Healthcare Anywhere Anytime
T
he COVID-19 pandemic ushered the importance of telehealth services to an all-time high. The pandemic has opened doors of opportunities for telehealth solutions. Telehealth is as effective as regular visits to doctors and is also an affordable option. Besides, it safeguards the health of both patients and doctors. Physical consultation with doctors became restricted due to the pandemic. But healthcare was not limited per se, thanks to telehealth services and solution providers. Some health conditions need regular monitoring, check-up, and consultation with medical practitioners. Telehealth was the right solution. With telehealth services already in practice, patients could avail online consultations. Medical practitioners who were not into telehealth quickly shifted to telehealth portals and guided their patients for virtual consultations. The healthcare industry had to ensure that they had enough trained people to handle the influx of online patients. Patients, too, resorted to the solution offered in such critical situations after overcoming the initial skepticism of using technology for health-related consultation. The ease of use and the necessity gradually translated into the patient’s choice to stay healthy and safe. The credit of the rise in telehealth services goes to everyone involved in providing and seeking healthcare. Pandemic or no pandemic, telehealth, and telemedicine are here to stay for good. The global telehealth and telemedicine market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.7 percent and reach USD 191.7 billion by 2025.
Population growth, the need to expand healthcare and provide easy access to everyone, growing prevalence of chronic diseases, lifestyle diseases, technological developments, public awareness, etc., have driven the telehealth market. Many players plunged into this healthcare vertical while those already in it upscaled it. Without the telehealth solution providers during crisis situations, the healthcare segment would have found it difficult to provide optimum care to their patients, while the latter would have probably been deprived of healthcare. In this issue of Insights Care, we bring forth the efforts of “10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers in 2021” that ensured everyone had access to medical consultation. We chose a few telehealth companies known for their quality and quick service. Have a great read.
Sumita Sarkar
Editor’s Note
14
Hope Care
MedM Inc
26
32
22
Indoor Air Quality - The Only True Solution Pawp
Rhinogram
36
CONTENT 08
Cover Story
AMC Health 18 Digital Health
Articles
30 Redefining Wellness
Editor-in-Chief Senior Editor Managing Editor Assisting Editors Visualiser Art & Design Head Co-designer Art & Picture Editor Business Development Manager Marketing Manager
Sumita Sarkar Anish Miller Aditya Umale Trishika Rokade David King Mrunalinee Deshmukh Paul Belin Rohil Shinganapurkar Amy Jones John Smith Sarah Wilson, John Smith, Alex Vincent
Business Development Executives Sales Executives
Kelli, Bill, Anna
Technical Head Assistant Technical Head Technical Consultants
Jacob Smile Pratiksha Patil David, Robert
Digital Marketing Manager Assistant Digital Marketing Manager SME-SMO Executives
Alina Sege Amol Wadekar Atul, Gemson
Research Analyst Circulation Manager
Eric Smith Tanaji
sales@insightscare.com
December 2021 Corporate Offices: Insights Success Media Tech LLC
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Company Name
Featuring
Description
AMC Health amchealth.com
Ryan Fox, EVP, Sales Customer Success, and Dean Panovich, Chief Revenue Office
AMC Health provides continuous visibility into individual patient’s health status by connecting patients to their clinical team on a real-time bases by expanding their care beyond the walls of hospitals, doctors’ offices and outpatient settings.
Braster S.A braster.eu
Dariusz Karolak President
Braster S.A was founded in 2008 by a group of Polish medical doctors and scientists who have developed a breakthrough method of using liquid crystals for diagnosing breast cancer.
EdenHealth edenhealth.com
Matt McCambridge Co-founder and CEO
Eden Health keeps your people productive and healthy with personalized, full-spectrum primary care, mental health care, and insurance benefit navigation.
Hims & Hers Health, Inc forhims.com
Andrew Dudum Founder and CEO
hims is a one-stop telehealth service for men's wellness and care, providing treatment options for hair loss, ED & more.
Hope Care hope-care.pt
Jose Paulo Carvalho Founder
Hope Care, S.A provide e-Health services and ensure the availability of data and information to customers and their caregivers.
Iris Telehealth Inc iristelehealth.com
Andy Flanagan CEO
Iris Telehealth was founded with the goal of creating a more patient-friendly telemedicine company that is able to quickly adapt to an organization’s needs.
MedM medm.com
Denis Khitrov, CEO and Kirill Filippov, Founder
MedM is the maker of award-winning remote care software platform and personal & family health monitoring apps.
Pawp Inc pawp.com
Marc Atiyeh CEO and Founder
Pawp gives you unlimited 24/7 access to licensed vets & a $3,000/year pet emergency fund. It’s like pet insurance, but better.
Rhinogram rhinogram.com
Dr. Keith Dressler D.D.S., M.S.D., Chairman, and CEO
Rhinogram’s virtual care platform allows providers to offer virtual visits through live video consults, text-based image and document exchange without the patient downloading an app or logging into a portal.
Telemedico mytelemedico.com
Joel Okner MD
TeleMedico is a Telemedicine company that deliveries health-related services using technologies in the support of patient care, and health education.
