Wolters Kluwer Launches Remote Patient Education Platform

The new platform provides patients with hundreds of videos and more than 8,000 leaflets in 20 languages and at a remedial reading level.

Wolters Kluwer on Tuesday launched an interoperable patient platform that the software vendor says will provide patients with remote access to easily understood healthcare educational content.

The new platform, EmmiEducate™ provides patients with hundreds of videos and more than 8,000 leaflets in 20 languages and at a remedial reading level, so they can better understand their health issues and act accordingly.

In an email exchange with HealthLeaders, Jason Burum, a general manager at Wolters Kluwer, says EmmiEducate is designed to "improve alignment between patients and their care teams."

Ultimately, Burum says, "EmmiEducate will meet health system requirements for patient education while helping to reduce unwanted clinical variability, improving workflow efficiency and empowering patients."

"Unwarranted variability in care is a huge challenge impacting quality and cost, and an important tool in addressing the issue is the harmonization of the education a patient receives with the tools clinicians use to guide their care decisions every day," he says.

"With educational content tailored to a variety of learning and reading styles, and interoperability across disparate systems and access points, EmmiEducate gives providers the ability to easily support their patients' information needs within their workflow, delivering easy-to-understand educational materials that mirror the guidance provided to patients during the clinical encounter."

Burum says the platform allows providers to give patients access to content in several ways, from electronic medical records, from remote access, and from the bedside. As needs expand, Burum says, the platform will expand to include "smart outreach programs," and engagement tracking. 

"With the addition of EmmiEducate to our solution set, we believe patients will become more empowered as partners in their healthcare," he says. "With better educated patients, hospitals could expect to see fewer readmissions, visits to the ED, patients better prepared for procedures and more likely to adhere to care plans."

The platform is billed on a "per bed" basis, with a range of pricing if the customer is new or adding EmmiEducate to existing WKL platforms. 

Burum says the platform has several integration options to fit organizational capabilities.

"EmmiEducate integrates directly into the EMR, allowing providers to deliver this content more efficiently and making it easier to recommend, preview, and assign content," he says, adding that the platform has a website that allows patients to get health answers 24/7.