In what has been hailed as an industry milestone, xG Health Solutions and Geisinger Health System announced today a new suite of EHR-agnostic software apps that will improve acute and chronic care management. The apps are based on Geisinger’s internationally renowned care models developed over the last 18 years.
“We are one of the first to launch a suite of physician-designed apps that use public APIs and standards in an EHR-agnostic manner,” said xG Health CEO Earl Steinberg, M.D., MPP. “EnrG apps unlock for health care providers everywhere two decades of Geisinger innovations in workflow redesign and clinical decision support that improve quality and safety, increase efficiency and reduce cost of care.”
“The ability to share Geisinger innovations that improve patient outcomes has been my dream for many years,” added Geisinger President and CEO Glenn Steele, M.D., Ph.D. “Apps like these will drive healthcare transformation over the next decade and I’m proud of our market leadership in this effort.”
The EnrG suite leverages new draft data standards based on the SMART on FHIR platform and works seamlessly with any FHIR-enabled EHR. The apps extract, analyze, re-organize and present EHR and patient-reported data to the physician in a clinically useful way together with decision support based on best practices. Although the apps reside outside the EHR, they are seamlessly integrated directly into workflow for greater ease of use.
EHR CEOs and other senior industry leaders spoke out in support of these apps at a private Geisinger/xG Health EnrG launch briefing held today in conjunction with HIMSS15.
“Our industry must rapidly move toward a new dimension of interoperability where EHRs deploy intelligent apps directly within clinicians’ workflows,” said Cerner Corporation’s Chairman and CEO Neal Patterson. “The EnrG apps suite developed by Geisinger and xG Health is an important proof point of the innovation that is possible through open standards, and we’re proud to support it in Millennium.”
“We congratulate Geisinger, an Epic client since 1994, and xG Health on their new apps suite. We share their commitment to improving health care and patient outcomes,” said Carl D. Dvorak, President of Epic Systems Corporation.
“The Geisinger/xG Health apps suite is an important initiative that brings together critical, yet too often, disparate information, for providers and patients alike,” said Jonathan Bush, CEO, President, and Chairman of athenahealth. “Its ability to pull together data sources into one usable view will result in better, smarter care.”
Aneesh Chopra, President of Nav Health and Co-founder & EVP of Hunch Analytics commented, “We are enthusiastic about xG Health and Geisinger’s new innovative apps suite, especially for its inspiration to other organizations committed to implementing FHIR-based APIs as in Project Argonaut. It is a terrific model for delivering population health capabilities as a secure extension of EHR data.” Chopra formerly served as the first U.S. Chief Technology Officer under President Barack Obama.
“The American College of Cardiology has worked for years through our registries to help physicians collect and use data to enhance patient care,” said ACC President Kim Allan Williams Sr., M.D. “We’re optimistic that apps such as these will have the potential ability to work across EHR formats and thus help bring medicine closer to the ideal of collecting and using data to create meaningful improvements in patient outcomes.”
ACC Chief Executive Officer Shalom Jacobovitz said the ACC is exploring opportunities to work with innovative HIT thought leaders, such as Geisinger, in the transformation of guidelines based-care.
The EnrG suite leverages Geisinger’s well-known evidence-based ProvenCare modules that focus on common procedures and chronic or acute care conditions, such as:
- Coronary artery bypass surgery
- Coronary angioplasty
- Total hip replacement
- Total knee replacement
- Lumbar spine surgery
- Hip fracture
- Congestive heart failure
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Asthma
- Diabetes
- Hypertension
- Chronic kidney disease
Additional apps will focus on evidence-based management of common diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and cancer, facilitate management of patients in the ER, discharge planning and care transitions, promote cost-effective use of high cost specialty pharmaceuticals, and help integrate clinical genomics into everyday practice.
The first app to market is EnrGRheum, which is based on a program for patients with rheumatologic diseases developed at Geisinger in 2009. EnrGRheum extracts, organizes and presents patient-entered data with EHR data in a user-friendly and clinically relevant way. For example, it graphically displays disease activity and medication data over time and improves the quality and efficiency of encounter notes.
EnrGRheum will be available through xG Health and other sources in the third quarter of 2015. Over the next 18 months, xG Health plans to bring six additional apps to market.
About xG Health
xG Health helps providers redesign care delivery processes to make them more effective and efficient and provides products and services that help care delivery systems deliver higher quality and lower cost care. Our products and services, which are powered by Geisinger Health System’s proven methods, are of value to providers and payers under fee-for-service, as well as performance- and risk-based payment approaches. For more information on the EnrG suite, contact Marcy Stoots, EnrG Apps General Manager, at ehrapps@xghealth.com or by telephone at 443-276-0600.
For more information, visit www.xghealth.com.
CONTACT: Tatiana Nikitina, xG Health
443-203-1079, tnikitina@xghealth.com
