IMS Health, Proteus Digital among 8 founding partners for Keck virtual healthcare clinic

The University of Southern California Center for Body Computing has teamed with 8 partners to launch a Virtual Care Clinic. The idea with VCC is to create an integrated approach to the use of mobile apps, "virtual" doctors, artificial intelligence, data collection and analysis, as well as diagnostics and wearable sensors to create truly on-demand healthcare.

The partners involved in this effort are peer-reviewed clinical trial database startup Doctor Evidence, drug data resource IMS Health ($IMS), consumer design firm Karten Design, HIPAA-compliant cloud platform Medable, video creator Planet Grande, sensor-enabled pill startup Proteus Digital Health and vision player VSP Global.  

VSP's next-gen sensor-embedded eyewear prototype, dubbed Project Genesis, will be refined and tested at the VCC in consultation with USC CBC, which is the digital health innovation accelerator at Keck School of Medicine. The VCC will also involve USC's Institute of Creative Technologies (ICT).

Dr. Leslie Saxon, USC Center for Body Computing founder and executive director

"Our Virtual Care Clinic is not only the democratization of health care allowing anyone access to our medical experts without leaving their home, but it also capitalizes on the promise that digital health is supposed to offer," said USC CBC founder and Executive Director Dr. Leslie Saxon in a statement.

She continued, "Because we have worked in collaboration with our VCC partners and our medical experts, this healthcare model will empower patients, improve quality outcomes with more precision medicine analytics and diagnosis, and enhance the physician-patient relationship by creating a contextualized experience and seamless communication that puts the patient in the driver seat of their own healthcare experience and outcomes."

ICT and CBC have already co-hosted a virtual reality health hackathon aimed at working to improve patients' understanding and experience. The CBC isn't alone--there are roughly a dozen digital health programs and institutes that have emerged over the last three to four years. The CBC, which was founded in 2007, has access to the roughly 1,500 Keck faculty, doctors and researchers.

In the next few months, the VCC will start by offering access to USC Eye Institute and Institute of Urology staffers--with access expected to ultimately extend throughout all the Keck Medicine physicians.

"University-based medical centers like ours are natural sources of health care innovation given the focus on basic science, clinical and translational research," said Keck SVP and COO Tom Jackiewicz. "But to achieve truly transformational medicine, we have to collaborate with the private sector, particularly the digital health and technology companies."

- here is the announcement