I have commented in previous notes about the increasing role of health insurance companies like UnitedHealth Group as healthcare providers (see, for example: Major Trends for the Year: Payers Use IT to Provide Total Care Management; OptumHealth, a Division of UnitedHealth, to Offer Virtual Patient Visits Nationwide). This trend, along with the growth of walk-in clinics in "big box" stores, will provide competition for health systems in the area of primary care. Now comes news that the UnitedHealth Group is launching its own e-health record in 2019 (see: UnitedHealth Group to Launch Electronic Health Records Platform in 2019). Below are the details:
Before the end of 2019, UnitedHealth Group plans to introduce an electronic health records (EHR) system that it developed internally....UnitedHealth Group...CEO David Wichmann announced plans to roll out a “fully individualized, fully portable” EHR platform in 2019 by leveraging Rally, their existing mobile wellness platform....With 20 million registered [health insurance] users already using Rally, this could encourage adoption and use of the new EHR among UnitedHealth Group’s 50 million fully benefited members....Exact details of the platform’s capabilities are still unclear. However, additional information...indicates that the new platform might function more like Apple’s approach to personal health records (PHRs) and less like a traditional EHR....
Coverage from Forbes [see: UnitedHealth Group: 50M To Access New Personal Health Record In 2019] indicates the UnitedHealth IHR will be available to both patients and healthcare providers, with UnitedHealth Group predicting usage by one million medical care providers by the end of 2019. “A traditional electronic medical record focuses largely on streamlining internal business processes for facilities and medical groups,” Steve Nelson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare (UHC),.... “But the IHR [individual health record] connects numerous EMRs, creating a unified and secure source of truth for both consumers and care providers, and unlocking the value of data that is currently trapped in today’s fragmented healthcare system....This would allow UnitedHealth to utilize the strong points of Optum—a UnitedHealth Group venture focused on providing health services and innovations—to leverage analytics capabilities aimed at both encouraging patients to take an active role in managing their health and finding the best providers in their area.
First of all, its important to understand that OptumHealth, a division of the UnitedHealth Group, is one of the largest employer of physicians in the country (see: OptumHealth, One of the Largest Employer of MDs, Pursues Telemedicine). As such, the company perhaps should develop an office EHR for the use of its MD employees rather than depending on a commercial product. UnitedHealth thus seems to be in the process of deploying an upgraded version of Rally for use in physician offices and simultaneously offering it to its insurance clients where it would function as an IHR (individual or personal health record). This is a strategy similar to that being pursued by Apple for its iPhone Health app absent the office EHR component (see: Apple Has Plans to Copy EHR Records to iPhones and Apple Watches).
Rally has previously served as an IHR-like product for UnitedHealth insurance clients. One of the previous goals for Rally was to provide wellness coaching. By moving to a more robust platform including heath data, the Rally successor could then provide a higher level of surveillance of health risks. For example, if the consumer has a history of congestive heart failure, the IHR could be designed to accept data from a smart watch monitoring heart function or a home blood pressure device. Using algorithms from Optum, the IHR could also function proactively in terms of its recommendations to healthcare consumers. This may be one of the goals of the new Rally release: to provide an IHR that contains health data and also utilizes algorithms provided by Optum to make recommendations as part of its health coaching feature.
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