American Well Deal Adds Remote Physical Exams To Its Offerings

Telehealth provider American Well has partnered with a vendor allowing patients to conduct and transfer data from their own basic physical exam during telemedical consults.

The partner, TytoCare, offers an “examination platform” allowing patients to do their own medical examination of the heart, lungs, abdomen, ears, throat, skin and temperature at home, then share the information with the clinician before or during their virtual visit.

Tyto’s consumer platform TytoHome, which is priced at $299, combines a digital stethoscope, otoscope, thermometer and examination camera. The company also offers a model, TytoPro, designed for professional use, which offers extended battery life, a headset for listening to heart and lung sounds, initial set of disposables for the otoscope and tongue depressor, and software designed specifically for clinician use. The company doesn’t say what the Pro technology costs.

Tyto’s software platform, meanwhile, offers cloud-based secure digital exchange of clinical data and a clinical repository. The company says it can integrate with most EHR systems as part of its TytoLink integration services. It doesn’t say what those integration services will cost, but it seems likely that they don’t come free.

At least at the outset, the partners plan to deliver services to health systems and employers, but without a doubt plans to scale beyond this. And they’re likely to have the resources to do so. American Well has established a foothold in telemedicine, while Tyto Care has received over $19 million in funding to date from investors that include Walgreens.

It’s worth noting at this point that TytoCare is far from the only player in the market offering remote examination tools. For example, I’m familiar with at least one vendor, MedWand Digital Health, offering a similar bundle of remote examination technologies. The MedWand platform lets consumers measure their heart rate or pulse or pulse ox level, listen to their heart, lungs or abdomen, look into their mouth, throat and ears, examine their skin and take the temperature. It can also integrate with other remote monitoring tools, such as connected glucometers of blood pressure monitors. It sells for $249.

And MedWand, like TytoCare, has venture backing, in this case from a technical partner. The company recently received a “major” investment from the venture arm for Maxim Integrated Products, which designs, manufactures and sells semiconductor products.

In my opinion, however, American Well may have a meaningful advantage over other competitors, as it appears to have fairly strong connections with health plans and health systems. The telehealth vendor has partnerships with more than 170 health plans and systems, and has created an enterprise telehealth platform designed to connect with providers’ clinical information systems.

While a company like MedWand may be better position to scale up a consumer technology offering — given backing by a semiconductor maker — over the near term I’d argue that better to be on good terms with those delivering and financing care. Right now, my guess is that very few consumers are willing to sink almost $300 into a home telehealth platform, even if they occasionally use telemedicine services, but this seems little doubt that health systems and health plans see the value of offering such services in a sophisticated way.

If I were either of these companies — or one of their competitors — I’d try to employers, health plans and health systems to buy and place the devices in the homes of chronically ill or high risk patients. But I don’t know if that’s in their plans. Let’s see how the next 12 months go.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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