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Bringing Healthcare to Your Home
Jose Paulo Carvalho Founder
14|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers In 2021
T
he leading telehealth solution providers around the world exhibit their excellence in remote delivery of healthcare services. They provide evaluation, diagnosis, and evaluation facilities to patients without any in-person visit. These companies enable patients to communicate from their homes by using internet and other technologies – providing lasting treatment experiences to the patients. One such established telehealth solutions provider is Hope Care. It is one of the first european companies in the digital health area to combine services, technological platforms, and products, allowing the provision of a totally innovative social and health care service. By promoting the well-being of its clients wherever they are, Hope Care collects and monitors vital signs at a distance and provides digital health service through advanced technologies. The company primes for the development of m-Health concepts together with support services. At the helm of Hope Care’s ceaseless success is its Founder, Jose Paulo Carvalho. His vision came from a personal experience when his mother was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in early 2003. Mr. Carvalho states that the lesson learned from this experience has 3 key points: – His mother wanted to live independently, so the challenge was to build a system where she could communicate and be free to make her own decisions. – She didn’t want to be institutionalized, so he needed to build a remote system to send the data to the hospital and to be sure she is secure. – Facilitate the access to care by coordinating different teams (from Social Care and Health) so that she could have “the Hospital at Home.”
e o creat t m i a We de the i v o r p and h the t i w s n citize nced a v d a t mos health digital m platfor In the following interview, Mr. Carvalho shares details about Hope Care’s inception, the various services it provides, its opinion about the industry, and its future plans. Following are the highlights of the interview: Please brief our audience about Hope Care, its mission, and the key aspects of its stronghold within the HealthTech niche. When my colleagues and I founded Hope Care, it was clear that the ageing of the population and the growing prevalence of chronic diseases would be the two biggest challenges that Portugal and Europe would face in this century. The founders’ opinion focused largely on the belief that, as connected care solutions, they could ease the burden of society by allowing more efficient care. We developed a solution that allows people to live independently in their homes for longer and with more quality of life. The goal is to allow access (and this is a fundamental word throughout the process) without barriers to caring through technology. The pandemic situation has proven our vision: digital solutions, such as Hope Care, are a key technical help to care for people and facilitate access to quality life support.
In 2009 Jose started an Executive MBA in AESE/IESE and jointly with more 2 colleagues, Simão Calado and Pedro Ferreira, designed Hope Care as their final project based on those 3 key principles. The concept was well received and pushed them to start the company in 2012.
Tell us more about the telehealth solutions that give your company a distinctive edge to stand out from the competition?
The vision that they implemented in the company was a simple statement: Build a hospital at home without barriers!
Hope Care has developed a solution, named HCAlert, that allows you to monitor chronic patients at home through their smartphone by collecting what we call ‘Life Data’.
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As a seasoned business leader what is your opinion on the effects of the pandemic on the healthcare sector, and what were the challenges that your company came across? I ’m optimistic by nature. The pandemic has challenged the status quo of health organizations and for me this is good. It means that what was taken for granted is no longer so and that it is necessary to change enormously the way health care is provided. Digital systems have demonstrated that new care pathways, such as video consultation, telemonitoring patients at home, developing new care techniques, new vaccines, all this is possible. The most important thing is that it has become clear that there is a role outside the hospital for health care and that the hospital must rethink the way it operates. Health systems must rethink prevention and not be reactive to the disease. The hospital must be at patient’s home and not waiting patients in the hospital. The pandemic has demonstrated there has to be a focus on monitoring patients at home, promote patient self-care (which implies better training of citizens and their accountability) and responsible personal decision/action when each of one of us face the disease.
In addition to vital signs monitoring such as Oximetry, Heart Rate, Body Temperature, we also monitor physical activity, environmental and behavioral data, among others. For us it is the data set that allows to measure the true condition of the patient. Our differentiating factor is that all this information is analyzed through screening algorithms that helps the health professional to detect in time a worsening of the health condition. This improves the clinical care process because it is known who should be taken care of in real time and without the patient having a serious event. What we have already proved is that we were able to detect early deviations that would lead to the hospitalization of the person with the chronic disease, such as COPD or Heart Failure. It is here, with proven evidence, that we distinguish ourselves from the competition.
Without this, the systems will not have the capacity in the future to serve the population and, as consequence, citizens will not have access to health care. There is an openness of mentality in various actors of the health system to adopt digital technologies, but it is essential not to miss the opportunity. For Hope Care, the biggest challenge will be to find the best way for this type of digital health system to be funded to allow widespread access. My view is that there should be a prescription, like medication, when the doctor knows what kind of system will benefit the patient at that time. This will allow a strong regulation and competition for the benefit of the citizens. With continuous development in technologies such as AI and ML, what is your prediction about the future of the telehealth solutions niche? The 5G will bring a new step for connectivity of data and will allow more information about the citizen.
16|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
From one side this will allow to build a predictive system that helps to improve the care and, on the other side, will challenge healthcare providers to create new care pathways, new clinical decision systems, new personalized care, and new medication. In my point of view, we will face two challenges:
Exhibiting True Excellence Hope Care was founded in 2012 and has received several recognitions and published impact.
•
The healthcare professionals’ roles will change, and we will have a gap between what technology can deliver versus healthcare professionals’ adoption and acceptance.
In 2015 it received a recognition from NOS Innovation Award (Telco) where Hope Care was recognized as one of the most innovative Portuguese companies acting in m-Health area.
•
A huge ethical dilemma that will start from discussions about the limit where we can accept a clinical decision by a Bot, where we can be intruders correlating data or knowing that an event can occur with certain person or how we can force or not to comply with a certain clinical decision.
In 2017 the Portuguese Coimbra Hospital (CHUC) published the PoC results from COPD patients using HCAlert: 50% reduction in hospitalizations and 30% of emergency room admissions compared to non-telemonitored patients.
This discussion already exists with the Digital Certificate for vaccinated persons, so imagine when we can have much more data for a clinical decision in real time! The future is bright, the question will be about adoption, regulation, and reimbursement. What would be your advice to the entrepreneurs and healthcare enthusiasts aspiring to venture into telehealth? Digital Health is in green field yet. There is a long run and new innovative solutions to build. My advice is that you must be challenged by what seems to be impossible, to be persistent and to focus on solving a real problem that impacts on each person’s lives. How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021? This year we are already operating in Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. Our perspective is to consolidate screening algorithms and adapt them to local reality, so we are testing these markets. If the result is positive, as we expect, then we will seek to enter in more European markets. We are currently developing predictive systems applied to chronic patient screening and looking forward to a new round of investment for this new phase of the company.
