and outcomes.

The three HDE accelerators will become available in early 2023.

OneStep Uses Smartphones to Determine Upper-Extremity Range of Motion

Virtual physical therapy provider OneStep has expanded the capabilities of its technology, which transforms smartphones into clinical-grade motion analysis devices, to assess upper body motion.

By holding a OneStep-enabled smartphone and moving the arm in directed ways, physical therapists are able to assess range of motion to inform post-surgical recovery and treatment of functionality of joints. The platform allows patients to connect directly with physical therapists to develop care plans including OneStep’s library of over 700 video exercises.

OneStep’s patented technology has been used most notably to assess a user’s gait after just 30 seconds of walking. OneStep is also able to take data collected regarding gait and predict and alert providers to a patient that may be a fall risk. No additional wearables are needed to assess upper extremities.

OneStep’s platform functions as a library, a virtual point of care and a collecting space for a handful of metrics including range of motion tests, gait tests, patient-reported outcomes and any additional information a provider may need to develop a treatment plan.

SoulBeing Teams Up with Walgreens Find Care to Offer Health and Wellness Support

SoulBeing has announced that its wellness services platform is now available through Walgreens Find Care. The platform offers on-demand access to a network of health and wellness services from traditional and alternative healthcare providers to help patients manage their total wellbeing, both in person and virtually.

Many health and wellness challenges can be avoided or managed with integrated wellness approaches. SoulBeing helps clients build a complete healthcare program by providing access to complementary and alternative services to be used in conjunction with conventional medicine. Through the Walgreens Find Care online marketplace, patients may connect with SoulBeing's large and growing network of local and national providers spanning more than 40 therapies.

SoulBeing's services include payment, scheduling, virtual telehealth appointments, and personalized guidance for individual health needs. Many specialties are covered by health insurance, including physical therapy, chiropractic care, and mental and behavioral health services. 

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