Boston Scientific ($BSX) will support its largest business segment, cardiovascular, by rolling out a cloud-based digital care solution that's aimed at giving hospitals greater insight into their chronic cardiovascular population and patients. To do so, it's teamed up with software giant Accenture ($ACN).
The partners developed the solution, called Advantics Care Pathway Transformation, in conjunction with two of the biggest hospitals in Scandinavia: Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden and Tampere Heart Hospital in Finland. That program was specifically focused on assessing the care delivery for heart failure patients and how that could be improved. Heart failure is one of the costlier diseases when it comes to ongoing management that accounts for roughly 2% of healthcare spending, they noted.
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| Mike Mahoney, Boston Scientific CEO |
"Boston Scientific and Accenture designed this digital health platform to help providers standardize care, reduce overall length of stay and lower readmission rates," said Boston Scientific President and CEO Mike Mahoney in a statement. "The Care Pathway Transformation solution is designed to support healthcare professionals and patients to have more informed relationships, leading to better health outcomes and lower costs for health systems. Together, we are addressing an acute need for some of the most costly chronic conditions."
Advantics includes three main measurements: pathway analytics of how a patient moves through each step in the hospital system; care management of how often patients are diagnosed, treated and monitored and by whom as well as vital signs and risk analysis; and, finally, patient engagement of how patients are monitored and receive communication during a hospital stay and after discharge.
The expectation is that closely monitoring and addressing these indicators will enable Boston Scientific to provide better overall and individual care, as well as to cut costs.
"The collaboration with Boston Scientific and Accenture exposed significant opportunities to increase provider collaboration and improve the quality of care that patients experience when coming to our hospital," said Tampere Heart Hospital CEO Dr. Kari Niemelä. "For example, we identified a 25% unnecessary heart failure readmissions rate, and therefore a definite need for better care coordination, supported by modern technology and processes that can decrease overall costs."
- here is the announcement