With routine hospital visits becoming a health risk in the middle of a pandemic, a growing number of medical practitioners looked at ways to monitor and track patient health virtually.
As a result, the telehealth and remote patient monitoring (RPM) market saw massive growth during the past two years.
The pandemic accelerated years of growth into months; an Insider Intelligence report initially forecast the market reaching 30 million users by 2024. They tabulated more than 29 million users of such tech in 2020 alone.
As demand has grown for RPM, the market has become very competitive, and Arrowhealth, a Memphis-based health tech firm, has monitored market trend lines.
Arrowhealth, formerly Novo RPM, was co-founded by experts from the health care-service industry: CEO David Brodegard, CRO Rick Mirell, CTO Scott Crunkleton, and CSO Kevin Jones.
“Telehealth went from something you barely heard about to now everybody using it,” Jones said, “and the same thing with remote patient monitoring. It went from very obscure to something widely utilized.”
Standout tech
The market was growing, but Jones said the leadership at Novo RPM quickly realized one of the biggest challenges they faced with this technology: It wasn’t in the same space as the existing electronic health record (EHR) systems that end customers were using. This meant that in order to use most third-party products, including RPM, medical practitioners would have to exit their current EHR workflow and log into a new system with new credentials and passwords.
“Most physicians and practitioners just aren’t going to do that,” Jones said.
Such users’ most prominent complaints were alert fatigue; keeping different tabs open for ancillary products; and remembering the different passwords.
“You can have the shiniest toy in the toy box, but if it doesn’t connect to the EHR system, it’s never going to be played with,” Jones said.
Realizing this went beyond their product — and something other third-party players across the industry were also witnessing — the leadership at Novo RPM began working on a solution. They came up with a product that takes the user’s EHR sign-in and extends it to other third-party applications. The solution is called Bridge.
“It bridges the gap between the EHR and all the ancillary third-party software products,” Jones said. “It’s an extension or overlay in the cloud-based EHR that allows for a single sign-on. When you sign in to your EHR, it recognizes your credentials and your rights, and it passes those to whatever product we have existing inside of Bridge.”
This includes RPM and extends to others such as Medicare Advantage, lab tools, and population health. Although EHR integration is already out in the market, this product eliminates the need to switch out of EHR to access any other product.
“We went from a relatively obscure RPM company, one of 30 in the marketplace, to the only game in town,” he said.
With technology like Bridge at hand, the company rebranded itself and, in December 2021, officially debuted as Arrowhealth.
Connecting Bridge
Arrowhealth spent most of 2021 in “stealth mode,” Jones said. With a differentiated product like Bridge, they began pilot tests.
“Those pilot projects have run their course through 2021. Now, they are turning into contract growth,” he said.
The rate of pilots turning into or requesting to move into a contract has been 100%.
“We’ve had a good 300% to 400% growth in a six-month period,” Jones said.
Arrowhealth has two business lines. They have a unique technology in Bridge, where they provide technology to third-party companies that gives products the advantage of ease of access. The company retains its brand, while also existing in the EHR through Bridge, making them a more attractive fit to its clients.
Arrowhealth has also continued with the product they began this journey with: RPM. That product line focuses on equipping practitioners and clinics with the technology to monitor and care for “the sickest of your patients remotely,” Jones said.
The RPM also helps them regularly track the health of patients who can’t manage frequent trips to their provider because they live a distance away or in rural communities.
The medical practitioner sets the desired vitals for the patient, who then regularly logs their results in this system. If the vitals ever go over or under the range set by the provider, an alert pops up for the physician and the patient’s appointed caregiver.
This RPM technology was recently picked up fore use by Philadelphia-based GrayHawk Home Care.
“Our ability to monitor as precisely as possible whether a patient is getting better or getting worse outside of the clinical setting is an essential part of patient recovery and quality of life,” GrayHawk CEO Andrew Henderson said in a press release. “Our partnership with Arrowhealth brings in the highest-quality technology to complement our health coaching and connectivity with patients.”
Arrowhealth’s cloud-based system of connecting technology is also adaptable to other professions, but its leadership’s current focus will remain on growing in Memphis within health care.
They have already filed for a patent for this technology.
With in-house developers, Jones said the team at Arrowhealth is consistently modifying their product to make it easier to use and incorporating more cloud-based systems.
Having the benefit of being device agnostic, he believes the commitment to updating their technology regularly with client recommendations will help them retain their lead in the market.
“That’s the beautiful thing about a piece of software. As long as you’re staying on top of it from a development standpoint, a features and attributes standpoint,” Jones said, “[and] most importantly, listening to your client, and putting the things in place that your clients need — you’re never obsolete.”