In same year the ANI – Agência Nacional de Inovação, SA (Portuguese National Innovation Agency) distinguished Hope Care with Born from Knowledge Award, an important recognition of a company that born from MBA students. In 2019 Hope Care was published by Portuguese Covilhã Hospital (CHCB) the PoC´s results from CHF patients using HCAlert: a 56% reduction in hospitalization, 45% reduction in the days of Hospitalization and reduction of emergency episodes by 89% when compared in the same period. These results allowed Hope Care to became one of preferred solutions by Microsoft. In 2020 the company started the ISO 13 485 ClassIIb certification process and the EUDAMED registration as Medical Device manufacturer. At end of 2020 the company received from ANI – Agência Nacional de Inovação, SA (Portuguese National Innovation Agency) the recognition of the competence of Hope Care SA in research and development.
17|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
Digital Health
and its
Scope in the
Post-Pandemic World C
OVID-19 is a big term in today’s world. Since the pandemic, if people have experienced something good, it is delivery of health care and health information services via remote technologies. Before the pandemic started, visiting a doctor, a hospital, or a clinic was a hectic task to do, which involved longer waiting times and delayed appointments. The efficiency, effectiveness, and cost associated with telehealth were rewarded with disbelief by providers and patients alike. However, the pandemic and the lockdown have pointed out telehealth as an essential and a good innovation to have, especially in the crisis. Post-pandemic, we can experience telehealth resulting in virtual check-ups and remote diagnosis with effective measures to treat the patients with the best methods possible. During the pandemic, many people started to use these services to fulfill their medical needs. In the process, people discovered that telehealth is providing far more amenities compared to video visits between the patients and healthcare providers. We can assume the numerous advantages of telehealth for both patients and healthcare providers post-pandemic.
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Ÿ
Convenience and comfort
One obvious advantage of telehealth is the comfort and convenience of having a medical visit without physically traveling to the doctor’s office or clinic. Telehealth visits will easily fit into patients’ busy schedules. As the patients will have an option to meet their health experts or physician using any electronic gadget such as phone, tablet, laptop, or computer, patients can access or schedule an appointment whenever they will have free time. In addition, those patients who are injured or in the stage of recovery will not have to travel to the clinic or hospital for their check-up, as telemedicine will allow these patients to stay in a safe and comfortable environment. Ÿ
Suitability of care
Controlling the spread of infections
Telehealth is currently an excellent way to help and control the diseases that cause infections and illness; a recent example is COVID-19. Telehealth protects both healthcare professionals and patients by holding patient-clinical meetings at a distance, making it the most effective way to control the spread of infections. Experts already assume that telehealth will soon come up with enhanced methods to control the spread of infections and treat the patients with additional precise medication required with advanced technology. Ÿ
Ÿ
Telehealth will be responsible for family connections
It will be helpful for the patient to have a family member with them when they are undergoing treatment or a consultation with their doctor. A family member will be able to help the patients to answer the questions or additional information. In addition, a family member will be able to keep and maintain a record of valuable information from the visits. Ÿ
With telehealth, the patients will easily receive the care when they need it, and they will not have to wait for an appointment. In emergency cases, telehealth will allow the patients to receive care immediately and help them until they reach the hospital. One of the advantages of telehealth we will experience soon is that: telemedicine will be accessible on weekends and holidays, especially when healthcare and clinics are closed. Telehealth will offer us an alternative source of immediate care. Ÿ
doctors with the data that will help understand the patient’s condition. As per the experts’ prediction, neurologists and physical therapists will find it easier to observe the patient’s ability to navigate their home environment while undergoing treatment.
Efficient cost-saving and management
Telehealth visits will not require patients to travel, and it will help in lowering the secondary expenses. Telemedicine will offer time and cost-saving by decreasing transportation costs, reducing the need for childcare, and reducing time away from work. Analysis from the research indicates that patients who will use telehealth will spend less time in the hospital, and that is going to reduce the associated cost of the additional hospital bills and other expenses related to hospital medicine. Eventually, telehealth will contribute towards reducing the overhead medical costs, as healthcare providers will pay less amount of money towards their facility’s additional expenses. By using telehealth in medical practices, even doctors can make medical appointments easier, more convenient, and less expensive for many of their patients. The bottom line Telehealth has been an invaluable tool, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has offered numerous advantages, both in treating the patients suffering from COVID-19 and treating patients with unrelated conditions from a distance, contributing its services to prevent the spread of the disease.
Telehealth will provide a better assessment
It will be an advantage for some specialists to treat the patients in their home environment when they are assessing their condition. Observing the surroundings will provide the
However, looking at the advantages of telehealth we can experience now, it can be assumed that these services will contribute more efficiently and will continue to apply in the post-pandemic world. -Abhishek Joshi
20|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers In 2021
Redening the HealthTech Industry through Seamless Innovation
T
he impact of technology on healthcare is undeniable. From electronic medical records to mobile apps, the way healthcare professionals diagnose and treat patients has changed dramatically in recent years. A study by Accenture found that 80% of physicians believe that digital health technologies will revolutionize patient care within the next five years. With so many new innovations available to both doctors and their patients, it’s important to consider how connected health solutions can improve outcomes and reduce costs for everyone involved. MedM Inc. has just the right answers when it comes to the optimum utilization of connected health solutions. It is a global expert in connected health solutions space covering over 25% of the market and enabling data collection from hundreds of Health IoT devices, sensors, and wearables. MedM has been recognized as the Most Flexible Health IoT Device RPM Software Provider, received The
Bluetooth® Breakthrough Awards, and became the Winner of Skolkovo by Cisco I-PRIZE.
software solutions to end-users, developers, and integrators, as well as caregivers.
