Highmark Health partners with Verily subsidiary on chronic care issues
Highmark Health is again collaborating with Verily to provide member clinicians specific treatments and other solutions for COPD and congestive heart failure.
The six-year venture builds off of Highmark’s current partnership with Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences arm. The company’s subsidiary health management company Onduo offers Type 2 diabetes management to Highmark clinicians and members.
Verily will use Highmark member data to build AI and machine learning algorithms to target patients’ chronic conditions. Clinicians including doctors and health coaches will engage patients with various solutions in an effort to prevent conditions from worsening.
Pittsburgh-based Highmark has 5 million members on its insurance rolls.
Onduo piloted a diabetes caremanagement model with Highmark in 2020. The two companies will use Google Cloud to integrate patient solutions into Highmark’s Living Health Model, which member health providers have access to, according to Dr. Tony Farah, Highmark Health’s executive vice president and chief medical and clinical transformation officer.
Verily and Onduo will pull data from patient claims, direct care and patient inputs. Then, a clinical insights platform will produce solutions for the patient. Machine learning and AI will also help determine what kind of provider is best positioned to engage with each individual. It could be a doctor in an office setting, but could also be a health coach or educator, according to Dr. Vindell Washington, Onduo’s CEO.
Highmark’s Farah said engagement from members can range from the single digits, to about 70% when a clinician or other provider is involved. That buy-in from providers to execute the solutions is crucial; Onduo held sessions with clinicians at the start of the diabetes pilot last year. Farah said the tool is expected to reduce the total cost of care.
Last year, Highmark signed a sixyear contract with another Alphabet company, Google Cloud, to build its Living Health platform, which includes centralized scheduling, care management, analytics and artificial intelligence tools.
Onduo has also partnered with many other organizations, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association plans in 2017, and self-insured employer Walgreens in 2018.