Amwell Further Advances Digital Connectivity with Next Generation Telehealth Platform
Converge platform provides a single meeting place for virtual care needs across the care continuum; open architecture supports third party innovators
BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Amwell®, (NYSE: AMWL) a national telehealth leader, today unveiled its next-generation Converge™ telehealth platform at its annual Client Forum. Born out of the profound shift in telehealth usage during the COVID 19 pandemic, from transactional to longitudinal care, this flexible and scalable platform is designed to provide deeper connectivity between healthcare players with unmatched simplicity, reliability, and scalability. With the Converge platform, Amwell’s products, programs, modules and Carepoint™ devices, as well as applications from leading innovators, will be available in one place with a single code base, further enhancing Amwell’s seamless and unified care experience and strengthening existing patient provider relationships across all types of care.
“Digital distribution of care is here,” said Dr. Roy Schoenberg, President and co-CEO, Amwell. “Telehealth morphed, almost overnight, from a promising technology to an existential platform in the operation of healthcare – alongside EHRs, claim systems and e-prescribing. We are witnessing a new consensus that the future care of any one patient will inevitably involve a mix of physical, digital and asynchronous/AI-based care. We designed the Converge platform to support, simplify, and delight patients, clinicians, and the healthcare tenants around them, as they rapidly embrace this new balance of care. Its open architecture invites customers and innovators to extend their reach, and all of us to imagine a more graceful healthcare experience, with technology on our side.”
The platform’s open architecture is designed to host and operate applications from innovators – further enabling rapid progress towards digitally enabled healthcare. By embracing a diverse group of developers as part of the platform, clients are able to pick and choose the capabilities that matter most to them. Examples include:
- Google Cloud: Leveraging AI and natural language processing technologies powered by Google Cloud, real-time captioning and translation services will advance provider choices for patient education by surfacing related health education materials based on a patient’s visit. AI-powered tools will engage patients and their care teams before, during and after visits to drive better health insights and outcomes.
- TytoCare: Livestream integration enables improved diagnosis and treatment for virtual visits using the award-winning TytoCare handheld exam kit featuring built-in visual guidance technology.
- The Clinic: Providers can request virtual second opinion services for patients, connecting them to one of 3,500 Cleveland Clinic physicians in over 550 advanced sub-specialties via the Amwell platform.
- Biobeat: Offering a wearable, wireless remote patient monitoring device in two forms: a wrist-monitor for long-term use and a disposable chest-monitor for short-term use, Biobeat provides a tool for the continuous monitoring of 15 vital signs including: blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygenation and respiratory rate. Biobeat devices are used by healthcare organizations and pharma companies globally; a Biobeat app would enable providers to receive alerts on patient health status and potential deterioration via an AI-powered, automated real-time early warning score system.
In addition, Amwell offered a peek at its forthcoming Home TV solution. Developed in collaboration with Solaborate, the Home TV Carepoint device, powered by advanced AI, is designed to bring hospital care into the home environment via an easy-to-use TV-based experience.
“We realize that transformation is all about partnership and collaboration,” said Dr. Ido Schoenberg, Chairman and co-CEO, Amwell. “By bringing together Amwell’s best-in-class solutions with those from across the ecosystem, we are uniquely able to deliver a solution that both supports a long list of capabilities across the full care continuum, from episodic to longitudinal care, and enables native connectivity between all players. We also understand that these players have unique needs, and these needs will evolve, so we have built the Converge platform to be highly scalable, modular and future-ready, giving clients the ability to reimagine new ways of using telehealth over time.”
“At the start of the pandemic, we integrated telehealth as a way to meet demand but have quickly realized the need to make telehealth a permanent component of our care access model,” said Susan Pleasants, MD, the Chief Medical Informatics Officer with M Health Fairview. “Core to the success of our program and high satisfaction rates thus far has been having a virtual care platform that is fully integrated with our EHR and embedded in our patient portal. These components have allowed us to create a more simple, more cohesive user experience for both patients and providers, while helping us increase efficiency and expand the reach of our virtual services to other community locations.”
Central to the Converge platform is its enhanced reliability and simplicity, featuring fast and reliable video and audio connections and the ability to easily upgrade these core components over time – ensuring that clients have access to the best connectivity experience for the future. The platform can be integrated with existing workflows, EHRs, patient portals, and consumer experiences, to support the delivery of care no matter where the patient or provider originates and resulting in faster and easier deployment. The single platform approach means a unified identity system that enables a streamlined and regulatory compliant exchange of information and services across the ecosystem.
“UPMC Health Plan expanded its telehealth capacity during the pandemic to meet increasing member demand, which quintupled in the 12 months after the start of the pandemic,” said Natasha Khouri, Associate Vice President, Telehealth Strategy Solutions, UPMC Health Plan. “The past year has proven that telemedicine can be a convenient, clinically appropriate means by which to deliver accessible, high-quality health care to our members and we expect to continue to add even more virtual care options to further strengthen member-provider relationships and improve health outcomes.”
To learn more about the Converge platform visit: https://business.amwell.com/solution-overview/
About Amwell
Amwell is a leading telehealth platform in the United States and globally, connecting and enabling providers, insurers, patients, and innovators to deliver greater access to more affordable, higher quality care. Amwell believes that digital care delivery will transform healthcare. The Company offers a single, comprehensive platform to support all telehealth needs from urgent to acute and post-acute care, as well as chronic care management and healthy living. With over a decade of experience, Amwell powers telehealth solutions for over 2,000 hospitals and over 55 health plan partners with over 36,000 employers, covering over 80 million lives. For more information, please visit https://business.amwell.com/.
American Well, Amwell, Converge and Carepoint are registered trademarks or trademarks of American Well Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements about us and our industry that involve substantial risks and uncertainties and are based on our beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to us. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this press release, including statements regarding our future results of operations, financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “will,” or “would,” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions.
Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements represent our beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this release. These statements, and related risks, uncertainties, factors and assumptions, include, but are not limited to: weak growth and increased volatility in the telehealth market; inability to adapt to rapid technological changes; increased competition from existing and potential new participants in the healthcare industry; changes in healthcare laws, regulations or trends and our ability to operate in the heavily regulated healthcare industry; our ability to comply with federal and state privacy regulations; the significant liability that could result from a cybersecurity breach; and other factors described under ‘Risk Factors’ in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and our subsequent filings with the SEC. These risks are not exhaustive. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. Further information on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated by our forward-looking statements is included in the reports we have filed or will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings, when available, are available on the investor relations section of our website at investors.amwell.com and on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
Contacts
Holly Spring
press@amwell.com
781.888.8219
