Improving Treatment for Patients With Chronic Conditions

Jake Sattelmair, cofounder and chief executive officer, Wellframe, discusses a new collaboration between Wellframe and Validic with regard to how data and technology will be integrated to help patients and providers manage chronic conditions while improving the quality of care.

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I'm Jake Sattelmair, one of the cofounders and the CEO of Wellframe. I'm an epidemiologist by training. Previous research focused on understanding the relationship between lifestyle behavior and chronic disease risk, and prevention, and management.

Can you talk about the collaboration between Wellframe and Validic? What do you hope to achieve through this partnership?

We're really excited about the collaboration between Wellframe and Validic. The 2 organizations are very complementary. When they come together and their capabilities come together, we believe we'll enable even better care for patients.

Wellframe is about using technology to extend therapeutic relationships and help people with chronic disease to feel connected, and cared for, and supported by care resources. Their care management and other types of care services.

Validic is about integrating data coming off of remote monitoring devices, and capturing those biometrics, and bringing those into care services. Through our integration and through our collaboration, patients are being supported by a care manager in Wellframe, will be able to integrate data from a remote monitoring device that they may own and use on a day-to-day basis.

We're starting with glucometers, but intend to expand into other clinical areas from there. That data that the patient's capturing from the glucometer on a day-to-day basis will be presented to them through the Wellframe app where they'll be able to track their progress.

That data will also be shared with their care management team to give them real-time insights into how that patient's progressing and how their biometrics are trending. That data will be used to inform that caring relationship and help provide more personalized support back to the patient.

How will you better address chronic conditions and help patients manage them?

One of the defining characteristics of chronic conditions is that they persist over time. I think that, historically, the way patients with chronic disease have been treated has largely been episodic.

We're part of a broader movement that's looking to use technology to help make that care more contiguous. Having more data coming from patients around their day-to-day experience and progress as they progress through their own care plan, as their signals of need, and risk, and progress change, incorporated into care to provide faster feedback loops, and to give them guidance and support along the way can be really helpful to make sure that people stay on track with their plan and progress toward their goals.

If they start to get off track, to equip care teams to help them to change direction and make sure that they're pointed in the right direction. Without this type of information coming at this frequency, people can get really off track, and then that's what leads to hospitalizations and other types of events that everyone's trying to avoid.

What can other organizations and health systems learn from this collaboration?

I think that there's been an explosion of digital health technologies over the last number of years, which are all very well-intended. I think all tackle different parts of need for people with chronic conditions and for health care organizations.

To start, they're often pretty siloed and pretty disparate and, in some cases, can actually cause more friction because you have more sources of data that aren't integrated with each other that people have to track down or that might not get incorporated in the care.

I think the idea that we're making proactive efforts to integrate complementary capabilities and integrate data in order to provide more seamless care for patients and more comprehensive care for patients is a theme that we're going to be seeing a lot of. I think that would certainly provide guidance to other organizations to look for these opportunities in order to integrate and offer more holistic support to patients.

What advice do you have for organizations struggling to manage patient populations with chronic conditions?

It can be hard. I think that it's really important to meet people where they're at and to identify the context around people's health care because that can often matter so much. To understand barriers for them getting care and for them doing the right thing, day-to-day, to improve their health.

I think you have to think about the holistic context, and needs, and priorities of individuals. You can't just focus on a disease or a condition. I think that's one thing.

The other thing is you have to make it easy. If you ask people to come to you and if you ask people to jump through a lot of hoops to do the right thing, fewer and fewer people are going to do it. The more that we can make it easy for people to do the right thing is really important.

The other thing is I think that the approach and the support has to be human. While we're really excited about technology as a way to improve care for people with chronic conditions, we believe that technology is best used to extend caring relationships and help people to feel connected and supported during periods of vulnerability.

It's not just about giving people technology, or giving them data, or giving them information. It's about helping them to feel supported and cared for on a day-to-day basis as they're navigating their condition and navigating the health care system.

Those are a few key tenets that we have seen to be really important and I would say are broadly applicable, regardless of the kind of organization you are, the kind of intervention that you're running.

Where do you see the future of care going?

I think it's pretty clear, and COVID certainly emphasized this, that more and more care is moving to the home. I think that this traditional model that the person goes to see the doctor in clinic or they go into the hospital and that's health care is changing in very meaningful ways.

We see more and more care moving to the home. We see care becoming more proactive and more contiguous. This idea of a reactive, episodic care model is not consistent with what people need, especially people living with chronic conditions.

I think combining new technology with new service models and new reimbursement models opens up some exciting opportunities for health care organizations to be much more proactive about addressing the needs of populations of people, and helping to build relationships with them, and to support them on a day-to-day basis while they're at home and in their community.

I think we'll see more and more of that. It will have a profound impact on the kind of care that people get, and the way the health care system is organized, and the way resources are deployed.

What else would you like to add to this conversation?

Just to reinforce the importance of using technology to extend relationships that help support people during periods of need and the importance of bringing different pieces of the puzzle together through integration to make that support more seamless and more holistic are themes that we'll see again and again.

We're excited to be part of that approach.