April 27: Today on the Conference channel, it’s an Interview in Action live from ViVe 2023 with Ali Rahimi, MD, CEO & Founder of ALYKA Health Technologies. What inspired Ali to create ALYKA Health, and how did he recognize the gaps in healthcare that his platform addresses? What specific data elements are included, and how is this information used to target education and improve engagement? What is the goal of the health resilience index, and how does it help improve health outcomes? How do they use a multimedia approach to make healthy behaviors more enjoyable for users?
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Welcome to this week, health my name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week Health. A set of channels dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged. Today we have an interview in action from the 2023 Spring conferences, vibe in Nashville and hymns in Chicago.
Special thanks to our cDW, Rubrik, Sectra and Trellix for choosing to invest in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders.
You can check them out on our website this week, health.com, now onto this interview.
A ll right. Here we are from VI with another interview in action, and we're here with Ali Rahimi. Doctor, I'm sorry. Yeah. I hate to forget that with Alika Health and it's great to see you.
No, it's very nice To see you too. Bill.
So we caught up Before this That's right. We had email exchange and then had a, conversation.
I'm really interested in, Alika Health and the stuff that you guys are doing. Why don't you share a little bit about what ALYKA Health is about?
Sure, sure. Bill. So, I'm a practicing cardiologist. My passion is in public health and I recognize that there's care gaps that are left open every.
The average American sees their physician maybe four times a year. That's over 360 days a year. That is it? Really? Four. That sounds like four times actually. Yeah, it is. That's if they make their appointments. Right, right. So there's 360 days that they're not getting that support. So the thinking is that let's create a personal digital health assistant.
That taps into three different layers of data, real time. We help bring in their EHR data, very curated and targeted. We ask them questions to understand their health behaviors and create a wellness report and other surveys. And then we also tap into home devices and wearables. With that data, we can now provide, improve their health knowledge, improve their confidence towards increased resilience And ultimately the goal is to help close those care gaps. Our focus today is improving cardiovascular and mental health.
Interesting. So you, you do start with some of the EHR data. That's right. But when you say curated, it's a
Very specific, we recognize the value of EHRs and the value that their portals bring, but there's a big repository of data.
A lot of the data is static and not actionable. What we do is we curate that. What are the elements of the labs that we would like you to know that we can do something with? So we'll bring in your creatinine, your hemoglobin, your lipid values, and with that we know what medicines you're on and we know what your blood pressure is.
Now with the logic that's smart in the background, we can target that education and the insights that's multimedia to help you. Help improve engagement and close those P gaps.
So the next thing you do is you collect information from the patient that's right in the form of questions. Is it like a long survey or
very brief a minute.
Dripping them out a minute at a time. So it's a couple questions. So one of the first surveys is health resilience. So we ask 'em five questions. How knowledgeable are you on your medical conditions, your medications? And then we ask another five questions on confidence. Do you have the motivation, the skills, and the tools?
And that creates their health resilience index on a scale of one to 10. And the goal is every five to six weeks we ask them these questions and then help improve their health resilience because we know the more resilient you. The more likely you're going to take your medicines to keep your doctor's appointments and to improve health outcomes.
That's f And then the, the other form of data you're bringing in is device data. That's right. That's right. A lot of devices, a few device data.
Very limited. So today we focus on what's the highest yield your weight. Your blood pressure, and the glucometer.
So today it's self entry. Next it's automated where we sync it in. We're also tapping into Apple Health Kit. So we'll bring in step. Data, your heart rate. So the next stage is wearables, but we want to be very mindful that it's not a data dump. We're not creating a file cabinet of all your health records and data.
Let's be real smart about it so it's digestible. So folks can come into alica interact five to eight minutes a day come away feeling better and smarter and more engaged about their health.
So, What outcomes would you like to drive? I mean, you mentioned these in the beginning, but I'm curious.
So we're bringing all that data together. It's not a complete picture, but it's a more complete picture. This is why you said only Yeah. Two, two specific areas.
That's right. Well, we focus on the heart. One in two adults will have heart disease, mental health. One and two will be diagnosed with a mental health condit.
So you need both to be working well to accomplish those outcomes. And so immediately, hypertension, let's improve blood pressure. One in two adults have high blood pressure, but only a quarter of it. It's controlled. We know that folks the treatment for blood pressure is very well known and very proven.
It's folks understanding that it's a chronic condition that lifestyles associated with it. Taking your medicines, changing your diet, those are important. Mental health is equally important too, that we.
So the, I mean, we talked about the text side of this, but a lot of it's behavioral modification. That's right.
Right. So how do you get me to do what I should do?
That's right. we have to get making healthy, fun, and enjoyable. So we've looked at social media, we've looked at Netflix. We've looked at how do folks keep you coming back for more, has to be a multimedia approach. It can't be a 15 page after visit summary that's printed out because you're meeting some mandate.
