Docs Say Goodbye to Bureaucracy, Hello Health

For example, patients with diabetes would be able to submit their glucose levels online to Hello Health and have their physician monitor their results and respond to them if necessary—all without an office appointment.

"We can't rely on office visits alone anymore," he says. "Even if you have a chronic disease and you see your doctor four times a year, the rest of the time you're on your own. By connecting a doctor virtually with a patient, you can ensure continuity of care."

Building a Hello Health "ecosystem"
When physicians conduct an in-office or remote transaction with a patient, it automatically becomes part of that patient's electronic medical record in the Hello Health platform. The patient can view their medical record at any time. In addition, other physicians in the practice who see the patient and have access to the system can also view the same information.

The company plans to develop regional "ecosystems" on the Hello Health platform that will consist of a group of primary care doctors and specialists who can communicate with the patient and with one another in a patient-centered environment. Khozin says that specialists are beginning to participate in the Hello Health platform in New York and he expects similar ecosystems to be launched throughout the country.

"There's a lot of ways this technology can be implemented in terms of coordinating the care of complex patients, such as cancer patients," he says. "It's so difficult to really take care of these patients because of lack of access to the right information when you need it."

An elegant platform to replace Frankenstein systems
L. Gordon Moore, MD, a family medicine physician, has been waiting for a product like Hello Health to come along for quite some time. He is credited with pioneering the Ideal Medical Practice (IMP) philosophy. Physicians who subscribe to IMP concepts operate low-overhead, high-technology practices that provide patient-centered care that is efficient, effective, and accessible.

To run these types of practices, physicians often piece together many different pieces of technology to build a grassroots version of what Hello Health now offers. They pull together billing systems, appointment schedulers, and bare bones EMR applications to come up with a complete, albeit imperfect, package.

"Other docs have picked up this Frankenstein system, and it's hard," he says. "They're pouring money into IT to finesse this Holy Grail of interoperability, which is almost an illusion."

By comparison, Moore describes Hello Health as an "elegant platform." "It manages relationships like nothing I've ever seen," he says. "It's really the best IT solution that I've seen out there so far."

Moore is in the process of developing Hello Health University for the company. It will educate physicians who are about to launch their own practices using the platform. The tool will provide the physicians with assistance on everything creating a business, deciding whether to hire staff, and purchasing office space.

Cash-based practices
The company will offer the platform to physicians free of charge and collect a fee for each transaction.

"If physicians aren't seeing patients on the platform, they're not paying for anything," says Khozin. "If they see a patient and a transaction occurs, then a percentage of that goes to Myca/Hello Health."