During this session, leaders from health systems and digital health technology companies explored how they are leveraging their prowess to develop cutting-edge strategies to deliver accessible, easy to use and secure digital health solutions that work together seamlessly across the healthcare ecosystem and patient journey.

Session panelists:

• Erica Davila, general counsel, Transcarent
• Daniel Gottlieb, partner, McDermott Will & Emery
• Nathan Leong, vice president, legal, Memora Health
• Sudipto Srivastava, vice president, digital transformation, Hospital for Special Surgery
• Paul Uhrig, senior vice president, chief legal officer and digital health officer, Basset Healthcare Network
• Moderator: Bernadette Broccolo, partner, McDermott Will & Emery

Top takeaways included:

• The patient relationship is the cornerstone of any patient engagement strategy. Most, if not all, of the panelists agreed with this statement, yet they also recognize that the consumer and patient engagement solutions flooding the digital health ecosystem have cast doubt as to where the primary patient relationship should reside. For health systems, there is no doubt—they are and must remain a central, trusted partner for delivery and coordination of care across a patient’s healthcare journey. In their quest to do so, health systems are aggressively pursuing strategies that combine digital and in person touchpoints to engage individuals, both as consumers and as patients, “where they are” so they can get them to the right healthcare, at the right place and at the right time. While many digital health technology solution companies pursued “direct-to-patient” offerings early on, some quickly recognized the complexities of that model and shifted their primary focus to becoming an “extension” of health systems and payors by providing the turnkey technology infrastructure and support services they need to remain the “front door” for healthcare for patients and consumers.
• Patients, providers and self-funded health plans want a seamless, integrated and holistic digital engagement experience. Digital engagement solutions and the data strategies supporting them have been highly fragmented and lacking integration across the patient journey and healthcare ecosystem. This is due largely to their multiple points of entry into disconnected “point-to-point solutions,” which is particularly challenging for poly-chronic patients. Providers and their patients, and self funded health plans and their members, are frustrated and clamoring for single sign on platforms through which they can engage seamlessly, in a single encounter, with digital health applications and data sources. Health systems, in particular, are looking to “fill the white space” in functionality existing between inflexible electronic health record (EHR) systems that rely exclusively on traditional patient identifiers and less formal point to point digital health solutions. Individual providers want solutions that will alleviate the burden and stress of today’s technology tools. And everyone wants an approach that brings a holistic rather than an episodic experience.
• It will “take a village” to achieve seamless, integrated and holistic digital health engagement. No single stakeholder in the digital health ecosystem has the solution for overcoming the frustrating fragmentation of digital health engagement solutions. There certainly is no “one-size-fits-all” approach. Health systems, payors and digital health turnkey solution providers are [...]
  
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During this session, leaders from Covera Health and Nuance Communications provided insights into their companies’ collaboration to improve patient outcomes and operational efficiency through innovative technology solutions. The panelists also shared their perspectives on what makes for a successful collaboration in digital health. The discussion shed light on broader trends surrounding novel strategic partnerships between digital health companies that are changing healthcare delivery and accelerating value-based care.

Session panelists:

• Jacques Gilbert, Vice President, Healthcare Strategy, Partnerships and M&A, Nuance Communications
• Ron Vianu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Covera Health
• Moderator: Jiayan Chen, Partner, McDermott Will & Emer

Top takeaways included:

