Q: Can you tell us about your company and the challenges you are solving within the remote monitoring space?

A: SeamlessMD is a digital care journey platform for hospitals and health systems to engage, monitor and stay connected with patients across the care continuum. More than thirty clinical studies and evaluations have shown SeamlessMD to improve the patient experience while reducing hospital length-of-stay, readmissions and emergency department visits. Health systems such as the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Intermountain, Atrium, University Hospitals, MultiCare, Baystate Health and others use SeamlessMD to elevate the patient experience, improve outcomes and reduce costs. Patients access digital care plans on their smartphones, tablets or computers and are guided step-by-step via reminders, education and progress tracking. Providers receive alerts, monitor patients and access analytics to deliver better care. SeamlessMD can directly integrate with most leading EHRs as well. 

For example, health systems can empower a 70-year-old with a knee replacement through electronic reminders so she doesn’t forget what to do before her surgery. Meanwhile, her care team can remotely monitor her knee pain and photos of her surgical incision after surgery. Obstetric providers can support a 30-year-old pregnant woman with care instructions delivered right to her smartphone right up until delivery, and her care team can continue to monitor her mental health status and blood pressure after delivery.

Q: How does your company differentiate from other remote monitoring vendors?

A: SeamlessMD has led the market on the primary factors that reduce risk and maximize adoption for health systems: scalability, clinical evidence and EHR integration. 

First, unlike device-based remote monitoring solutions, SeamlessMD is an app-based platform that enables health systems to engage patients via the patient’s smartphone, tablet or desktop computer to send surgery or condition-specific reminders, deliver pre- and post-care education, and monitor symptoms. Patients can self-monitor via automated workflows (like automated guidance on relieving constipation after surgery, for example) and providers can get alerts and dashboards to monitor patient progress remotely (such as pain, vital signs or incision photos). Our extensive library of evidence-based out-of-the-box care plans–which includes surgery, oncology, maternity care, chronic disease and others–enables rapid implementation by clinical teams while also allowing digital leaders to centralize on one system-wide platform. 

Second, we have a large body of clinical evidence that demonstrates how SeamlessMD improves outcomes and controls costs. Digital health solutions require buy-in from both leadership and clinicians, and clinicians are much more receptive to clinically proven solutions like ours. Our clinical validation helps all stakeholders feel confident about successfully scaling our remote monitoring solution across all departments. 

Third, we are the only remote monitoring platform in the industry with validated, turnkey integrations with the three largest EHRs (Epic, Cerner, Meditech), which empowers digital leaders to deliver integrated user experiences in just weeks.

Q: What are some of the biggest changes your company has seen around how health systems are approaching remote monitoring since 2020?

A: The biggest change we have seen since 2020 is how health systems have transitioned from what we call RPM 1.0 to RPM 2.0. Prior to 2020, organizations were primarily focused on RPM 1.0: Device-based, post-discharge RPM for the top five percent of at-risk patients (with conditions such as heart failure or COPD) and requiring significant provider monitoring resources. Since 2020, we’ve seen RPM 2.0 explode among health care systems: App-based, pre and post-care remote monitoring for 100 percent of patient care journeys, beyond chronic care and into pre- and post-surgery, maternity care, oncology, behavioral health, and more. We also saw health systems shift more of the monitoring efforts to patient self-management, thereby freeing up time for burned-out staff. 

Not only do patients want digital care across all types of care journeys, but health systems are leveraging these RPM 2.0 experiences to improve outcomes and lower costs across a broader range of use cases, all while minimizing provider burnout.

Q: What does an ideal client look like? How are health systems best organized for success in remote monitoring?

A: Health systems ready for remote monitoring don’t just require that digital and operational executives buy into digital transformation, they also need–and this is arguably even more important–engaged clinical champions for at least a few initial clinical areas. For example, we have often seen health systems start with at least one or two department chiefs across orthopedics, cardiac, maternity care and oncology who are fully engaged with the solution and vision. Those early champions are critical to ensure that there is bottom-up clinical buy-in to make the remote monitoring initiatives successful. This is why being able to point a large body of clinical evidence with a remote monitoring solution is critical–frontline clinical leaders need very strong proof points to rally their team around these innovative initiatives.