It's something that you go, it may be a recipe, it may be a daily trivia, a factoid, a. blog that's Three to four hundred words that's speaking to you and not at you. And lots of video content. So it's interactive. There's scores, so something for everyone that you can interact with. And then we've made it fun.
You're earning ALYKoins and you level up, and the goal is to be able to also share the content. No different than LinkedIn or Facebook. You can Share a recipe. Share a factoid, invite your friends and family so you can create that ALYKA community.
📍 📍 all right, we'll get back to our show in just a minute. We're excited. We have a great webinar for you in May on May 4th at one o'clock Eastern Time. It is part of our leadership series on modern data strategies in healthcare. In this webinar, we're going to explore data driven approaches to healthcare and how they can improve patient outcomes, increase efficiency and reduce cost, which are also critical at this time.
In this juncture in healthcare, our expert speakers will explore data governance, analytics, strateg. anything that can help healthcare providers gain actionable insights from healthcare data. We would love to have you there and we're excited about it. You can register on our website.
Just hit the leadership series, modern Data Strategies. It's gonna be in the top right hand corner of our website this week, health.com. you can discover how we are going to use data to be more efficient, effective in the modern healthcare system. we would love to have you join us again.
Hit the website this week, health.com. Top right hand corner. Sign up today. Hope to see you there. Now back to the show,
📍
Well, if I'm with a medical group or if I'm with a health system how would I engage with?
So the opportunity is that we see ourselves as a partner through the existing infrastructure they have. They may have multiple point solutions that they're using, that they're not getting true value to themselves or true ROI clinically for their patients. And we partner with them, identify where their areas of need are, obviously, Cardiovascular and mental health engagement.
Lots of health systems. One of the challenges they have, folks aren't engaging in their portals. They paid so much for these expensive EHRs that are wonderful, but yet the engagement is core. So we see that as an opportunity to interact with them and help improve that engagement through the use of alico.
What's the economic model? Is it direct to consumer or direct to
It's both. So we've, we've done all the work in creating, three years of software development and research bringing us to market. We rolled it out to the market in October. Our first B2B client has signed on with 7,000 users and so that immediately, is that an employer?
it's a health navigator that helps bring down. Cloud support services, admin support services. So this one is a small payer that they've brought on, but ultimately the other opportunities are health systems. We're moving towards value-based care. They need help closing the care gaps.
Hiring health coaches is very expensive. And then the other opportunities direct a consumer, you've built it. Good health should not be tied to your employment or your geography. So you can go to the App store, Google Play, download. Subscription based and you get healthy and happy,
all. Where do you get your content, your educational content?
Do you develop that on your own or is there
So it's a bimodal approach right now. So we're a team of physicians, pharm d our content is brought together with our content writers. We follow evidence-based guidelines with American College of Cardiology. The US Preventive Task Force American Diabetes Association.
So we bring together our own blogs and factoids around that. Then the other opportunity is to partner with healthwise. We partner with Healthwise to bring in curated content. One of the compliments they've given us is you're the only application that actually goes and cure. Our content as opposed to just providing it as a glosser.
So if you have high cholesterol or if you've got a condition, we have gone and tagged that video to that. So if you have that diagnosis or that abnormal lab, what's below it is Aliki University right then and there, rather than an H or an L for high or low. You can go on the spot and see a two minute video and, and learn more.
If people want to engage with Alka, how do they.
Right now you can go to our website, www alica health.com. You can go to the app store, type in alica Health, A L Y K A Health download the app, take it for a spin. Give us feedback. We're constantly learning, auditing the content, auditing a ui the compliments that we receive.
So far, five stars. People really love. The retention is great, and we believe we're as close as you can be to your doctor in the pocket. That virtual doorway to healthcare as an adjunct and partner helping to close those care gaps with different solutions out there.
So if you projected out three to five years, what would you like to see happen?
Alica will be the most trusted, widely used personal health assistant that started closing care gaps around heart and mental health wellbeing. Next we go into maternal health. Next we go into the other areas that is very prevalent. We'd like to tackle disparities. We understand access to care is critically important.
Can we make this something free to the community that they can have access to and help close those care gaps? Good care should lie in the hands of the individual and not only solely on the shoulders of their physicians or their health insurance.
Right? Absolutely. Ali. Thank you. Thank
you, bill. I appreciate the time.
No, thank you.
Another great interview. I wanna thank everybody who spent time with us at the conference. I love hearing from people on the front lines and it's phenomenal that they've taken the time to share their wisdom and experience with the community. It is greatly appreciated.
We wanna thank our partners, CDW, Rubrik, Sectra and Trellix, who invest in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.