SearchHealthIT – June 2016
The sprawling University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is at the forefront of a wave of large healthcare systems that are transforming themselves into their own insurers.
An increasingly important part of that approach is using remote patient monitoring technology in large-scale population health programs to keep the chronically ill out of the hospital and more engaged with their own health, and so drive down costs.
On June 1, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) rolled out its biggest remote patient monitoring technology initiative to date.
It’s a project involving some 800 patients with congestive heart failure, each of whom has been provided with a free kit containing remote patient monitoring technology from Vivify Health Inc.
UPMC, through its UPMC Enterprises venture capital arm, is also an investor in Vivify; it provided the startup with $10 million as part of a recent $17 million financing round.
The kits include a pulse oximeter, blood pressure cuff, weight scale and a 4G tablet — all wireless-enabled out of the box — to which metrics from the devices are transmitted, which, in turn, uploads the data to a UPMC care team.
