“Techquity” is the concept healthcare expertise can both be a barrier or conduit to extra accessible, equitable care, relying on its goal and design. Techquity as an idea can be the driving power behind a rising variety of startups – together with, and most meaningfully, healthcare platforms.

Just as a result of the healthcare expertise has gone digital doesn’t imply it’s readily accessible or straightforward to navigate – digitally or in any other case – for everybody, and definitely not equally. Digital inclusion, which some researchers have dubbed a “super” social determinant of health (SDoH), performs an more and more vital position in figuring out well being outcomes – and, relying on a wide range of components, can both exacerbate or bridge gaps in well being disparities.

The thought of healthcare expertise being both a barrier or conduit to extra accessible, equitable care is what’s been dubbed by many within the healthcare trade as “techquity.” Per the HLTH Foundation’s newly created Techquity for Health Coalition, techquity refers to “the strategic design, development, and deployment of technology to advance health equity, and acknowledgement that technology can inhibit advancements in health equity if not implemented intentionally and inclusively.”

It’s an ethos that’s on the core of most value-based healthcare supply organizations. It’s a precept that’s been baked into the Quadruple Aim, with the addition of fairness and inclusion as a pillar. Techquity can be the driving power behind a rising variety of startups aiming to enhance well being fairness and higher account for SDoH – together with, and maybe most excitingly, healthcare platforms.

Trends in Techquity

Techquity, as each an idea and name to motion, took middle stage at HLTH’s second annual ViVE conference in Nashville in March, the place the Techquity for Health Coalition introduced findings from its first nationwide survey on the subject. The National Techquity for Health survey builds on the group’s beforehand launched “The Path to Equity” report, which aimed to deliver consideration to the care inequities that may stem from well being tech that’s not designed with fairness in thoughts.

Among the important thing findings within the Coalition’s newest techquity survey embrace:

• 87% of contributors understood the idea and the way it related to their position, as soon as the time period was
• 66% of leaders say their organizations have initiatives in place to deal with well being fairness
• The hottest type of initiative to deal with well being fairness was via community-based partnerships

Given the character and complexity of addressing disparities in well being, there appears to be a widespread recognition that driving measurable enhancements won’t be achieved by anyone participant, and even anyone platform, and definitely not in a single day. But as a result of digital well being firms using platform enterprise fashions create value via facilitating connections and aligning pursuits amongst completely different stakeholder teams, they’re uniquely able to overcoming a lot of healthcare’s systemic points that immediately influence well being fairness: bettering entry (by effectively matching provide with demand), lowering info asymmetry, empowering clinicians (by giving them instruments and increasing their profession choices) and reducing transaction prices (by eradicating duplicative prices).

Maia Hightower, MD, MBA, MPH and Chief Digital & Technology Officer at University of Chicago Medicine, additionally makes the compelling case that digital well being firms needs to be addressing well being fairness in an effort to make their options extra engaging to potential healthcare clients. “When digital health companies pitch their solutions to me, I am looking for ways that the technology can be used to address health disparities,” explains Hightower.

Lost In Translation: Platforms Overcoming Language Barriers

According to an evaluation on Census Bureau information for 2018, 67.3 million U.S. residents speak a language aside from English at residence, with one in twelve U.S. sufferers being unable to speak in English effectively sufficient to know or be understood by their caregivers. Limited English-speaking and deaf sufferers are additionally disproportionately extra more likely to undergo opposed occasions, misdiagnosis, or mistreatment, the place analysis even suggests 55% of provider malpractices cases stem from miscommunication.

Language obstacles are undoubtedly a major driver of well being disparities and a pricey problem for all the healthcare system. One firm that’s using its platform to assist sufferers, caregivers and suppliers to beat points associated to language obstacles is Jeenie. Jeenie’s on-demand platform connects suppliers (and sufferers) with medically certified and HIPAA-compliant medical interpreters, obtainable 24/7, in 300+ languages, together with American Sign Language and indigenous languages. The firm boasts the connections are made in below 30 seconds, on both video or audio, and with out utilizing name facilities, operators, or “login hurdles.”