In the following interview, Kirill Filippov, the Founder of MedM shares a few details about the company’s journey so far, the current scenario of the HealthTech space, and his vision for the company’s future.
Tell us more about the telehealth solutions that give your company a distinctive edge to stand out from the competition?
Please brief our audience about MedM, its mission, and the key aspects of its stronghold within the HealthTech niche. MedM is unmatched in its ability to collect data from a multitude of consumer medical sensors and channel it into existing caregiver workflows. As of 2021, our software seamlessly integrates with over 550+ medical devices (and the list keeps constantly growing). It is our mission to drive interoperability in the healthcare ecosystem, enabling connected health and improving the speed of information exchange between all parties involved. We address both the B2B and the B2C markets, offering
MedM is uniquely positioned at the center of the ecosystem: we work directly with end-users, with device manufacturers and distributors, and with RPM providers. From the consumer market, we learn which new features to introduce next in our consumer-facing apps. We support our vendor partners in delivering the ultimate user experience to their clients while allowing the vendors to focus on what they do best – hardware. And to our RPM partners, we bring an expert understanding of the device market and also the flexibility of rolling out deployments in record times (months or even weeks) and with virtually any sensors they want. As a seasoned business leader what is your opinion on the effects of the
22|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
“
In 2021, MedM is set on acquiring dozens of new B2B customers and partners, as well as launching three new products, further enhancing the company’s central position in the ecosystem.
“
Kirill Filippov Founder
About the leader MedM’s Founder Kirill Filippov has a background in electronics. Years ago, he had a dream of software being able to complement the new medical hardware that was beginning to be built and accessible to millions and millions of ordinary people. And with the ever-growing rate of Internet penetration, healthcare is changing. To have their blood pressure or sugar measured, people used to have to go see a medical professional in person, but today, a dozen medical measurements can be accurately made in the home, and instantly shared with doctors or researchers automatically. Zero clicks involved! With all this medical data being collected and analyzed, nally, humanity can go from curing diseases to preventing them. Kirill envisioned MedM as a company that can support humanity on this journey. The MedM team is made up of brilliant software professionals. Its ‘troops’ are led by CEO Denis Khitrov, who has taken a few successful software products to market and has been in the Mobile App development business since Palm was still a thing.
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Denis Khitrov CEO
pandemic on the healthcare sector, and what were the challenges that your company came across? The effects of Covid-19 are tragic. The pandemic is both straining Healthcare to the limit but also pushing it to adapt and change. We hope that the world comes out of it stronger, with healthcare turning more connected, efficient, and accessible. With continuous development in technologies such as AI and ML, what is your prediction about the future of the telehealth solutions niche?
We at MedM believe that the abundance of medical data to analyze is at the bottom of progress in healthcare. For AI and ML to yield great results we need to start with plenty of reliable data from hundreds of millions and even billions of people. Users also want to exercise control over their medical data and make the call: decide if they want to share the data with researchers, just their doctor or family, or even keep it offline altogether. What would be your advice to the entrepreneurs and healthcare enthusiasts aspiring to venture into telehealth?
I think that as an entrepreneur, healthcare enthusiasts aspiring to venture into telehealth need to know what problem they are solving. Believing that you can fix a problem empowers. How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2022? In 2022 MedM is set on acquiring dozens of new B2B customers and partners, as well as launching 3 new products, further enhancing the company’s central position in the ecosystem.
24|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
Indoor
Air Quality The Only
True Solution I
f you were trying to hang a picture frame and you had a nail, a hammer, and a screwdriver, would you use the screwdriver instead of the hammer? Of course, you wouldn't! If you were in the middle of a pandemic spread by airborne pathogens, would you prefer to use the most effective proven tool we've had for over 80 years against airborne pathogens? Of course, you would! And yet we haven't been doing much, if anything in most cases, to clean the air in our environments since the beginning of this pandemic. Wait, what? That's right, washing hands, wearing masks, social distancing, and vaccines are all defensive measures that do little to nothing to reduce the airborne viral load in our environments. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that the most effective thing we can do against airborne pathogens is to improve our indoor air quality by eliminating the hazard. They even clearly note on their website that the three known evidence-based ways to effectively clean our air are with increased ventilation, ultraviolet light (UV), or HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filters.
So, then why on earth have we been focused on PPE and Administrative Controls, which the CDC clearly designates as the least effective control measures? Perhaps because
those were the easiest, cheapest, and politically expedient things to deploy rapidly. While they may not have been effective enough to blunt the spread of the virus, they did buy us more time to develop vaccines and therapies. Yet vaccines and therapies also do nothing to reduce the viral load. Are we continuing to fail to implement the measures we know can actually end not only this pandemic but also future ones because of perceived challenges surrounding the cost, rapid procurement, and installation of proven equipment to improve indoor air quality? Could this really be just a tragic miscalculation of Return on Investment (ROI)?
26|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
About the Author PJ Piper is the Founder and CEO of Far UV Technologies, which has been developing gamechanging Far UV solutions to eradicate the pathogens that lead to infectious disease with NASA, the Army, and the Air Force since 2016. The company's autonomous and continuous disinfection solutions have kept defense buildings, healthcare facilities, schools, transit systems, and even the Pentagon free of transmission since the pandemic started and are available now through National Stock Numbers, the GSA, and coops almost anywhere. An entrepreneur with several successful public and private financial exits, Mr. Piper, left a career in investment banking and financial derivatives, where he also used risk management strategies to protect businesses and enhance return on investment.
