HealthPartners®, a non-profit health care organization serving 1.3 million people in the State of Minnesota, launched VirtuWell™ this week (via BlandinonBroadband’s Ann Treacy and at MSP Business Journal).
Virtuwell is an interactive online diagnostic tool for those simple ailments (e.g., cold & cough; sore throat; ear ache) that can easily be determined by having the patient walk through a decision tree and answer questions. Proven business models like Minute Clinic having perfected this simple and cheap diagnostic process. The acceleration of nurse practitioners and physician assistants taking routine diagnostics off of busy physicians, alongside the efficiency drivers contained within health care reform, means that online medical diagnosis and treatment services like this will help consumers quickly solve some of the most common medical conditions at much lower costs than traditional medical clinics.
What puzzles me is why HealthPartners opted to develop this diagnostic system on their own instead of engaging like another non-profit, Park Nicollet, did with startup Zipnosis (see our post on Zipnosis for more). Minnov8 has interacted with Virtuwell’s external communications person, but after two days haven’t had basic questions answered or response to our queries. We hope that their response to consumers with health issues is better.
Update after the jump…
UPDATE:
+ Why start Virtuwell?
We really see virtuwell as natural evolution of the innovations in health care delivery that HealthPartners has made for more than 50 years. This service is new, but our interest in this concept isn’t. We’ve known for some time that a part of health care delivery is moving in this direction. Since 2005, HealthPartners patients have had access to physicians with our evisits. virtuwell takes this concept to the next level and offers 24/7 convenience to anyone living in Minnesota. With virtuwell, HealthPartners is now able to provide individuals yet another option to access quality care.
+ Did you look at current providers (i.e., Zipnosis) and why did you opt to create your own?
Yes. We’ve done a lot of homework. HealthPartners Clinics has been innovating with electronic medical records and secure online patient visits for more than a decade. We took a good hard look at what was going on in the market and concluded that there really wasn’t an off-the-shelf product that could deliver the simple, fresh, approachable, and empowering experience we envisioned. Online care is more than a simple web site. We’re coming at it, first and foremost, as a health care provider — not as a software company. We wanted to tap our in-house clinical protocols, legal and regulatory know-how and patient service expertise that we’ve built up over the decades. For these reasons and others, we decided to create it. It’s also why we decided to partner with AKQA, a top-notch, global interactive marketing agency, to help us build it.
+ What’s the technology used to deliver it?
We use sophisticated technology that allows us to adjust our clinical rules and protocols based on recommendations from our physician advisory council. For instance, the rules associated with treating the flu often change frequently and we can do this without making code changes. Virtuwell uses Grails application development framework. Grails is based on the Spring and Hibernate frameworks using many tried and true java technologies allowing high productivity without compromising any architectural integrity. We use jQuery, AJAX, Flash in the front end to deliver a compelling consumer experience on leading modern browsers. Virtuwell uses Alfresco Enterprise Content Management System to deliver the personalized/localized Q&A for consumers.