Portfolio News

5 Best Telemedicine Apps For When You Can’t See a Doctor

Telemedicine apps are making it much easier for many people to get help from a doctor. They’re based on a simple idea: most people already have a smartphone or a personal computer, so why not use these devices to speak to a doctor online? The biggest benefit of telemedicine apps is that they give people access to quick and convenient medical care for a wide range of issues that don’t require an in-person office visit. Telemedicine has also helped with a doctor shortage by making...

Travis Broome Discusses Aledade’s Partnership with Aetna

Aledade and Aetna are partnering to bring population health to patients and greater accountability of total cost to providers, said Travis Broome, vice president of policy at Aledade, in an interview with AJMC. Broome said one of Aledade’s core beliefs is that they want the total patient panel. “If we’re going to move away from 15-minute blocks, it’s best if you can do that for everyone, so it’s always been a mission of Aledade to get as many of our practices’ patients under value-based care models,...

Today’s entrepreneur: Mike McSherry

Vator recently interviewed Mike McSherry, Founder and CEO of Xealth, a platform that enables clinicians to prescribe digital health tools to patients. Through the Xealth platform, clinicians can find and order digital health tools and programs for patients direct from a health system’s electronic health records workflow, and send those orders to the patient’s smartphone or computer. Afterwards, those clinicians can monitor patient engagement and analyze the effects of those digital health tools on the patients’ health outcomes. Prior to founding Xealth, McSherry was the CEO of...

Inhaler Monitoring Cuts Hospitalization Usage, Study Finds

Patients with emphysema, also known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) whose inhalers were tracked by a monitoring device were less likely to need hospital admission, according to a new study by Propeller Health and the Cleveland Clinic. Electronic monitoring allowed healthcare providers to intervene sooner than they typically would had they relied solely on patients’ reporting of their respiratory distress. The study also highlights the role technology can play in providing data that can help disease management programs to be more effective. The sensors were designed...

More than half of US seniors would use telehealth, survey finds

According to a new study from American Well, 52 percent of U.S. residents over 65 are willing to use telehealth services. For its Telehealth Index: 2019 Senior Consumer Survey, the company hired market research firm Harris Poll to conduct an online survey of more than 2,000 adults regarding their opinions on telehealth usage. Of the entire number of survey participants, 20 percent were 65 or older. When these individuals were asked about the main factor that got them interested in telehealth, they gave the following answers: Seeing...