Improving Patient Engagement through Interactive Care with Michael O'Neil was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Michael:
At GetWellNetwork we are focused on one thing. We believe that patient engagement is the super drug of the next 20 years. We actually believe that if we can help society just move the curve to the right on having consumers of their health be more informed, engaged, empowered and activated, that is what's going to drive significantly better outcomes. And as we all know, it's so cliche, if we don't have our health, we always say we have nothing. So in order to live our best lives, to maximize our own human potential, health is front and center. And so we truly believe and we're seeing the outcomes that patient engagement, again, is not an amenity, not just about like hugging your nurse, which of course is nice. It really is about driving better outcomes through being engaged patients. And we do it with empathy. That is the combination that we're seeing having the biggest outcome.
Jim:
Medvale is a community helping healthcare innovators make a difference. And we have our own podcast--Medville Radio. This podcast celebrates innovators who are out there making the world a better place to live. My guest is one of those innovators, Michael O'Neil is the founder and CEO of GetWellNetworks. I met Michael this morning at a YPO conference here at the Harvard Medical School. You'll see why I asked him to tell his story for our listeners. Michael, welcome to Medvale Radio. Tell us about how you are making the world healthier.
Michael:
Thanks, Jim, and thanks for having me. I guess simply put, our idea for making the world healthier is to make patients and their families more active participants in their own health journey. And the way we do that is as a company GetWellNetwork has built a portfolio of technology- enabled patient engagement solutions that help patients and families get more educated, be more activated, just be more enrolled and engaged,to take more control of the journey they're on. And so the part that's unique to us is we thought in the beginning we didn't want to be yet another mHealth app that you download from the App Store and likely only use once. So we decided to do our work through health care providers. So we always thought that we wanted to enhance, not try to skip the relation between the physician and nurse and the patient. And so our work is done through the healthcare provider, through hospitals, through health systems, through doctors' offices. And they're basically prescribing to the patient, "Hey, we're going to put you on GetWellNetwork so you can be a more active participant in your care."
Jim:
Micheal, let me back up just a bit. What didn't you like about your care or what don't you like about American healthcare that you thought you could make a difference in?
Michael:
You know, I think the fundamental thing is when you are thrust into our healthcare system, it often comes as a surprise to you. All of a sudden you don't feel well or suddenly you've gotten into an accident or all of a sudden you feel really sick. And so you're arriving into our health system at a very vulnerable moment. And all of a sudden you're thrust into a new world that is incredibly complex. There are acronyms and language and busy people and technologies and medications that you don't understand. And too often the system is set up in a way where the very folks who are charged with providing such great care for you--and they truly want to do that--they're wrought with many other tasks that they're going to do on a given day. And so as a patient often times you feel rushed and afraid and anxious and not really empowered to make the very best decisions for yourself in your journey. And so ultimately, like that was my experience, things happen very fast for a patient. Things usually happen without perfect information for a patient. And we just thought we can we can help the patient slow things down by informing them and activating them, then we can create a better experience and a better outcome.
Jim:
So how are you doing that?
Michael:
So here's how this whole thing works. At GetWellNetwork we connect our software to the very systems that the hospital or the physician office runs on. So we're connected to the electronic health records. So we know what patients are in what bed at what time. We know what language they speak. We know what medications they're on. We know what procedures they're having. And we use all this data to create almost like a virtual assistant for that patient, either on their phone, on the television in the patient's room, anywhere you can find a piece of glass that a healthcare consumer is looking at. GetWellNetwork kind of becomes your virtual care navigator through your health journey. And so the moment that you, for example, were scheduled for a knee surgery, you'd be prescribed what we call a "get well loop.' And we're going to keep you in the loop of your knee surgery, throughout your preparation, throughout your surgery and after you're done. And so that's how GetWellNetowrk begins to work. It becomes a proactive, interactive, highly personalized and digital way for us to help you navigate through your procedure, through your surgery, through your condition.
Jim:
Would you have an example of a patient that has benefited from GetWellNetwork?
Michael:
Yeah, you know we are blessed at GetWellNetowk. You just don't have to look very far for inspiration. We are touching 10 million people a year. We're touching a hundred thousand people in a hospital bed every day; can you imagine. So the stories are coming at us daily and it gives us such energy and fuel to kind of figure this whole thing out. And so I guess just one that just pops into my head and always sticks out. We do a lot of work in the V.A.,the Veterans Administration, across the U.S. So we work in about 50 V.A. medical centers in 50 different cities. And we have the incredible privilege to work alongside veterans who are caring for veterans and the incredible privilege of working at the point of care with veterans and their families. And some of the work we actually do is in spinal cord units where soldiers have been injured on the battlefield, come back into a whole new life, where they may be quadraplegic and don't have use of their arms and legs. So we've had the privilege to be a part of one veteran in particular, where he had been in the hospital for six or seven years, spending way too long sitting there watching daytime television. And we had a chance to meet him and his family and watched him using a sip and puff device to actually alert his nurse that he had to go to the bathroom or that he wanted to eat. And we ended up grabbing our R&D guys, having them integrate the sip and puff technology into GetWellNetwork and to watch this veteran now be able to use GetWellNetwork, understand his medications, understand his condition, connect with his old army buddies, play chess with them online, do all the kind of things that make us feel like we are active, we are engaged, we are taking control of our own journey. That would be one example of the kind of thing that we do all the time. And it's been incredibly fulfilling.
