Renowned Scientists Launch Doctella, First-Ever Digital Health Studio for Health Care Providers and Health Insurance Companies to Build CareKit Apps

Business Wire

Enables Doctors and Other Medical Professionals to Quickly Create CareKit and Internet of Medical Things Apps without Software Developers

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Patient Doctor Technologies, Inc today launched Doctella, a Digital Health Studio for HealthCare Providers and Health Insurance Companies to bring CarePrograms to patient apps, leveraging CareKit an open source framework from Apple. Using Doctella, medical professionals can develop apps specific to their practice and their patient’s individual medical conditions in minutes without any software developers. By integrating with HealthKit and other hospital-grade medical devices and sensors present on patients’ phones or via the cloud, patients can choose to share their information with doctors via Doctella to automatically track reported outcomes, vitals, and actions, exercise routines, pain monitoring and prescriptions. Through Doctella CarePrograms, this information is analyzed to create the context for alerts and reminders that are shared with the patient, caregiver, and providers. The Doctella Digital Health Studio is available online and is already being used by some of the most respected physicians and surgeons in their field. Its flexible design allows its use by hospitals, health care providers, nurse case managers, pharmaceuticals, health plan coaches and startups focused on chronic conditions and digital therapeutics.

"The health care system is striving to meet patient expectations outside the clinical setting,” says Doctella Co-Founder and Surgeon, Adil Haider MD, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. “Currently, verbal or paper instructions, a quick call from the doctor or a brief visit are considered state of the art methods for managing patients, outside a hospital or after they leave a clinic.” These tools used to help improve healthcare quality and safety today are inefficient and often ineffective, yet they do not need to be. It is estimated that providers and health plans are wasting over $2.5B on these antiquated modes of partnering with patients. They desperately need a simple, low- cost way to create modern digital health interventions. These interventions can guide patients and families outside of the hospital, follow them, and track outcomes based on device data input and patient reported outcomes.

Challenges in developing apps with device integration

Mobile apps and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) hold the promise of providing patients with digital health interventions from their providers and health plans. Technology providers have invested billions of dollars and years of research into creating sensors that monitor patients vitals and have released open source frameworks like CareKit developed by Apple. Despite the simplicity of these frameworks, there are still massive costs and technical expertise barriers in creating medical apps with device integration that works for doctors and patients. Doctella solves these barriers by creating a simple, easy to use Digital Health Studio through which interested parties can create CarePrograms. The studio has hundreds of templates that providers can use to create CarePrograms for their patients which capture sensor data and patient feedback and deliver health education with timely health interventions. Doctella CarePrograms provide the missing link to bring meaningful patient-centeredness to the market.

“Digital health interventions are the key to implementing value-based care. With Doctella, providers can bypass software developers and have the power to create powerful digital interventions with zero coding or technical skills. This empowerment will bring the digital patient revolution we have been waiting for that we call the ‘Patientization’ of health care,” said Amer Haider, CEO of Patient Doctor Technologies, Inc. “Our team consists of scientists, doctors, patients and tech entrepreneurs which give us a unique perspective on digital health. We’ve spent over three years working with physicians from different specialties, analyzing over 5000 Doctella patients and 200,000 Doctella digital health interventions to create CarePrograms. In addition, we’ve iteratively tested hundreds of templates to create a robust solution.”

Doctella is built upon the proven success of checklists in medicine that have revolutionized practice. “Over a decade ago, my colleagues and I at John Hopkins created a simple checklist that defined actionable tasks for doctors and nurses that decreased the rate of deadly infections in the United States and led to the adoption of checklists as a standard of care,” said Peter Pronovost MD, PhD, co-founder of Doctella, Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and SVP of Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “Doctella employs the implementation science that is behind checklists, and has worked with patients, caregivers, doctors and nurses to create CarePrograms, which is easily customizable for providers and patients.”

How Doctella Works

Doctors or hospitals can sign up at www.doctella.com and design their own branded and personalized CarePrograms using templates in minutes online or they can hire Doctella digital health experts to assist them. They can choose from hundreds of CareProgram templates across a number of specialties. Doctors and hospitals can easily integrate forms, patient reported outcomes, education, instruction handouts, protocols and device data integration or any other multimedia materials in CarePrograms. Doctors can then send an invitation to their patients for their specific CarePrograms. Patients receive their doctor’s secure invitation via email, SMS or through their EHR. Using Doctella’s integrated dashboard, doctors are able to automatically follow their patient’s progress via patient feedback or sensors in their everyday devices.

Additional Doctella features include:

Smartphone and Web App for Patients and Caregivers

Implements Apple CareKit on iOS, Android and mobile web interface
Allows multiple providers to send CarePrograms to a single patient and then integrates all the information for the patient to ensure they are at the center of their data and care
Integrates real-time data from HealthKit, Google Fit and cloud APIs for medical grade IoMT
Caregivers and family members can easily be added by patients and can share data
Integrated education content (multimedia) keeps patients motivated and on-track
Alerts, notifications delivered through SMS, email or native mobile notification

Doctella Dashboard for Providers, CaseManagers, Caregivers

Customizable views to deliver relevant information for Physicians, Case Managers and Nurses to save time and focus on patients that need help
Automated tracking of patient status, compliance, and feedback 24×7
Set notifications for specific events, vitals or points in time
Provides access to valuable data and analytics on population health CarePrograms, patient reported outcomes and more

EHR Integration

Designed to easily integrate with popular EHR platforms like Epic and Cerner
Send CarePrograms through EHR with just one click
SMART on FHIR app in SmartHIT Gallery
Works with other platforms as well, such as scheduling software

Webinar on Sept 21, 2017 at 11am ET:

Join our digital health experts to discuss examples of implementing ERAS and Congestive Heart Failure monitoring after discharge using Apple CareKit with device integration and an automated dashboard. To register for the webinar click here.

For images and press references: http://blog.doctella.com/press-kit/#references

Pricing and availability

Pricing is based on a Freemium model measured by number of patients. Doctors and Hospitals can start using the studio for free. Patients can download the Doctella app from the App store for free. Additional pricing information is available at www.doctella.com.

About

Patient Doctor Technologies, Inc. is the owner and operator of Doctella.com, a Digital Health Studio for Health Care Providers and Health Insurance Companies to make CarePrograms that patients use as apps. Patient Doctor Technologies was co-founded by Dr. Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Adil Haider of Brigham and Women’s Hospital/ Harvard Medical School, and tech entrepreneur Amer Haider. Doctella aims to revolutionize patient care outside the clinical setting through its invention, CarePrograms. Doctella and CarePrograms slash the cost, time, and skills required for building apps using Apple CareKit UI/UX for iOS, Android and web by 100 times compared to today’s solutions that require hiring software developers. The science behind CarePrograms is based on smart checklists as covered in a recent NEJM article. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. The company has a license agreement with The Johns Hopkins University. The company has raised funding from a strategic partner and private investors. For more information please visit www.doctella.com