Health Companion
Mobile-first patient engagement

Today, as healthcare transitions from fee-for-service model to value-based care, patient engagement and relationship management are becoming crucial components of a successful healthcare delivery operation. At the same time, the growing significance of consumerism and data democratization in the healthcare arena is driving changes in patient behaviors and expectations. In fact, an increasing number of modern-day patients are demanding transparency and the ability to self-manage their health information, thereby causing healthcare providers to seek robust collaborative platforms that can consolidate patient data from various disparate sources. Another prime driver of a tech-driven patient engagement solution is the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has replaced traditional, face-to-face consultations with remote and virtual doctor-patient communication.

Addressing this growing need with its comprehensive patient engagement platform that assists healthcare providers, payers, and employers in securely, seamlessly, and effectively managing and leveraging patient data is Texas-based Health Companion. “Our platform acts as the central location where doctors and patients alike, can view, manage, and share health status information to relevant entities in a highly secure and compliant manner,” says George Samuel, CEO at Health Companion.

The company’s platform is 100 percent HIPAA compliant with all of its transactions executed via HL7, CCDA and/or FHIR interfaces and OAuth 2.0-powered user authorization and access. Health Companion is also a certified electronic medical record (EMR) provider, thereby eliminating the concerns with respect to compliance with data storage and transfer regulations. From a cybersecurity standpoint, the company leverages AWS’ unmatched security alongside several automated tools for assessing inventory and privilege access, managed VPNs, SSL-enabled mobile-based and web-portals, and encrypted backups. “There is a comprehensive checklist that we go through our entire DevOps cycle to ensure robust controls and regulatory compliance,” adds Samuel.

Apart from its patient engagement features, Health Companion also offers full-fledged personal health record (PHR) capabilities for the provider and the consumer. As a result, even healthcare vendors that do not use Health Companion can receive critical health information from their platform. Patients can facilitate seamless switching between physicians via the provision of selective access and secure information transfer. A huge part of achieving this level of aggregation with a majority of healthcare information management systems is the underlying interoperability capabilities built into the platform. Health Companion’s unparalleled IoT integration, allowing doctors and patients to share real-time data, makes the tool indispensable for healthcare delivery marketplace.

For physicians, Health Companion offers one-stop-shop solutions for the enhancement of their practices’ workflow efficiency.

Our mobile-first patient engagement solution helps providers to implement decentralized digital capabilities to dramatically improve patient interactions, satisfaction and productivity

Physicians can directly communicate with their patients via secure chat, messaging and video. As a result, physicians can share vital information such as prep work for a diagnostic or surgical procedure proactively or implement and monitor a discharge protocol, thereby saving time. On the other hand, Health Companion also helps doctors confirm that a patient will keep their appointment, get critical health forms electronically signed, and collect co-pay payments. Its just-in-time arrival workflow enables patients to by-pass the waiting-room and facilitates contact-free appointments. Additionally, the company’s platform uses its machine learning (ML) algorithms to assess a patient’s social, geographical, and financial parameters, thereby aiding doctors in gaining a more holistic view of the patient. “Our mobile-first patient engagement solution helps providers to implement decentralized digital capabilities to dramatically improve patient interactions, satisfaction and productivity,” states Samuel.

With such strong competencies, Health Companion has ignited several customer success stories since its inception in 2012. In one instance, the company assisted an imaging center in south-eastern United States to improve their workflow efficiency significantly. Typically, the client had nearly 900 appointments every day and several people managing patient interactions such as periodic reminders, delivery of prep instructions, collecting forms, copays and more. As a result, the imaging center was spending an inordinate amount of people’s time and yet, not able to optimize patient flow. With Health Companion, the client was able to increase the efficiency by automating the patient appointment and onboarding process. With the machine learning models, Health Companion was also able to identify patients with high probability of ‘no show’, so the client can focus on those patients who were poised to miss their appointments.

Looking ahead, Health Companion is planning to expand its patient engagement capabilities in clinical, administrative and financial areas. In pursuit of this, the company is incorporating additional ML models that can extract more value from patient data and improve the data collection aspect with IOT and other means. “We will continue to build out Health Companion to help our clients better engage their patients, extract actionable insights, and add value to their overall patient care process,” concludes Samuel.