Q: What measurable outcomes have you seen from your clients who have prioritized remote monitoring?

A: Our clients who have prioritized remote monitoring have achieved 45 to 72 percent reductions in readmissions, decreased length-of-stay by one to two days, 41 to 68 percent fewer ED visits, 59 to 65 percent fewer phone calls, and significant cost savings per patient. And because patients and caregivers find the platform easy to use and enjoy feeling connected to their care teams, they’ve also achieved high patient adoption and activation. 

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Health System, which launched their digital health strategy in 2017, initially used our platform to engage and monitor patients from pre-surgery preparation through post-surgery recovery, including cardiac, thoracic, colorectal and gynecologic oncology surgery. UAB has produced astonishing results with this initiative, including a 94.7 percent patient adoption rate, reductions in hospital length-of-stay by up to two days, reductions in readmissions by up to 50 percent and cost decreases of upwards of $8,100 per patient. 

MultiCare launched their digital care journey strategy in June 2021 across multiple service lines including hip and knee replacement surgery, spine surgery, bariatric surgery and maternity care. Within the first six months, clinical outcomes improved, such as in hip and knee replacement, with a 25 percent reduction in length of stay and a 37 percent reduction in 30-day readmissions.

At Baystate Health, the digital care journey program has helped its cardiac surgery program reduce readmissions by 72 percent, discharge to skilled nursing facilities by 60 percent and length of stay by 0.9 days. 

In 2020, University Hospitals launched their digital care journey strategy to guide, monitor and elevate patient care beyond the four walls of the hospital. Since prioritizing remote monitoring, they have reduced readmissions by 49 percent, seen a 68 percent decrease in ED visits and a 59 percent decrease in call volume, and reduced discharge to skilled nursing facilities by 52 percent.

Q: What major functional enhancements and/or product investments are you making in the near term to keep up with the evolution of remote monitoring?

A: We continue to innovate across a variety of dimensions based on the priorities of our health system partners. First, we continue to expand our evidence-based digital care plan library to align with the evolving consumer and value-based care landscape. For example, we recently released new digital care plans for behavioral health and endoscopy, and are growing more into population health (such as diabetes), medical episodes of care (such as sepsis) and complex journeys (including transplants and palliative care). We also continue to invest in our industry leadership with EHR integrations, making more robust and comprehensive integration workflows available, like more streamlined integrations with EHR-based dashboards and analytics.

Q: How is your company partnering with clients as reimbursements and use cases shift?

A: Our health system partners drive our company’s business and product roadmaps. We enable this continuous feedback loop with our partners through frequent client check-ins, including meeting with frontline staff monthly and conducting reviews with digital, clinical and operational leadership a few times a year to share our roadmaps and get feedback on priorities. In particular, we facilitate the creation of health system steering committees, which ideally include representation from digital, operational and clinical leadership, and meet several times a year to strategize on the future of the health system’s digital transformation strategy and how SeamlessMD’s digital care journey roadmap can best align with their vision.

Q: What are the biggest opportunities health systems should be thinking about this year when it comes to remote monitoring?

A: Health systems realize that remote monitoring must transition from provider-heavy to patient-empowered. With the pressing issue of staff burnout, health systems should be thinking about expanding remote monitoring past staff-heavy, provider-based monitoring and toward patient self-monitoring that requires much less from staff. Digital care across all patient care journeys means fewer unnecessary phone calls to providers while still providing a mechanism to escalate issues to providers for patients who are at risk.

Q: How do you see remote monitoring evolving in 2022 and beyond?

A: Meeting the needs of digitally savvy health consumers has led to the recent rise of app-based RPM solutions–also called digital care journeys–which can be easily scaled across surgery, oncology, maternity care, and other service lines. In the long term, we expect to see consumer-empowered and clinically relevant remote monitoring delivered at scale across all care journeys in health systems to deliver better patient experiences, improve clinical outcomes and lower costs on a much larger scale.