Partnership Aims to Enhance Remote Examination Capabilities

Overlake Medical Center and Clinics recently partnered with virtual care company TytoCare to add remote examination devices with the aim of improving virtual care capabilities and healthcare access.

Based in Bellevue, Washington, Overlake Medical Center and Clinics is a nonprofit healthcare system that includes a 349-bed hospital and a network of primary, urgent, and specialty care clinics.

TytoCare provides solutions and services that enable clinicians to replicate physical exams for both acute and chronic conditions remotely.

Overlake Medical Center and Clinics has introduced TytoCare's Home Smart Clinic solution into its Concierge Care medical service through this partnership. The goal is to enable providers to diagnose and care for patients remotely.

The TytoCare Home Smart Clinic provides users with a broad range of resources for virtual care assessments. These include the Food and Drug Administration-cleared remote physical examination kit, which providers can use to conduct medical exams of the heart, skin, ears, throat, abdomen, and lungs, along with heart rate and body temperature measurements.

“We are excited to be partnering with Overlake – our first partnership of this kind in the region – as they look to virtual care to strategically improve their core patient offerings,” said Dedi Gilad, co-founder and CEO of TytoCare, in a press release. “As we continue to expand across the US, we seek health system partners like Overlake who prioritize not only quality of care, but user engagement. Our Home Smart Clinic offering tackles this on both fronts, providing patients with clinic-quality care from the comfort of home, while improving their experience and usage through tailored support and care across a range of modalities and patient populations.”

The remote exam kit includes various devices, such as a pulse oximeter, a blood pressure cuff, and a weight scale, which will be provided to members of the Overlake Clinics Concierge Care service. With these devices, providers can offer patients access to a wide range of diagnostic tests.

“Our priority for our patients is to provide the best possible personalized treatment, while simultaneously working to raise the bar on quality and access to care,” says Kelan Koenig, MD, Overlake Clinics' chief physician executive, in a press release.

The organizations plan to expand the scope of the partnership throughout 2023.

This is the latest partnership to expand virtual care access to improve patient outcomes.

Similarly, in February, UVA Health and a Southwest Virginia-based coalition of healthcare groups partnered to improve access to virtual healthcare to assist COVID-19 patients and those with chronic health conditions.

Amid the healthcare access challenges and adverse outcomes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, various Virginia counties have struggled to improve chronic care management.

 UVA Health and various healthcare groups formed the Virginia Consortium to Advance Health in Appalachia to combat this issue. This effort aims to expand healthcare access through virtual care, technology, and home monitoring services.