Of the three evidence-based solutions the CDC recommends for clean air, Harvard Medical School has determined the cost of ultraviolet light solutions is 1/13th the cost of ventilation and 1/3rd the cost of HEPA filters. At the same time, ultraviolet provides up to 24 Air Changes per Hour (ACH), double that recommended by ASHRAE (the American Society for Heating, Refrigerating and Air-
27|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
Conditioning Engineers) for hospital operating rooms and about 8-12 times more than the newer HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems in use in most other buildings today. Columbia University Medical Center and other academic colleagues around the world further demonstrated that Far ultraviolet light, utilizing 222nm wavelengths, can provide even greater protection of up to 35 ACH in our higher traffic occupied environments, all within OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) guidance. So, with UV solutions then repeatedly shown to be the most effective, affordable, and available solutions, let's review some of the ROIs. We can't seem to go a week without our favorite sports team missing players or coaches to COVID protocols. The potentially avoidable cost to these teams is astronomical. With the average cost of a win in the NFL exceeding $20 million in players' salaries alone and the cost of UV installation throughout the locker, weight, meeting rooms, and more being less than a single player's game check, the ROI can easily be several thousand percent for any given game let alone sustaining that competitive advantage throughout the season and playoffs. And that competitive advantage and ROI are not only for professional sports. Ask any collegiate booster what it might be worth to them to significantly improve the probability that their team could be at full strength for key matchups. These are solutions they could literally obtain next week! The amortized cost of the UV can be about 1/50th the daily cost of hiring a minimum wage employee to wipe down tables, and substantially more effective given those table washers wouldn't be cleaning the air at all. Similarly, keeping even a minimum wage employee from having to isolate or quarantine provides a comparable outsized return for a business. The return only becomes more pronounced when the impacted employee is getting paid six or seven figures as a highly paid medical, legal, finance, or other professional. While the ROI is clearly staggering to protect our businesses, the return is actually infinite in our K-12 schools, where they can spend as little as 15% of their already allocated but largely unspent COVID ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funding to protect our kids and their teachers.
Beyond the 28 million extra years of life estimated to be lost in 2020 and the likelihood that these estimates will be increasing in each of 2021 and 2022, the financial cost of the pandemic have easily been well over a trillion dollars and counting. And yet here we are today, with clear guidance as to the preferred economic, humanitarian, environmental, and political solution in plain sight, mandating less effective countermeasures. One could argue this is easily the greatest Return on Investment opportunity in history, one that could make the world a profoundly better place and one that everyone could support. While this seemingly no-brainer Far UV solution may have fallen through the cracks somewhat given limited awareness at the onset of the pandemic, after almost two years, many have decided that they are just going to move on with their lives, even if potentially dangerous new variants emerge. COVID fatigue is simply lowering our guard as the perceived risk-reward shifts with an assumption that the vaccines will at least reduce the chances of severe disease. However, would you rather live in a world where you, your families, or your communities get an unknown variant of COVID and hope for mild symptoms without long-lasting impacts, or would you rather still just not get COVID? Fortunately, there is a continuous and passive technology that can provide the protection we need without many of the personal sacrifices that we have been making. The battle against COVID has been one of constant adaptation. The virus will continue to circulate and mutate into new forms and will keep finding ways to evade our vaccines to infect or reinfect us until we implement a solution that's always working and pathogen agnostic. Fortunately, that solution is already here. Far UV light kills or inactivates the pathogens in the air and on the surfaces all around us regardless of which Greek letter they are assigned. It doesn't matter if it's the common cold and flu, foodborne illnesses, hospital-acquired infections, or mold; this technology should immediately change the way we think about disease preparedness and prevention now and forever. CXO's, Boards of Directors, investors, employees, unions, service members, patients, parents, voters, sports fans, tenants, and anyone else whose business, family, friends, or communities occupy buildings or vehicles with other people should demand these readily available, highly effective and high ROI solutions Improve Indoor Air Quality now.
28|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
Importance Corporate Wellness
T
he health of the employees impacts their working possibilities. According to the research, healthy employees are more productive, happier, less stressed, and work with increased morale. Eventually, such factors can lead to the success of the company. This situation can be vice-versa if the employees are facing stress-related problems. Companies or businesses can use corporate wellness programs as an effective solution to solve these problems. Companies can provide employees with tools, social support, and strategies to maintain a stress-free living environment and maximize the stress management scenario with these wellness programs. Recent developments point towards more than 70 percent of employers or business owners offering corporate wellness programs. Research has proven that these programs are beneficial for the employees and the employers as well, promoting a healthier workplace. The corporate wellness programs impact the development of employees and the creation of a healthier workplace with these benefits: Ÿ
Increasing the productivity
The leading causes of low productivity are stress and poor health. When employees are stressed out, or they are unwell, they can feel exhausted and less motivated to work. If the company is adopting a wellness program for such employees, it is going to help them to adopt healthy habits with stress management and regular exercise. Eventually, it can help the employees to feel motivated towards their work and construct positive thoughts about the same. Wellness programs provide activities that can increase productivity and performance, leading the employees to work in a focused and motivated manner to execute the assigned tasks.
Ÿ
Adopt the healthy behavior
A significant benefit of introducing the wellness program in the workplace is that it can help the employees to improve their mental and physical health. A well-curated wellness program can help and guide the employees to maintain healthy habits from their diet to proper exercise with a regular routine. As the employees are getting educated about health and wellness, they can maintain an excellent work surrounding and reduce the risk of health problems that are caused because of the stress. Ÿ
Increasing employee engagement
Corporate wellness programs can help employers to establish a wellness culture, creating an engaged and workfocused environment, where employees will consider that good health is beneficial towards their careers. It will also develop an interest in organizing group activities such as fitness challenges, walk meetings, and tasks where employees can establish effective communication among themselves and form friendly surroundings within the company. Additionally, the wellness program can also benefit and engage employees outside the workplace as well. This can be a good advantage as it will create a positive impact with this social connection among the employees and they can have a comfortable time while working with the company. Ÿ
Reducing stress with effective stress management methods
Many employees can face stressful situations while executing their assigned tasks, and stress can cause errors or reduced productivity. Stress can even cause severe health problems, and if any company or business plans to execute their operations smoothly, they should focus on their employees and stress management.
