Amwell Releases Open Platform for Integrating Multiple Virtual Care Applications

Telehealth vendor Amwell has released a platform allowing providers to integrate multiple types of virtual health services using a single infrastructure.

Amwell’s Converge platform is designed to integrate with existing workflows, EHRs, patient portals and consumer digital health technologies. It offers access to single sign-on technology and its APIs leverage FHIR. Its goal is to create a streamlined and regulatory–compliant exchange of information across its ecosystem.

With the Converge launch, Amwell is making several of the company’s products, programs and modules available, along with applications from other vendors, in a single place with a single code base.

Products available from outside vendors include:

  • An iteration of Google Cloud which will include real-time captioning and translation services designed to help providers deliver patient education during visits
  • Livestream-based telehealth technology from TytoCare, which includes a handheld device offering visual feedback during exams
  • Virtual second opinion services from the Cleveland Clinic
  • Support for wearable wireless remote patient monitoring devices from Biobeat, which offer continuous monitoring of 15 vital signs

In addition, Amwell is working with partners to develop apps for its own App Marketplace.

It will be interesting to see whether providers and other digital health vendors see the Converge platform as a tool for making their lives easier or merely another environment to maintain.

Over the short term, I’ll be particularly interested to see whether providers see this platform as a way of meeting the information blocking requirements set by the recent ONC final rule on the subject.

As part of its announcement, meanwhile, Amwell also offered a preview of its pending home TV solution. The new Carepoint device, which developed in collaboration with Solaborate, is an AI-powered platform designed to bring hospital care into the home via a TV-based interface.

I haven’t seen a demo of this system but I hope to do so, as I’m eager to see what its user interface will look like and just as importantly, how and in what form the device will deliver data to clinicians.

The telehealth-using-TV concept makes a lot of sense when you consider that the older, sicker patients most likely be homebound and in need of those services often find existing telehealth remote monitoring devices to be confusing.

According to a recent research study, millions of seniors aren’t ready to participate fully, or in some cases at all, participate in telehealth visits due in part to a lack of technical knowledge. If Amwell can make Carepoint look and feel enough like a TV entertainment interface it could do much to make these services more accessible.

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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