Intellivisit
20935 Swenson Drive, #350, Waukesha
Innovation: Virtual health care application
www.intellivisit.com
Waukesha-based health technology firm Intellivisit is reimagining the first touchpoint of primary care with a web application that allows local doctors and clinicians to make virtual house calls.
The application, also known as Intellivisit, opens primary care medical professionals up to a portal through which they can diagnose and treat patients suffering “simple acute conditions,” according to Jay Mason, chief executive officer. Those conditions include colds, influenza, urinary issues, headaches, basic sinus infections, eye infections – any ailment an individual would overcome with the help of a primary care physician.
“Our goal is to really become a trusted digital front door for primary care for individuals and their families,” Mason said.
The Intellivisit app, which is also mobile ready, first walks a patient through a customized, self-guided assessment and interviews the patient about his or her medical history and the symptoms he or she is exhibiting. The initial assessment also collects information about basic factors like age, gender and location. Using a patient’s responses, the app generates a list of possible conditions the patient has. The information is packaged and shared with a local health care provider, who then creates a diagnosis and virtual care treatment plan for the patient. The patient is then able to access those details through the Intellivisit app.
With its app, Intellivisit aims to generate the highest quality primary care outcomes with the minimum amount of effort, said Michael Eaton, chief innovation officer of Intellivisit.
The app is not out to replace doctors, but rather to get more information to them to better inform their diagnoses while also optimizing medical experiences for patients.
Part of the beauty of the app, according to its developers, is the convenience it creates for individuals and families on the go. Once a patient answers all questions posed by the app, the patient can carry on with her day as medical staff on the other end of the app field her responses and assess the details of her health. After a doctor has devised an action plan, Intellivisit notifies the patient about his treatment plan, often within an hour. A patient’s treatment plan covers his official diagnosis, advice on steps to take to feel better, and information about any necessary prescriptions.
If, however, a patient’s condition cannot be treated virtually or if a patient needs a more thorough consultation, the app allows her to directly schedule an appointment with the right doctor.
Mason said the app’s mark of success is not measured by treating patients virtually, but rather by ensuring patients’ medical needs are met, whether that is through virtual care or in-person care.
To properly diagnose patients, Intellivisit uses a probabilistic medical graph that conceives questions for patients based on more than 225 million clinical data points and more than 30,000 hours of physician curation. The graph can treat more than 3,000 medical conditions, according to Eaton.
Mason equates the way the probabilistic medical graph functions to the way Google searches and offers up information relevant to users’ questions and research topics.
In this way, Intellivisit can act as a bank of medical knowledge for clinicians trying to keep up with the ever-growing body of medical science and use medical advances meaningfully.
After more than 18 months of designing and constructing the app, Intellivisit will begin deploying its technology this month in three markets, including two undisclosed markets in Wisconsin. Company customers fall into two categories, one of which is large, self-funded employers that offer health benefits to employees and their dependents. Intellivisit is particularly interested in working with large employers that have onsite clinics for employees. The company’s other customer base consists of large hospitals and health care systems, whose medical teams can use the Intellivisit app as a tool to address the primary care needs of regular patients.
Mason and Eaton plan to continue developing Intellivisit’s app capabilities as they consider expanding the product to include functions related to prescription refills, chronic disease management and behavioral health.
What’s key right now, the executives say, is building an engaging platform that becomes the “front door” for health care.
Once they have successfully rolled out the technology and gained the trust of patients, they can transfer their attention to additional app capabilities, Mason said.
