HealthTap Goes Global Introducing HOPESTM, the First and Only Health Operating System™ for Hospitals, Clinics, and Community-Based Programs Worldwide

Business Wire

New Zealand’s Waikato District Health Board Selects HealthTap as a Partner to Create a New Virtual Health Practice

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- HealthTap, the world’s first Global Health Practice that provides 24/7 query-to-cure individualized care with a network of more than 73,000 doctors, announced that its Health Operating System^TM (HOPES)^TM is now available for hospitals, clinics, and community-based programs worldwide. The HOPES^TM service provides immediate access to “always-on” quality healthcare, enabling healthcare providers, large and small, to manage the care for patient populations efficiently and cost-effectively.

HealthTap and the Waikato District Health Board (DHB) in New Zealand are engaged in a unique partnership designed to virtualize healthcare by providing immediate access to a top-quality New Zealand-based health service. This service is available from any mobile device or web connection anytime, anywhere for the more than one million people within Waikato’s population base as a tertiary referrals center. The groundbreaking partnership will create fundamental improvements in clinical service delivery to the population through enhanced care and service, advanced health education, seamless medical communications, and advanced clinical engagement tools.

Healthcare systems around the world are struggling with growing demand for access to care, often as a result of growing demand for health services. Unnecessarily complicated systems and expensive processes are also impediments to meeting this demand. HealthTap is streamlining and simplifying the process of administering and receiving the right care, at the right time, at the right place, and at the right cost. With HOPES^TM, the Waikato DHB is leading a citizen-centric healthcare reform by providing its population with unprecedented control and ubiquitous access to their care. As a result, fragmented care, inefficiencies, and unnecessary costs in many areas are giving way to more efficient and effective virtual healthcare for all.

HealthTap HOPES^TM is the only all-in-one integrated Health Operating System linking the entire continuum of care to an individual patient’s Personal Health Record (PHR). With HOPES^TM, patients are empowered to permit authorized doctors of their choice access to their records. HOPES^TM is being integrated with existing systems and services, including the Hospital EMR systems and current primary care Practice Management Systems, to provide everything needed to create a seamless virtual healthcare environment for patients, clinicians, and administrators. The HOPES^TM service includes:

Health Content Application: enabling access to doctor-created and peer-reviewed answers to the most common health questions and useful health tips.
Secure Communications Application: the ability for doctors and patients to connect 24/7 via live video, voice, or text chat—anytime, anywhere
Services Applications: the ability to schedule appointments and make payments
Meds and Labs Application: the capability for direct access to pharmacies and labs for prescription and lab tests
Engagement Application: the ability to support patients after doctor visits with reminders and feedback
Analytics Application: the ability to review engagement analytics privately and securely, from individual patients to entire patient populations
Administrative Application: the ability to set up and manage large sets of doctor and patient accounts
The world’s highest level of privacy and security (HIPAA compliant and SOC 2 Type II-certified)

More than 2,500 Waikato District Health Board clinicians and affiliated health services providers will gain tremendous benefits through the power of HOPES^TM, including the ability to inspire greater patient engagement and forge deeper relationships with citizens—both patients and other doctors. Clinicians and providers can share knowledge and learn from each other, securely enjoying the benefits of flexible care provision from their mobile devices and PCs. With the HOPES^TM service, Waikato’s primary health providers, including general practitioners—very often the first point of medical contact—will receive convenient, always-on 24/7 access to specialist colleagues who enable high-quality, efficient care delivery for all anytime, anywhere.

“This is a historic moment for global healthcare,” says Ron Gutman, founder and CEO of HealthTap. “For the past five years, we've worked with hundreds of millions of people and tens of thousands of doctors to create and perfect the first-of-its-kind query-to-cure experience for managing health from any mobile device or personal computer.”

“Now, for the first time, our engineering, design, and product teams have taken this wealth of experience and proprietary knowledge and made them available to health services, hospitals, and clinics globally in an easy-to-install Health Operating System that does not require any software or hardware installation. Powered by HOPES^TM, just like the Waikato District Health Board, every healthcare system around the world can now become virtual in weeks, giving people immediate access to world-class care anytime anywhere. We’re humbled by the robust inbound demand from healthcare practices all over the world and are fully committed to deliver our customers the highest standards of quality, reliability, security, and user experience.

“We want citizen-centric healthcare that is at the patient’s convenience and delivered in their community, closer to home,” says Dr. Nigel Murray, CEO of Waikato District Health Board. “Every citizen at some point will become a patient, and they should have agency, control, and a voice in the way care is delivered and received.”

“Access is vital,” Murray says. “We believe high-quality care, provided conveniently and cost-effectively, is our citizens’ fundamental human right, removing boundaries and inequalities. With our new virtual health service, powered by HealthTap's HOPES^TM, we can deliver the highest-quality care at a lower cost. This is not incremental software implementation. We are embarking on a clinical service revolution that will provide ubiquitous access to our citizens and empower our doctors and other health professionals through global collaboration, greater convenience, and increased flexibility. With the Waikato-HealthTap partnership, more than one million New Zealand citizens will be able to live happier and healthier lives.”

About HealthTap

HealthTap is the world’s first Global Health Practice^TM. We deliver immediate world-class healthcare 24/7 from Query-to-Cure^TM. Through video, voice, and text chat on any mobile device or web connection, we connect millions everywhere with the most trusted health advice from a network of more than 73,000 top U.S. doctors. HealthTap’s proprietary, robust, and secure Health Operating System^TM (HOPES^TM) and proprietary triaging technology enable ubiquitous access to the right care at the right time at the right price.