1. Covera and Nuance decided to partner because they were aligned on solving the same problem: longstanding challenges in driving quality in radiology care and aligning incentives among payor and provider stakeholders. The collaboration made particular sense because each company has a unique lens and business model in the space, with Covera building offerings for payors and Nuance interfacing with radiology providers. Both companies are also highly technologically driven, committed to advancing healthcare quality through artificial intelligence (AI) and deriving insights through data.
2. While “collaboration” and “partnership” are used quite liberally in the digital health context, Covera and Nuance have a truly integrated partnership that requires alignment, shared vision, tenacity and a willingness to overcome challenges. This is not a vendor/provider relationship or merely a cross-selling or cross-promotion arrangement. Each party brings a unique set of tools, strengths and relationships to the table, whether it is dexterity in the managed care space or a wide network of integrated technology and data platforms used by providers. Overcoming challenges in this kind of partnership requires the teams—at even the highest levels—to align around a common goal and a belief that they can accomplish the goal. When they run into areas of conflict, that fundamental alignment allows them to move forward and find solutions.
3. Some of the biggest barriers for technology-driven partnerships can come from each team’s desire to build and own the technology. Overcoming these barriers requires constant focus on the collective goals of the partnership and for each party to engage in ongoing internal reflection and calibration.
4. There can be particular challenges when one party is a startup and the other is an established, larger company. For a startup, it can be difficult to scale the company while simultaneously collaborating with a much larger company that, for its part, must manage more extensive and varied strategic goals. In turn, larger companies often must be sensitive to the fact that a startup partner can be built to move quickly and is positioning itself for growth and potential future acquisition. To better navigate these differences, the larger company could consider carving innovation opportunities out of its core business and staffing it with people who understand how startups operate.
5. There’s an increasing recognition that the path to success is through partnerships. For companies looking to enter partnerships, understanding each party’s incentives is crucial. This concept goes beyond the partnering companies and includes [...]
   
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During this session, CEOs and founders of transformative digital-health companies shared their experiences and offered thoughts on today’s market and where care delivery is heading next.

Session panelists:

• Priyanka Jain, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Evvy
• Naveen Kathuria, Chief Executive Officer, GoCheck Kids
• Kristina Saffran, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Equip
• Moderator: Marshall E. Jackson, Jr., Partner, McDermott Will & Emery

Top takeaways included:

1. Virtual-care platforms and digital-health technologies continue to reduce barriers by bringing care directly into the home and expanding access to culturally competent care.
2. Digital-health tools help increase provider access to data and inform patients about new research findings and other relevant developments they may wish to raise with providers during care visits.
3. Advances in women’s health continue to lag, but digital-health providers are closing the gap by using enhanced data collection and analysis to develop new care pathways designed specifically for women.
4. Patient and provider education is critical to the successful adoption and use of digital-health tools. However, choice of technology impacts adoption and continued use of digital-health platforms. For example, the leveraging of smartphones that providers and patients are already accustomed to using may yield greater results, as compared to the use of unique or custom devices that require training to use correctly.
5. Market focus is shifting from access to quality. As economic conditions change, digital-health platforms that seek new funding will face pressure to prove that their offerings not only increase access, but actually improve outcomes.

During this session, panelists offered insights into the regulatory action, rulemaking and legislation shaping the future of digital health, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence (AI), data privacy and the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE).

Session panelists:

• Lucia Savage, Chief Privacy and Regulatory Officer, Omada Health, Inc.
• Latoya S. Thomas, Head of Policy and Government Affairs, Included Health
• Kate Tipping, Deputy Director, Regulatory and Policy Affairs Division Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
• Moderators:
  • Kristen O’Brien, Vice President, McDermott+Consulting
  • Rachel Stauffer, Senior Director, McDermott+Consulting

Top takeaways included:

1. As the landscape changes, multiple regulatory entities continue to look closely at digital health, especially telemedicine and AI. Agencies are contemplating how to regulate effectively while focusing on the advancement of health equity and social determinants of health.
2. ONC is proposing additional transparency requirements for AI in Certified Health IT through its recently proposed rule Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Certification Program Updates, Algorithm Transparency, and Information Sharing (HTI-1). Through these new proposed transparency requirements, ONC is focused on promoting trust and increasing adoption by providers of AI tools embedded within Certified Health IT products. However, given that certain uses of AI in healthcare are already regulated by the US Food & Drug Administration, these new proposals may add additional regulatory layers to AI outside of current authorities.
3. The end of PHE flexibilities is causing frustration and increased costs of compliance among digital-health providers. For example, the expiration of eased restrictions regarding the cross-border practice of medicine and other scope-of-practice limitations is requiring digital-health platforms to confirm that providers are appropriately licensed in applicable states and that care teams comprise providers practicing within the scope of their license.
4. Industry stakeholders would like to see the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) take action on reimbursement for asynchronous telehealth services, primarily because the historical paradigm of reimbursing for synchronous telehealth services provided by a distant site to an originating site no longer reflects effective telehealth modalities in use today.