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In the wellness programs, the employees and employers are assisted by the experts in their stress management sessions to learn and maintain their thought processes in stressful situations. In these sessions, they are also introduced to the methods which are essential towards stress management, leading to reduce the stress and improve their performance significantly. When staff is less stressed, they can completely focus on their work and properly execute the tasks, also enhancing their working abilities. Ÿ
Improving the employee retention
Corporate wellness programs have a positive impact on employee retention. These programs not only help to manage stress but also focus on health and maintaining healthy habits. Successful programs help to create a work and friendly environment altogether, leading the employees to stay healthy and happy in their jobs. As a result, employees develop abilities to improvise their working skills, which effectively increases the performance of the employees and the company. Successful programs highlight the importance of employee wellbeing, indicating that the company is forward-thinking and is concerned about their employees’ issues about health and stress management. Through the wellness programs, the employees feel like an asset for the company, which can create a friendly relationship between the employee and the company; they are less likely to leave and seek a job elsewhere. Workplace reimagined With the wellness programs, it is the organization and the employees who are maintaining a loyal connection together. Implementing wellness programs can create a strategic advantage to boost productivity, working abilities, stress management and create a work-friendly environment altogether. Such a working atmosphere creates interaction, promotes healthy, long-lasting positive behaviors among the employees, and enhances their commitment to their work output. -Abhishek Joshi
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Marc Atiyeh CEO and Founder
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elehealth is one of the healthcare services that has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initiated with the motive of providing easy care at home, telehealth services worked wonders during the pandemic-induced isolation period and helped contain the virus among the community. Humans benefitted substantially through telehealth services during one of the most difficult times in human civilization and now that has extended to our beloved pets as well.
Pawp is a veterinary telehealth platform based out of New York, which is revolutionizing the telehealth space by introducing pet care to the arena. Celebrating its first anniversary in September 2021, Pawp has already been named as the ‘Most Innovative Petcare Company’ in the 2020 BestMoney Awards. While interviewing Marc Atiyeh, the CEO, and Founder of Pawp Inc., about the vision behind setting up the company, he said, “We founded Pawp to democratize pet care. Our approach is uniquely attractive to pet parents, offering one affordable plan that covers every dog and cat in the family. Our first-of-its-kind solution marries the power and accessibility of 24/7 telehealth with the guarantee of
Revolutionizing Pet-Care Through Telehealth Services
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10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers In 2021
financial security, providing pet parents with some well-deserved peace of mind.” Read ahead to receive more insights into how Pawp is changing the pet-care landscape. Please brief our audience about Pawp, its mission, and the key aspects of its stronghold within the HealthTech niche.
should be a rite of passage for pets and their parents.
Our ultimate goal is to make quality vet care, and the means to pay for it, accessible to everyone and we’ll always find new
Pawp’s ultimate goal is to help pet parents become more educated, equipped, and financially empowered to take the best possible care of their dogs and cats. Currently, Pawp is the ONLY company offering on-demand telehealth via a 24/7 digital vet clinic and a $3,000 annual emergency fund so pet owners are never forced to make healthcare decisions for their pets based on accessibility or financial restraints. Pawp’s mission is to make pet care affordable to everyone so that families can have peace of mind. Tell us more about the telehealth solutions that give Pawp a distinctive edge to stand out from the competition? Pawp is the first-of-its-kind veterinary telehealth platform that helps pet owners across the country by offering access to quality care and providing help to pay for it. Its 24/7 digital clinic is on-demand, meaning you can text, call, or video chat with a veterinarian any time of the day or night within minutes — no appointment required. Pawp members can ask medical questions as well as many other topics like behavior and nutrition. Pawp is also available 24/7 in case of an emergency.
ways to make that goal possible.
If your pet were to experience a lifethreatening emergency, Pawp also offers a $3,000 safety net for an emergency vet bill paid directly to the clinic, making it an affordable alternative to pet insurance. By increasing access to vets and helping to pay for them, Pawp uniquely addresses two of the largest pain points pet parents in the U.S. face today. One Pawp plan can also be used on up to 6 pets in one household at no additional cost. As a seasoned business leader, what is your opinion on the effects of the pandemic on the healthcare sector, and what were the challenges that Pawp came across? Many healthcare businesses and providers had to pivot and endured many changes as a result of the pandemic. One of the more welcome changes has been the rise of telehealth services. Humans have greatly benefited from the widespread emergence of telehealth and Pawp was perfectly positioned to leverage this familiarity and pioneer a new category for pets. We at Pawp believe that access to affordable, quality healthcare
Pioneering a new category comes with all sorts of surprises, but the company has experienced incredible growth in a relatively volatile period. The pandemic taught us to stay nimble and to adapt to circumstances so that we’re constantly iterating on our product and making it the best it can be. With continuous development in technologies such as AI and ML, what is your prediction about the future of the telehealth solutions niche? Practicing telemedicine 20-30 years ago seems like something out of the Jetsons. And telemedicine for pets? Almost inconceivable. We are iterating at such a breakneck pace that it’s hard to imagine just how much could theoretically be possible in 5, 10, or even 20 years. The expectation is constant improvement. The digital clinic experience can only get better, enabling us to treat our pets from the comfort of our homes, knowing they’ll be just fine. We can already do so much, it’s exciting to think of the future. That’s why we’re investing heavily in our engineering teams so that we can continue to leverage thoughtful technology to both improve and extend our pets’ lives. What would be your advice to the entrepreneurs and healthcare enthusiasts aspiring to venture into telehealth? Telehealth is a great field to be in, especially post-pandemic. It’s also high impact and advances generally improve the world around us, which is as exciting as it is fulfilling. My advice
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About the Leader Before starting Pawp, Marc served as Chief Strategy Officer at Clarity Money (acquired by Goldman Sachs) where he focused on growth efforts including user acquisition, operations, partnerships, and marketing. Prior to Clarity Money, Marc served as the Head of Growth at Paribus where he oversaw the growth of the company from 10,000 users to almost 1,000,000 in just 12 months, until Paribus was acquired by Capital One. Marc has also been involved in other industries including both ad-tech and venture capital. He’s currently an advisor for Nuvocargo and Cushion.ai.
