Healthy Interactions and Medcurrent Lauch Easy-to-Use, End-to-End Clinical Decision Support Platform for Real-time, Automated Chronic Care Planning

June 2, 2016

CHICAGO and TORONTO – Two companies with proven solutions in behavioral change management and clinical decision support technology have come together to create one of health care’s most comprehensive solutions for efficiently improving population health.  Today, Healthy Interactions and MedCurrent introduce a first-of-its-kind clinical decision support platform that merges evidence-based guidelines with clinical workflows at the point of care designed specifically to manage chronic care conditions.

Healthy Interactions offers the world’s most deployed diabetes patient education program.  Nearly 60 independent studies have validated its success in combining behavioral change methodologies with both human and technological support to improve the lives of 30 million people across more than 100 countries. MedCurrent, the leading vendor to offer a comprehensive radiology clinical decision support (CDS) system with embedded appropriateness criteria, is successfully helping organizations improve quality, manage costs and reduce unnecessary radiation exposure.

“Providers are constantly stretched for time and have only minutes to engage patients, make diagnoses and develop personalized care plans for as many as 50 patients a day,” said Paul Lasiuk, co-founder and CEO of Healthy Interactions (and board director of MedCurrent). “We are extending beyond alarms, alerts, and checklists to do the heavy lifting for these providers with a best-in-class, complete care solution that, in real time, triggers automated development of recommended and individually optimized care plans for each patient.”

In recent years, Healthy Interactions has expanded beyond diabetes to address co-morbidities and other chronic conditions such as asthma, obesity, cancers and psychiatric illness and MedCurrent has integrated rule sets from disciplines beyond radiology, such as cardiology, oncology, lab and other clinical areas. 

“Designed to simplify and enhance a primary care visit, the clinically intuitive, EHR-embedded system uses transition of care rules to identify the right patients at the right time for the right population health management initiatives,” Lasiuk said.

With a single keypad click, the provider sees the evidence-based care path and initiates the system-defined care plan including e-prescriptions, referrals to specialists, and initiation of education programs perfectly matched to the patient’s transition of care.   With another click, the patient is connected to the system’s digital health platform, allowing for engagement and interaction with a care coordinator, educator or coach as well as procurement of sensor-derived data such as blood pressure or weight.  The system also enables point-of-care scheduling for recommended tests and procedures

“Analytical capabilities are powerful and the system is flexible,” Lasiuk explained. “Ordering behavior can be monitored in real-time for individual or groups of practitioners, giving health systems actionable data to drive clinical and operational change.” He added that a robust rules engine is complemented by a visually intuitive rule-authoring studio allowing users to create, customize, and manage clinical content based upon varying organizational or geographic needs.

The two companies have seen substantive results, especially with patient and physician engagement, said David Moen, MD, Healthy Interactions Chief Medical Officer, who has spent his career providing thought leadership to teams achieving nationally recognized and market-changing Triple Aim results for high-risk patients in hospital, clinic, and community settings.

“Our Conversation Maps® methodology improves compliance, with studies showing improved compliance to A1C targets by as much as 46%, and a 43% reduced incidence of hypoglycemia, and 27% of patients who attend a Conversation Map session convert to a digital coaching model,” he said, adding that “on the MedCurrent side, we’ve seen physicians embrace the system.  One organization runs more than 30,000 individual patient orders per month through the CDS.  Another has reduced inappropriate imaging utilization for low back pain by 12%.”

Lasiuk stated, “We’re bringing decades of proven work by some of our industry’s most respected innovators in both behavioral change management and health information technology to create an all-in-one platform.  Now, organizations can have unparalleled impact when planning, delivering and evaluating the effectiveness of care for patients and populations with costly chronic conditions. Both outcomes and reimbursement will be enhanced.”

About Healthy Interactions

Healthy Interactions is a privately held health education and engagement company that has the most widely used diabetes program in the world. Healthy Interactions programs help their patients become more knowledgeable, more confident, and better self managers of their health. It offers engaging, interactive programs to people with diabetes and other chronic conditions to lead healthier lives. There have been over 30 independent behavioral and clinical studies conducted around the globe validating the programs efficacy. Healthy Interactions is based in Chicago, IL. www.healthyinteractions.com

About MedCurrent

Founded in 2005, MedCurrent was created with the goal of developing sophisticated clinical decision support software to improve medical practice – clinically, operationally and financially. Using evidence-based guidelines, MedCurrent’s EMR embedded, cloud-based workflow engine improves operational efficiencies, hastens user adoptions, supports change management and provides rule authoring flexibility. Using MedCurrent for imaging services in the first step in developing an enterprise-wide strategy as clinical decision support is added for any physician-referred services. MedCurrent is based in Toronto, Canada. www.medcurrent.com