Q&A with Sid Kandan and Sandra Gomberg of Stel Life: Bridging the digital divide

AVIA Connect is the leading online resource for accurate, unbiased information about digital health companies and solutions. Our goal: To empower hospitals and health systems with the information they need to match with vendors who can meet their individual needs. We asked the top remote monitoring companies about their solutions and what they think the future of digital health looks like. No sponsored content or advertorials—just transparency and insights that decision-makers can use.

Stel–short for Simple Tech Everyone Loves–was established to facilitate simple and straightforward data collection with minimal setup and low barriers to use for both clinicians and patients. The proprietary Stel Vitals Hub collects and securely transmits data from Bluetooth-enabled monitoring devices, flowing it directly to the EHR without requiring WiFi or a smartphone app. Remote data appears within existing workflows without any need to integrate a separate platform.

 
 

CEO and co-founder of Sid Kandan previously led Ranking, Privacy and Bluetooth Beacon teams at Facebook before focusing on HealthIoT. He holds an engineering degree from Duke University.

 
 

COO and co-founder Sandra Gomberg, D.N.P., previously served as CEO of the Philadelphia COVID-19 Surge Initiative, president of Aria Jefferson Health System and community physician enterprise and president and CEO of Temple University Hospital, Inc.

 

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

A: Stel Life’s mission is to create simple, secure and scalable products to make digital health sustainable for patients, care teams and digital health companies. As patients and care teams evolve the standard of care to the home, common barriers that emerge are:

  • Complexity for patients, especially those that lack Wi-Fi, smartphones, and/or comfort with tech.

  • Care team burnout, especially with new systems and processes outside the EHR.

  • Privacy and security risks from device manufacturers and sensor experts are forced to perfect PHI, app development and EHR integration to commercialize products. 

Stel’s proprietary technology solves these complexities, so patients and care teams can more confidently adopt digital health and evolve care. Stel’s wireless (Bluetooth and cellular) Vitals Hub enables patients to share vitals with their care team without the use of WiFi or smartphones, and doesn’t require tech literacy. Patients simply plug in their Hub at home and measure their vitals with their preferred peripherals. The Stel Vitals Hub passively and securely transmits the data to the patient’s EHR or the care team’s preferred system. Since the start of the pandemic, Stel has transmitted millions of vitals measures from vulnerable patients to their care teams.

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

A: Among venture-funded companies, there’s a growing trend of disruption by replacing providers and care teams. This is typically seen by products that are stand-alone, vertically integrated solutions. This may work in other industries, but we don’t believe it works in healthcare. As a result, we’re taking a different approach with some novel product bets. 

First, we own the core technical stack to create better experiences for care teams and patients. There are no extra pairing steps for the Vitals Hub or monitoring devices, no apps and no extra buttons or switches. We couldn’t have achieved that level of simplicity with wireless connectivity unless we owned the operating system. 

Second, we’re building on existing community standards instead of mandating our own closed proprietary standards. Our platform promotes scalability by utilizing existing EHR or care platforms. Our push-based integration allows Stel to avoid acquiring PHI or customer data in the process. 

Third, the Vitals Hub promotes an expanding Bluetooth device ecosystem that can connect with hundreds of general and specialty devices for remote care. We pursued this device ecosystem strategy because we think it will accommodate and facilitate innovation from sensor and AI companies. Companies that use the Stel Vitals Hub can gain immediate access to data transmission without the financial or regulatory burden of cellular-connected products.

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

A: Virtual/remote care isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore–it’s necessary. The pandemic forced health systems to rapidly deploy new solutions to stay connected with patients. At larger health systems, new solutions typically start as pilots, and they can stall out for a lot of reasons. We think our platform is a great tool to avoid “pilot-itis” because it makes scaling a remote monitoring program much easier.

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

A: Stel’s ideal client can be a health system, a virtual care team, a digital health platform partner or a device manufacturer. Typically, our best customers are health systems that prioritize virtual care strategies and goals to reach tens of thousands of patients. These systems organize for success through committed leaders in the C-Suite (typically the CMO and CIO) and empowered stakeholders among population health and nursing outreach, physicians, IT and logistics. 

The most popular remote monitor programs are the ones that address chronic diseases like congestive heart failure or diabetes, perinatal hypertension and diabetes, VAD and transplant patients, home anticoagulation and enhanced recovery after surgery.

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

A: In a six-month study of 60 high risk congestive heart failure (CHF) patients assigned to a remote patient monitoring program powered by the Stel platform, the following results were achieved:

  • 50% reduction in 30 day all cause readmissions 

  • 83% reduction in 7 day all cause readmissions 

  • 100% reduction in 3 day all cause readmissions 

  • 29.8% improvement in length of stay 

  • Estimated pay for value savings greater than $60,000 

  • Estimated fee for service revenue of $58,000


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: Our ultimate goal is to prove that remote monitoring can and should be a sustainable organizational priority. We’d like to help health systems hit 10,000 weekly monitored patients. To achieve this, we have three product priorities:

  • Building our portfolio of high-quality device sensors and including newer cutting-edge remote monitoring devices. 

  • Adding on to our portfolio of best practices and workflows within EHRs and AI/care platforms to ultimately support expansion and sustained scalability

  • Expanding Stel’s operating system to support internet modems, routers, smart speakers and other internet gateways to facilitate greater patient connection with care teams.


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

A: Our subject matter experts have the knowledge to help our customers consider revenue impact options for their digital health programs, and we can provide modeling to assist clients as they make business decisions around fee-for-service billing and value-based incentives. Stel experts join health system leaders in considering clinical use case expansion based population attributes and assists health systems in exploring new devices that can be paired with the Stel Hub to address patient needs. When new clinical use cases require a new device, Stel partners with device manufacturers to explore new device integration and sourcing.

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

A: More than 150 million people in the US have a chronic illness and it’s well-documented that monitoring the primary vital sign associated with a particular chronic illness can help reduce preventable utilization and cost, allow providers to reach more people with improved efficiency and improve quality of life for patients and quality of life for providers.

We see three major opportunities that are relevant to the Quadruple Aim. First, health system leadership should embrace a commitment to include digital health within its strategic care delivery continuum. Organizations that do that are empowered to move with clarity and purpose as they make technology, workflow and clinical use case decisions, and they’re less likely to experience stalled pilots and program investments that don’t scale. Second, health systems should also deploy strategies to remove friction from provider workflows, instead of replacing providers with tech solutions that only address narrow use cases. Third–and arguably the most important–is that health systems should prioritize safe and secure care for vulnerable populations. Things like transcription errors during manual EHR data entry, apps with poor security, digital literacy and inequitable access need to be addressed with a digital health program that can overcome those barriers.

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

A: During the pandemic, the global healthcare system was forced to evolve care to the home.  Safe, secure, and equitable care at home is now the new standard, and demands innovation that can meet current needs and strategies for the future. In the future, we believe digital health innovation will focus on patient accessibility, device quality, workflow efficiency and program scalability. Innovations that stand on these pillars  will facilitate the continued evolution of care to the home in sustainable programs that can reach millions of patients with acute and chronic conditions.

 

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