Kevin Keenahan, is the Chief Product Officer at Net Health and co-founder of Tissue Analytics, Inc., acquired by Net Health in 2020.
Net Health’s mission is to harness knowledge for human well being. They provide EHR software program and predictive, actionable analytics for medical specialties, together with rehab remedy, wound care, house well being and hospice and worker well being. Their options are trusted in over 23,000 services throughout the continuum of care, together with the nation’s main hospitals, expert nursing services, senior residing services, house well being and hospice businesses and outpatient clinics.
Could you share the genesis story of how you bought concerned in wound care, and the way this resulted out of your graduate research at John Hopkins University?
Back in 2013, I began my Master’s on the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID), which is an unbelievable program that provides younger engineers the prospect to rotate by means of totally different medical settings on the Johns Hopkins Hospital. I used to be lucky sufficient to see continual and acute wound care throughout these rotations and located the area fascinating, which led me to spend extra devoted time within the wound heart at Hopkins.
Through that have, I noticed there was an absence of innovation within the wound care trade, with most wound care therapies counting on outdated strategies and applied sciences to evaluate efficacy. I noticed this as a possibility to make use of my engineering coaching to create an answer for wound care administration that may facilitate higher knowledge assortment and enhance continual wound outcomes, main me to discovered Tissue Analytics in 2014.
Tissue Analytics, Inc., was then acquired by Net Health in 2020. Could you share some particulars about this second in time and why you selected to be acquired?
Net Health® Tissue Analytics makes use of machine studying to research wound photographs and robotically measure therapeutic. The acquisition was extremely strategic for us as a result of it gave us a possibility to develop our attain and offered entry to a a lot bigger dataset for us to use to our machine studying strategies. Joining forces with Net Health additionally allowed us to leverage their established place out there and entry its community of healthcare suppliers, along with strengthening their inpatient wound care enterprise.
How does Net Health use machine studying for wound monitoring?
Net Health’s algorithms analyze hundreds of thousands of photographs in seconds to robotically measure a wound’s dimension and colorimetric composition. It’s 90% extra correct than guide, ruler-based measurements, which have a 40% error price. This functionality results in a extra goal story of therapeutic to drive higher affected person care and outcomes. This know-how is the inspiration of our cell wound imaging and analytics answer, which makes use of synthetic intelligence mixed with a smartphone to measure, characterize and analyze a continual wound extra precisely. Using the info collected within the wound imaging course of, it additionally predicts whether or not a strain damage is in danger for deterioration, a very essential function for hospitals that get penalized for hospital-acquired strain accidents.
Why is exact monitoring of wound dimension so essential in healthcare?
There are a couple of causes. Precise monitoring allows clinicians to observe the therapeutic progress of a wound over time, make efficient therapy choices and estimate therapeutic instances. By often measuring the wound, suppliers can decide if the wound is therapeutic as anticipated or if there are any indicators of stalled therapeutic. This helps suppliers make knowledgeable choices about the suitable course of therapy and regulate these care plans as needed. By offering a typical basis of therapeutic to your complete care workforce, everybody together with the affected person now has an goal measure of progress that’s shared throughout suppliers in addition to care settings.
What different forms of analytics may be supplied for wound care?
In our wound care EHR product, Net Health® Wound Care, we will provide highly effective predictions round amputation threat and complete wound therapeutic time. In addition, we provide a missed go to prediction indicator that flags sufferers in danger for lacking a go to. This allows wound care suppliers to intervene, whether or not they assist talk with the affected person immediately or double-book to make sure they don’t lose income or time spent offering care.
Net Health goes past wound analytics, what different forms of companies are supplied?
We additionally provide EHRs for full spectrum of rehab professionals, which embody bodily and occupational therapists and speech language pathologists. Our rehab remedy EHRs serve non-public observe clinics, hospital treatment items, hospital outpatient clinics, expert nursing services and assisted residing communities. Our outpatient and personal observe EHR comes with a affected person engagement suite, which helps clinics market their companies and interact their sufferers by means of digital interactive instruments and an automatic digital consumption course of.
In your opinion, why is the adoption of AI in healthcare so essential?
AI has the potential to enhance the accuracy and effectivity of healthcare operations, from prognosis and therapy to the automation of administrative duties. Algorithms can analyze huge quantities of knowledge and establish patterns that may be tough or not possible for people to detect, enabling extra correct diagnoses, extra customized therapy plans, and higher useful resource allocation. It may even assist to cut back healthcare prices by streamlining processes and decreasing the necessity for guide labor. It also can assist to enhance affected person outcomes by enabling earlier prognosis and therapy, decreasing the danger of issues, and facilitating extra customized care. For instance, AI-powered wound care administration platforms might help healthcare suppliers to trace wound therapeutic progress extra precisely, establish potential issues, and regulate therapy plans accordingly. Healthcare suppliers can enhance affected person outcomes, cut back prices, and keep on the forefront of technological innovation within the subject with AI, so adoption is essential if in case you have not already utilized it.
Do you see a future for generative AI in healthcare?
Absolutely. AI might help to enhance the accuracy and pace of prognosis, main to higher outcomes for sufferers. Generative AI can analyze a affected person’s medical historical past, genetic knowledge, and different components to automate the documentation course of whereas concurrently predicting which therapies are almost certainly to be efficient for that particular person.
Tissue Analytics initially had the imaginative and prescient of remodeling the smartphone into a classy imaging and diagnostic platform for continual wounds, to redefine how wound care is delivered. Could you share how your imaginative and prescient has advanced over time?
Following the acquisition by Net Health, Tissue Analytics has continued to develop its wound care administration platform, whereas additionally integrating its know-how into Net Health’s broader suite of healthcare options. This has enabled Tissue Analytics to develop its capabilities and embody performance for predicting the deterioration of strain accidents within the hospital setting and robotically capturing wounds that wrap round sufferers’ limbs, which we name circumferential imaging. Moving ahead, the product will proceed to innovate with a deal with identification, prevention, and administration of continual wound situations by means of superior analytics options in all care settings.
Is there anything that you simply wish to share about Net Health?
Net Health has a robust deal with the specialised wants of healthcare suppliers. This focus allows Net Health to ship tailor-made options which might be particularly designed to satisfy the distinctive wants of suppliers, quite than providing a one-size-fits-all method. This understanding of specialised medical workflows places us in a novel place to seamlessly collect probably the most impactful, high-quality knowledge and develop innovative AI instruments that can in the end assist us transfer your complete trade ahead.
Thank you for the good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Net Health.