Case Study

A Recognized Opportunity for Innovation:

The Cloud and Things Approach:

The Cloud and Things innovation team analyzed the existing processes and presented the concept of a connected care platform. The approach provided for three user experience designed portals supporting: (1) Primary Care Providers; (2) Clinicians; and, (3) Patients. In the spirit of the Cloud and Things Lab Connect concept, a development team of Salesforce CRM expert developers were engaged through our Cloud and Things partner. The Salesforce CRM and its Health Cloud functionalities were leveraged as the base components for the application powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud solutions.

Following the conceptual design, the solution was incrementally analyzed and developed by applying agile methodologies to create and execute the roadmap. The iterative approach involved reviewing and reiterating the work in progress through daily standup meetings, a weekly walkthrough with the client to gather feedback, and the capture of requirement contributions for both the minimal viable product as well as future enhancement backlogs.

A decision was made to ‘start small’ with pilots that engaged local practices, patients and clinicians, while creating a scalable framework which had the potential to expand to state, national and subsequently, international use. This vision helped the team remain focused on the niche, but to not lose sight of the overarching goals supporting risk prevention, patient retention, Participating Care Provider features, and business strategies.

Achievement of Substantial Benefits:

Compared to the traditional 60 minutes of an interviewing session, the interviewing process is typically now under 45 minutes with the connected care solution. The initial rollout involved more than 100 patients receiving treatment, who were referred by different Primary Care Physicians from 4 major practices involving over 20 onboarded physicians. The system has been constructed to support further integration through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms that can enable the clinicians and prescribers to develop insights, forecast trends, identify anomalies, and establish constructive methodologies to support improved treatment quality for incoming patients as the treatment support demand grows.

Through the innovative connected care process automation, the initial screening and interview has been reduced to three business days from what previously took several weeks. The end-to-end process has been streamlined with the implementation of the cloud-based assessment questionnaire, documentation, and reporting tools that provide an online, user friendly, efficient, and outcome focused operation. Elimination of manual paperwork on the part of physicians, clinicians and prescribers results in time and cost savings that are supportive of higher volumes for treatment. Overall the digital transformation provided by Cloud and Things results in improved data management practices, compliance, and security.

The outcome is that patients feel more empowered, with more clarity, to tackle their behaviorial disorders. Independent studies conducted by the research team suggest that connected care system successfully accomplished a 70% decline in the drop out rate of the patients after being referred to the system. Compared to any other interviewing and assessment system, there is nearly a 100% increase in supporting information, which has led to improved accuracy in assessing the patient’s background, history, and overall mental health. This has contributed to a 49% reduction in psychiatric admissions, thereby reducing the risk of crisis by maximizing efficacy and outcome. The end result is that more patients have displayed recoveries of their mental health symptoms, enabling themselves to lead better, elevated and risk-free lives.