New Healthcare Platform for Black Americans Will Include Telehealth, mHealth

Telehealth and mHealth services will figure prominently in a recently announced project by several large corporations to create a healthcare platform directed at the Black community.

Doctor On Demand, Grand Rounds Health and Medtronic are joining Walmart, Target, Best Buy, State Farm, Genentech and Accenture – all members of the Black Community Innovation Coalition – to create a “dedicated care concierge and healthcare navigation platform” aimed at reducing barriers to care access and boosting health equity among Black Americans.

“Health disparities in the Black community have been a known problem for decades, and the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the inequities around access and advocacy that have been driven by a pattern of structural and interpersonal discrimination,” Ian Tong, Chief Medical Officer of Grand Rounds Health and Doctor On Demand and the coalition’s executive leader, said in a press release. “We are proud to have built the capabilities to help under-resourced populations over the past decade into a solution tailored for Black Americans. The community has long deserved resources that provide agency over care direction, advocacy, and access to improve trust, care experiences, and outcomes.”

The effort is the largest to date to take on the social determinants of health, non-clinical factors that affect healthcare access and outcomes. They include groups and programs aimed not only at addressing the challenges that connected health exacerbates – like digital literacy and broadband connectivity – but the ways that these tools and platforms can reduce barriers for underserved communities.

Through next spring, this project will lead focus groups and other efforts that target asynchronous and synchronous data collection around some of the top health issues faced by Black Americans, including maternal fetal health, cardiometabolic disease and access to primary care and behavioral health services.

The group expects to launch a healthcare platform sometime in early 2022.