Rather than counting on the normal medical interpreter providers mannequin – which consists of a fancy chain of actors from distributors (who promote interpreter providers) to brokers (who join them to interpreter service suppliers) to name facilities (who employees and make use of interpreters) – Jeenie makes use of a technology-as-platform mannequin that immediately connects finish customers to medical interpreters which have signed as much as be a part of the Jeenie community. Think of Uber’s mannequin, however as a substitute of riders and drivers, it’s suppliers / sufferers on one aspect and medical interpreters on the opposite.

Gezzer Ortega, MD, MPH is a professor and researcher on well being disparities, and a surgeon at Mass General Brigham (MGB) , which makes use of the Jeenie platform. “The capacity to use Jeenie on any mobile device removes the limitation of providing interpreter services only within the walls of our hospital. We know the vast majority of our healthcare occurs outside of the hospital and Jeenie can be there as well for our patients,” Ortega explains.

Jeenie’s platform mannequin appears to be paying off. CEO Kirsten Brecht Baker notes that the corporate has grown its market footprint by 400% since its Series A fundraise in February 2022, and now has healthcare clients in all 50 states.

As the corporate brings on increasingly healthcare clients and sufferers, that elevated demand ought to make the platform extra engaging for extra medical interpreters, which will likely be vital to assembly each higher and extra numerous language wants. “Being able to support languages like K’ekchi’ and K’iche’, and other rare and indigenous languages, on video and on demand, is a great source of pride,” notes Brecht Baker.

Ortega stresses the significance of interpretation on affected person understanding of therapy plans and the way this may have an effect on medical outcomes, and that having a expertise platform that may scale to satisfy MGB’s numerous inhabitants is thrilling. “Knowing that we have the potential to address this problem for this population, motivates me to work on solutions necessary to provide equitable surgical care,” he notes.

Solving Broader Health Equity Challenges Through Platform Thinking

In addition to language providers, different ways in which platforms are addressing well being fairness embrace:

• Specialist referrals: Similar to Jeenie’s interpreters, healthcare organizations are relying extra on platforms to extra readily join their physicians with a community of specialists. RubiconMD, for instance, is a doctor seek the advice of platform that connects major care suppliers with specialists. Founded by Gil Addo and Carlos Reines, the corporate was envisioned as a means to enhance affected person entry to medical experience, partly based mostly on Addo’s family expertise of how inconvenient, pricey and inaccessible it may be for sufferers who’re required to journey repeatedly to see specialists. Currently connecting 8,000 major care physicians (PCPs) to its community of specialists, RubiconMD empowers the PCPs and sufferers by giving them trusted entry to medical specialists whereas respecting the trusted nature of their PCP-patient relationship.
• Community referral help: Healthcare platforms akin to UniteUs and NowPow are offering expertise infrastructure connecting sufferers (and their help system and supplier stakeholders) with a big selection of socially-directed providers and extra holistic care, together with help and assets for meals insecurity, housing, home help, psychological and behavioral well being, and plenty of different community-based assets.
• Improving tech design/combating bias: Hightower of University of Chicago is an advocate of expertise in healthcare, however has seen the dangers as effectively. “Bias in clinical algorithms is a problem. There are algorithms that have widen health disparities and caused harm to black populations,” she explains. To assist deal with this, Hightower based Equality AI, which gives evidence-based steerage for machine studying in healthcare. Perhaps extra importantly, the corporate additionally gives collaboration instruments to builders and constructing a group of builders and corporations that need to study from one another.
• Staffing wants: Platforms targeted on connecting expert caregivers and help professionals with sufferers or different caregivers are additionally changing into extra distinguished. Incredible Health constructed a digital nurse hiring platform that makes use of proprietary customized matching algorithms to match the most effective candidates to open roles at well being techniques and hospitals. Incredible Health’s CEO and co-founder, Iman Abuzeid M.D., CEO noted in 2022 that the corporate works with greater than 600 hospitals and is seeing greater than 10,000 nurses be part of its market each week.

Although we’re within the relative early days of the platform revolution in healthcare, and have solely begun to scratch the floor on well being fairness, the ability and potential for healthcare platforms is nice. Because platforms develop sooner, scale faster, and obtain greater valuations than non-platform (pipeline enterprise mannequin) well being tech firms, they’re not only a smarter guess for buyers, they’ve a greater likelihood of reaching their meant mission. And for these platforms properly incorporating ideas of techquity, reaching success means having an influence on the affected person and inhabitants stage.

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