Marc Atiyeh with Co-Founder, Andrew Malek How do you envision scaling Pawp’s operations and offerings?
Pawp’s mission is to make pet care affordable to everyone so that families can have peace of mind. to any aspiring entrepreneur is to stay agile and to stay hungry. When a field is up and coming, it’s competitive. It’s not about being the first or the loudest, it’s about being the best. Make sure you have a product you believe in. Make sure you can make a case for it. If you can’t convince yourself, you’re not going to convince anyone.
Our goal is to always provide the most comprehensive care for your pet as possible and we know that definition will expand constantly. We as a company are driven by growth on every front: we’re always hiring, always looking for the next optimization or new tool that can make the product better. Pawp wants to make quality vet care, and the means to pay for it, accessible to everyone and we’ll always find new ways to make that goal possible. Since our launch in September of 2020, we have already seen revenue growth of 5x in the first half of 2021 with projections to more than double by year’s end.
A graduate of Harvard College, Marc earned his degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He graduated High School from College Notre-Dame de Jamhour in Beirut, Lebanon where he received the French Baccalaureate with the highest honors. As a pet parent himself (a full-time dog dad to Chelsea, a Yorkie, and Fluf, a Chow Chow), Marc knows that access to vets and information you can trust can make a real difference on a pet’s health, and that pet emergencies often happen outside of office hours. He started Pawp to make sure every pet has 24/7 access to quality vet care as well as help paying for it. Knowing how much his dogs mean to him, it’s incredibly important that Pawp realizes its mission in making sure no pet parent has to choose between paying a vet bill and saving their best friend’s life.
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People choose us because we offer a seamlessness and frictionless experience for all stakeholders. Dr. Keith Dressler D.D.S., M.S.D., Chairman and CEO
Providing Simplified and Seamless Telehealth Solutions 36|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers In 2021
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rtificial intelligence and virtual care are changing the healthcare industry for the better. Just a few years ago, nobody would have thought about treating patients via telephonic calls or video chats—the COVID-19 pandemic being the source of this change. Telehealth now plays an important role in shaping how people have access to quality healthcare. Thanks to companies like Rhinogram, patients can now receive medical attention from wherever they are. Dr. Keith Dressler, the Chairman and CEO of Rhinogram believes that this blend in technology and healthcare will only bring ease and betterment to the telehealth industry. In the following interview, Dr. Dressler, shares valuable insights into the company’s operations, the current industry landscape, his vision for the achieving the company’s vision and mission. Please brief our audience about your company, its mission, and the key aspects of its stronghold within the health-Tech niche. Based in Chattanooga, Tenn., Rhinogram is a leading cloud-based, HIPAA-compliant virtual care platform – connecting patients, clinicians, and office administrators through confidential, text-based and video interactions in real time. The virtual care platform, which supports multimedia messaging and Facebook messenger communication, seamlessly integrates with most EHR and PMS systems, synchronizing secure, encrypted patient communication into clinical workflows. With Rhinogram, providers can better engage with their patients by streamlining administrative processes, managing pre- and post-procedure
care, and reducing unnecessary appointments to realize value-based care success and deliver a quality experience that drives patient loyalty. Tell us more about the telehealth solutions that give your company a distinctive edge to stand out from the competition? Virtual care and remote patient engagement are essential, now more than ever. The Covid-19 pandemic prompted patients and providers to understand the benefit and necessity of virtual care platforms and use them for triage, procedure follow-ups, simple diagnoses, medication-related advice, behavioural health visits, and more. We at Rhinogram enable providers to communicate with patients securely and safely via text-based and video interactions at any time from their mobile device to address appointment requests, clinical questions, refill requests, medical records access, and more. Through the integration of eforms and signatures with us, providers can create and send forms via text to patients. In turn, patients will be able to securely view, sign and submit these forms right on their phones or other mobile devices, which are then digitally stored in their patient profile. The availability of live video calls within our platform enables providers to deliver virtual visits without patients having to download an app or log into a portal. Our virtual care platform gives providers several options for contactless care and extends care to patients with limited access, such as those living in rural communities. The platform seamlessly integrates with most EHR and PMS systems, synchronizing secure, and encrypted patient communication into clinical workflows.
It also includes a quick message-triage to appropriate team members, allowing the scheduling team to handle appointments, billing staff to field financial and insurance queries, and freeing clinical team members to address care concerns. As a seasoned business leader what is your opinion on the effects of the pandemic on the healthcare sector, and what were the challenges that company came across? The global pandemic accomplished something many in the healthcare sector had despaired of – it pushed providers to quickly adopt new technology like virtual care platforms, which gained a lot of traction with providers because they greatly benefit both the practice and the patient. For providers, it was a valuable resource to help keep their doors open and remain profitable. For patients, virtual care allowed them to receive care in the most appropriate and safest manner possible. As a result, I believe virtual care is here to stay and we will see practices beginning to hybridize the way they deliver care. As practices navigate the changing healthcare landscape and look toward the next phases of inperson and virtual healthcare, it is clear that virtual care platforms can provide exactly the type of hybridized support they need. The reality is that many patients would be much better served with virtual wellness checks, quick text-based check-ins, and even symptom monitoring via laptop or mobile device. For example, those living in rural areas may have very limited broadband access. This restricts their ability to engage in video tele consults or even log into an EHR portal. Not to mention, many patients with comorbidities reside in these and other
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underserved communities. Virtual care platforms have an advantage here, relying on widely available cell service rather than broadband. This allows for high-risk patients to remain home during the pandemic. In the end, I believe the pandemic sped up the learning curve when it comes to hybrid care with the realization that it is better, more profitable, and more convenient for all involved. My one piece of advice for those looking to adopt this technology would be to ensure you have adopted a HIPAAcompliant platform. Early in the pandemic, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S Department of Health and Human Service recognized the importance of interoperability during the pandemic and announced that it would lift penalties around telehealth use during the Covid-19 pandemic. So, some non-compliant platforms are in play. With continuous development in technologies such as AI and ML, what is your prediction about the future of the telehealth solutions niche? With AI and machine learning, we’re looking at a more streamlined and seamless way of communication between patient and provider. AI, for example, will allow a provider to receive data – intelligent data – from home devices with remote patient monitoring. Now, a provider can monitor their patients and triage things quickly and easily. Integrating AI and ML technology into a virtual care platform will enable the
platform to understand what normal looks like and what abnormal looks like. Clinicians will then be alerted to abnormalities, which in turn can be triaged quickly so care can be provided, and better outcomes achieved. Therefore, I believe the future of virtual care systems will integrate symptom checking and remote vital-sign collection such as blood pressure, oxygen level, and A1C level, some without the need for additional devices like a blood pressure cuff.