Jim:
Oh, what a heartwarming story. Thank you. So who buys your product, your service?
Michael:
You know, it's interesting. Hospitals and health systems are the ones that license and buy our product. And the reason they actually do, ever since we started the company, healthcare providers knew this is what they should be doing. But frankly, over the last 10 years, it's kind of what they have to do. Now reimbursement, at least here in the US, is often times tied to things like readmission rates, things like length of stay, things like satisfaction scores. And we have found through our research into our data that patient engagement and patient experience is not an amenity. It's a core strategy for performance improvement in healthcare. And so healthcare providers are licensing GetWellNetwork to literally drive the very improvements that impact both their business success as well as their commitment to community to provide great care.
Jim:
Where's this going for you? Do you have a longer term vision, or are you just keeping up day to day? How how many countries can you do? How many millions of patients can you touch?
Michael:
It's a great question. We are currently working against what we call our Vision 2020 plan. And we believe we're on a path and going from touching 10 million people to 50 million people a year. We're going to do that in the next three years. And we also have two things happening to get there. One of them is just like the care is moving from inside the hospital into the community--so are GetWellNetwork tools. We started our business with an inpatient tool and now our tools touch patients everywhere at home, at work, at school. Anywhere they're holding their phone they can stay on their care plan through GetWellNetwork. And so the way that we're going to impact more people is: One -- we call it GetWellNetwork Anywhere. Anywhere you are---when healthcare is front and center in your life--GetWellNetwork should be a virtual care navigator for you and your family That's the first thing. And the second thing is globally. So we are finding that as different as our governments might be, as different as the business of healthcare may be, the needs of patients and families, frankly, have a lot of parallels. Doesn't matter if you're in Saudi Arabia or you're in Chicago, Illinois. You know patients are nervous. They're anxious. They are going through a defining, vulnerable moment. And they actually want to be informed, engaged and empowered to take control of their journey regardless of wherever the are. So we think there's a to a lot of growth coming internationally over the next couple of years as well.
Jim:
Well, anywhere could be a lot of places. They have to have a piece of glass in front of them, whether it's their Apple Watch, or a smartphone, or a monitor on their desk?.
Jim:
Yes. So essentially it could be their own device or device that a hospital has put in. But we have written these digital care plans. We call them GetWellLoops and we have a library of almost 200 GetWellLoops. So if you're having surgery to fix your shoulder, if you're having a baby,if you've been diagnosed with cancer, we are using a digital care plan to really keep you connected to your care team and to keep you activated on your plan of care. And so wherever you happen to be--in front of your laptop on an iPad, looking at your Apple Watch--it doesn't really matter to us where the glass is. Buy anything big or small. We can leverage it to run the software and to keep you connected to your plan.
Jim:
Amazing. Well, a provider, a physician apparently is not threatened by what you're doing. Do they see this as more of an extension of them because they're busy anyway? How do they feel about what you're doing?
Michael:
You use the word that we use all the time? GetWellNetwork is not a replacement. It is truly an extension of the care team. Imagine if your doctor had the time in his or her day to literally reach out and call every one of their patients personally every day. That's what GetWellNetwork does for the physician. So every day, proactively, I'm getting literally a message, a check-in from my physician. Hey, Michael, "It's Dr. Ambinder. Just checking in. You're three days away from surgery. Here are the three things I want to make sure you do today so you're prepared to come in three days from now." And so we're automating digital check-ins and checkpoints and interactions and education. We're automating that on behalf of the physician and the provider.
Jim:
It sounds like that could reduce visits to the office. Everybody would like that.
Michael:
Absolutely. We are freeing up time, keeping the care personalized, highly interactive, highly digital. Also doing it with empathy. You know, we have (this is going to sound very Silicon Valley-esq) but we have empathologists in the company. What they're acually doing is they are taking traditionally clinical content that's hard for a patient to absorb and they're actually rewriting it with empathy.
Jim:
Well, Michael, you may not feel very lucky to have been a cancer patient, but maybe the rest of world is because you're doing some good out there that probably wouldn't have happened had you not had that unique experience.
Michael:
No, thank you. Cancer teaches you some interesting things. It teaches you the preciousness of time and it teaches you gratitude. We are grateful to have a chance to do the work. We're grateful to have a chance to impact people. We are very fortunate and we have a good grasp of that for sure.
Jim:
Michael, we're coming to the end of the podcast. What else would you like to share with our listeners that maybe I didn't get around to asking you about?
Michael:
I guess the two things. A push of energy to two stakeholders. One is to any and all budding or potential healthcare entrepreneurs. I simply would say the world needs positive force leaders more today than ever before. So dive into the deep end with two feet immediately. Go through the hard work. It is worth while. You will never choose a more fulfilling industry to use your very best capabilities to impact. That's the first thing. The second thing I would say to our health care providers, we are aware that you're being now--there's a lot of pressure on healthcare providers to provide a next generation patient experience and digital experience. And we, of course, always will just welcome the opportunity to share some of the work we're ooing. It won't always be the right work for you, but we always love getting into a room, banging our heads together alongside of patient families to figure out how to do this work better, which is what all of us kind of want.
Jim:
Well thank you. Michael, I'm sure some of our listeners are going to want to get in touch with somebody at your company. What's the best way for them to do that?
Michael:
Yeah, pretty easily. So at GetWellNetwork.com we have a wonderful team. I put together a handful of digital tools that are easy to access and connect with us. And then I'm on Twitter at @GetWellCEO.
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