UPMC Telehealth Spinoff Enhances its Infectious Disease Resources

A telehealth company spun out of UPMC to provide expertise on infectious diseases is bulking up its resources to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

Infectious Disease Connect (ID Connect) announced this week that it is merging with ILUM Health Solutions, part of pharma giant Merck’s business group. UPMC is retaining a majority stake in the company, and as part of the agreement the hospital’s innovation and commercialization unit, UPMC Enterprises, and the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund are each investing $5 million in the company.

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The move reflects a growing interest in telemedicine and mHealth technology designed to improve a healthcare provider’s ability to detect, triage and care for patients with infectious diseases. With many hospitals and health systems rushing to quarantine contagious patients from care providers and other patients and to treat them in isolation, connected health platforms that facilitate treatment are a hot commodity.

Infectious disease management is not only important in containing outbreaks and improving outcomes, but also to expand access to clinical decision support tools that reduce reliance on drugs – which in turn can fuel drug resistance and render those drugs ineffective.

ID Connect came into being roughly one year ago to help small and rural hospitals struggling to find that expertise. At that time, the goal was to treat patients locally and support community-based approaches to care management.

“Hospitals absolutely understand this gap that they have,” Company President David Zynn told mHealthIntelligence in a May 2019 interview. “Without it, they lose patients (who are transferred to larger hospitals with the appropriate resources. “What we’re hearing from these hospitals right now is that we can help them keep their patients in the community … and continue to provide the care they need.”

The new partnership also gives ID Connect access to ILUM’s public health surveillance platform, created in conjunction with the New York State Department of Health to track threats like COVID-19.

“The rising level of resistance to antimicrobials remains a serious threat to public health, food safety and global security,” ILUM CEO Paul Edwards said in a press release. “This combination marries the excellence of Infectious Disease Connect’s physicians and telemedicine platform with the real-time intelligence needed to effectively manage increasingly complex and life-threatening infectious diseases, as seen in this current pandemic.”