Welch Allyn Enters at-Home Patient Monitoring Sector

Welch Allyn (Skaneateles Falls, NY, USA) has bought up all the assets of HealthInterlink (Omaha, NE, USA), a telehealth startup company that has developed a mobile health (mHealth) patient monitoring system.

Welch Allyn sees its first foray into remote vital sign monitoring as an early step in investing in post-acute patient care monitoring outside the hospital setting. It will target this first venture specifically to chronic disease management, with hypertensive patients being a particular focus. The company expects that by offering a remote patient monitoring mHealth solution, earlier and ongoing interventions by physicians could help reduce healthcare costs and optimize cost-effective collection and delivery of health information.

HealthInterlink, a Prairie Ventures (Omaha, NE, USA) company, developed a flexible, affordable, and scalable software-based remote patient vital signs monitoring solution that was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in March 2014. The solution incorporates wireless patient monitoring devices and a mobile gateway device (such as a tablet or smartphone) that transmits vital signs data, answers patient care plan questions, and streams patient messages to a cloud-based web portal for data management by healthcare professionals and other authorized stakeholders.

“We believe that this represents an exciting opportunity to advance the trend of investing in non-hospitalized and post-acute care monitoring to help take cost out of the system and help patients adhere to treatment plans—in the doctor's office and beyond,” said Stephen Meyer, President and CEO of Welch Allyn. “As healthcare delivery becomes decentralized and extends beyond the traditional acute and ambulatory care locations where our offerings are used today, we intend to provide solutions that enable providers to deliver high quality care, regardless of location.”

“As an innovative medical software company specializing in remote patient vital signs monitoring, we believe that joining Welch Allyn will accelerate adoption of a practical telehealth solution designed to provide better outcomes and value for patients and providers alike,” said Danna Kehm, managing director of HealthInterlink. “HealthInterlink's software and telehealth expertise coupled with Welch Allyn's sales, marketing, and customer support strength, will give clinicians a powerful tool to manage more patients outside traditional healthcare settings.”

“We founded HealthInterlink after the very first in-home patient monitoring products with Bluetooth communication capability arrived on the market,” said Craig Tuttle, president of Prairie Ventures. “The company's plan was to develop a best-in-class software system to integrate these in-home devices with a patient's caregiver to improve routine measurement of their health status without requiring the patient to travel to their physician, as well as detect when intervention was needed if their status declined.”

Related Links:
Welch Allyn
HealthInterlink
Prairie Ventures