Highmark Health announced a strategic collaboration with Verily that will complement and build upon the partnership it recently announced with Google Cloud — sister company to Verily within Alphabet — to develop its Living Health model.
How does it work?
The Living Health model is designed to eliminate the fragmentation in health care, re-engineering the health care delivery model to provide a seamless, simpler and smarter customer experience. In addition to offering improved interactions with patients, the Living Health model will free clinicians from time-consuming administrative tasks while providing them with timely personalized data, real-time remote monitoring, and actionable information about each patient.
The six-year collaboration agreement centers on Verily providing digitally-enabled care solutions to manage chronic conditions, with potential initial areas of focus to include congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as a clinical insights platform that will allow Highmark Health to use data to guide patients through personalized pathways for care. These solutions will be part of Highmark Health’s Living Health model for patients and clinicians.
Leveraging Verily’s advanced analytics and artificial intelligence and Highmark Health’s clinical insights and expertise — gathered through its unique relationship and experience with patients as both insurer and provider — these solutions will be refined through a robust, nimble, test-and-learn environment to build evidence and clinical validation for condition-specific solutions. Verily, and its subsidiary Onduo, will simultaneously collaborate with Google Cloud to integrate these chronic disease solutions into Highmark’s Living Health model and the Living Health Dynamic Platform currently being built on Google Cloud.
Ultimately, the Living Health Dynamic Platform will enable clinicians to determine the appropriate next set of personalized actions for each patient, taking into account comorbidities, patient interests and goals, and more. These chronic disease solutions will also extend care outside of the traditional clinical setting — integrating virtual care, digitally enabled devices and coaching to support patients in between visits.
On the record
“Highmark Health and Verily have a shared mission to truly transform health care,” commented Karen Hanlon, executive vice president and COO of Highmark Health. “A key component of that transformation is our Living Health model. We believe the collaboration with Verily and Google Cloud is the ideal trifecta of expertise that will enable us to create and deliver a remarkable health experience for patients through a holistic, digitally-enabled, personalized set of solutions, while also enabling clinicians, supported by a person’s health team, to focus on the specific needs of each patient and intervene at the right time to proactively prevent disease or its progression.”
“We’re thrilled to be working with Highmark across Verily’s health platforms to serve the needs of both patients and clinicians,” said Vivian Lee, MD, President of Health Platforms at Verily and Chair of the Board of Onduo. “As a leading integrated delivery network with a large population, Highmark is poised to show how a technology-enabled environment can help their members achieve better health in a personalized and accessible way that also lowers the costs of care. By providing actionable insights for patients and clinicians, the tools we build together will make the experience of health care more engaging and effective for all.”
The context
Built on top of Google Cloud’s secure, reliable infrastructure, privacy and security are a guiding principle of the Living Health model. Highmark Health controls access and use of its patient data using rigorous, long-standing organizational privacy controls and governance. Verily will join the existing Highmark Health-Google Cloud Governance structure, which includes Verily participants in each of the Committees: Executive Committee, Joint Steering Committee, and Data Ethics and Review Board (DEAR), which will ensure that uses of data are consistent with prescribed ethical principles, guidance, and customer expectations.