What would be your advice to the entrepreneurs and healthcare enthusiasts aspiring to venture into telehealth? As an entrepreneur myself, I firmly believe virtual care is the new frontier for healthcare. My advice for those looking to get into the virtual care technology game would be to make sure whatever you develop can be easily integrated into all the other great solutions that are out there because you are not going to be able to conquer the entire frontier with one solution.
Medical apps can also be integrated with some platforms, allowing clinicians to more closely monitor both acute- and chronic-care patients. AI allows providers to deliver more care to more people in a higher quality way.
That is why the question keeping any virtual care entrepreneur awake at night should be ‘can my new technology easily integrate with other health IT platforms used by providers’. Knowing Rhinogram easily integrates with existing remote patient monitoring platforms or EHRs, allows us to be the engine that drives the communication for providers as we have so many features already built into our comprehensive virtual care platform. There’s no need to reinvent those wheels!
As for Rhinogram today, we have shifted the healthcare communication paradigm from voice answering machine dominated to a text messaging paradigm. We are looking to integrate AI and ML into our solution in 2022, which will enable incoming text messages to be read, interpreted, and then automatically routed to the right internal teams. In essence, AI will allow for smart routing with conversation intelligence. But it does require human intervention, which I don’t believe will totally disappear. What AI and ML will do is take away more tasks that can and should easily be automated as the paradigm shift continues and text messages become the dominate form of communication.
How do you envision on scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021? We are continuing to look at ways to enhance our existing feature set that currently serves 36 different healthcare verticals. Our virtual care platform provides robust support to any medical specialty, from internal medicine practices managing a large patient population to specialists, looking for a way to better serve remote areas to behavioral health practices seeking to streamline frequent patient check-ins.
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About the leader: Dr. Keith Dressler can best be described as a compassionate, philanthropic, and extremely dedicated person who unconditionally cares about his patients, his staff, and his community. With more than 35 years of experience in orthodontics and entrepreneurship, Dr. Dressler loves interacting with his patients in a positive and encouraging way and strives to give every family an exceptional patient experience every time.
We are constantly learning what these verticals need as well as the enhancements to existing feature sets that they would like to have built-in to the platform. A functionality that I would say is one we would like to add is more automation, which I mentioned earlier when talking about AI workflows. At this stage, automation is critical to how we plan to scale and grow Rhinogram.
With a longstanding generational background in healthcare, Dr. Dressler understood the needs of both the patient who was looking for a convenient and secure way to interact with their provider, and that of the provider who wanted to ensure they were doing so in compliance with HIPAA regulations. To help address this need, Dr. Dressler built a solution to modernize communication across all of healthcare from enterprise, all the way down to the individual practitioner. With Rhinogram, all barriers between the patient and the provider are removed so that patients can simply communicate with their provider. For Dr. Dressler, this meant developing a virtual care solution that offers multimodality communications which supports bidirectional messages that engage patients in their preferred manner including secure text messaging, PDFs, images, video conferencing and social media access. A serial entrepreneur, in 2000 he co-founded OrthoBanc, LLC, a payment solutions management company currently serving 4,000+ healthcare providers. In 2020, he successfully sold OrthoBanc to OrthoFi.
Another way we continuously look to scale our virtual care offering is to partner with those verticals that are currently using bidirectional text communication in a limited form. Instead of considering changing the entire communication paradigm, they are using bidirectional texting to add work to their staff’s plates rather than lessen administrative tasks. Their thinking is ‘if you cannot get the patient by phone or by email, then text them’. That goes back to resisting the paradigm shift from a phone dominated communication practice to a text dominated one. Over the next five years, providers will truly come to understand how important patientinitiated texting is as a means of providing a frictionless and convenient patient experience.
We have only just begun to scratch the surface and I still think we are in the pre-early adopter phase of a text dominated virtual care platform. Educating providers is key to moving that forward, particularly with those who have experience using a virtual care platform with limited bidirectional texting who then realize they need more from their platform.
Exhibiting Excellence
Following are the awards that Rhinogram has won: Co. Lab 2020 High Growth Business of the Year Co. Lab 2020 Startup of the Year Becker’s Healthcare 102 Women And that's when they come searching in Health IT to Know | 2019 for Rhinogram because we have more Becker’s Hospital Review experience and knowledge gathered over the past five years that no other Telehealth companies to know | company has about how patient 2019 and Telehealth companies initiated communications work, what patient and provider demands are when to know | 2020 it comes to communication, and most CityScope Magazine’s 8 importantly, we know the technology Companies to Watch in 2021 that drives this need in a secure and compliant way.
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