ChristianaCare Designs its Own Telehealth Platform for Amazon Alexa

A Delaware health system has customized an Amazon Alexa mHealth app to give patients personalized care management information at home.

Wilmington-based ChristianaCare announced this week that the Home Care Coach mHealth app will be prescribed for home care patients to use on the voice-enabled digital assistant platform. The app was designed at ChristianaCare’s Health & Technology Innovation Center.

“We have a bold vision of the future: All care that can be digital will be digital, and all care that can be done in the home or in the community will be done in the home or in the community,” Janice Nevin, MD, MPH, CEO of the three-hospital health system, said in a press release. “Engaging patients digitally is more important than ever right now, as it will help them reach their health goals, improve their experience, and shape the future of health care as we know it.”

With healthcare providers adopting telehealth and remote patient monitoring platforms to extend care into the home, they’re looking for tools that can guide patients along a care path and keep them in touch with their care providers. They’ve been keeping a close eye on the evolution of digital assistants like Alexa, Cortana and Siri for the last few years.

Last year, Amazon announced that Alexa supports HIPAA-compliant services and formed a team of healthcare providers to develop healthcare uses for the platform.

Now others are jumping onto the bandwagon.

“Voice assistants are in millions of homes in the US,” Randy Gaboriault, ChristianaCare’s chief digital and information officer, said in the press release. “By leveraging this technology, we are creating a new model of care within patients’ homes to support the best health outcomes possible.”

Lowell General Hospital has also custom-tuned the connected health platform to meet patient needs.

Last year, the Massachusetts-based hospital partnered with digital health company Frontive to design an app that allows patients recovering at home from knee surgery to access personalized care management information.

“Our patients often get pages and pages of discharge instructions that we’re not even sure they read,” Barbara Viens, the hospital’s director of orthopedic services, told mHealthIntelligence. “There’s a lot of information there that we go over with them while they’re in the hospital, but once they leave that connection with them is gone.”

“We’re giving these patients the opportunity to take control of their care at home,” she said. “I think this will help fill in the gaps in care that lead to hospital readmissions. It’s personal to the patient. It can be their coach. But you have to be clear about what you expect from the technology and what you’re going to get. The patient wants to know what the patient wants to know.”