Medtronic expands access to health
Every year on April 7, World Health Day commemorates the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948. The theme for this year is Health for All. Medtronic works to improve global health access and believes that healthcare technology can connect, enhance, and extend lives.
Donor-funded healthcare programs in low- and middle-income countries have traditionally focused on specific diseases such as malaria or maternal health, but Medtronic LABS is thinking bigger than individual diseases when designing the global health system of the future.
The independent Medtronic-funded nonprofit is growing to address the full range of community health needs, including hypertension, diabetes, mental health, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and maternal health.
“With over 5 billion people in these communities across the world lacking access to healthcare, we need health systems to look beyond addressing specific conditions and consider patients’ broader health needs,” said Anne Stake, chief strategy and product officer at Medtronic LABS.
“It’s time to move away from the historical ‘verticalization’ of health systems.”
Since its inception in 2013, LABS, which uses technology to improve healthcare access for underserved communities around the world, has primarily focused on hypertension and diabetes.
While disease-specific programs, referred to as verticals by Stake, have been successful in addressing individual diseases, they frequently overlook the connections between different health conditions and patients' overall needs.
“We realized that LABS’ strength in data-driven population health adds value to a range of different conditions,” she said. “It’s a pivot away from just looking at a single condition to transforming community healthcare delivery.”
And how does that transformation appear? It is more data-driven and responsive to patient needs for LABS.
LABS's success has been built on a sustainable healthcare model that combines hyper-local services with cutting-edge technology — and this will not change as the company expands.
The organization forges strong partnerships in both the public and private sectors, all while connecting patients to care via a network of community health workers who play an important role in bridging the gap between disease verticals.
SPICE, LABS' technology platform, is installed in health systems to improve patient health outcomes. SPICE ushers in a new era of community healthcare delivery based on data. One feature, for example, alerts clinicians if a community health worker sees patients in the field with worsening symptoms or alarming test results.
The dashboard tracks health outcomes and population health indicators in real time, which can help health system leaders with policy and planning.
SPICE, and LABS in general, were designed for this kind of expansion.
“We built SPICE for integrated care, with the ability to turn on and off conditions,” said Kelly Shelden, head of technology at LABS, “Our strategy from the beginning is to be the community health platform standard.”
LABS has reached over 1 million hypertension and diabetes patients and trained over 6,500 health workers in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, Sierra Leone, the United States, and India since its inception.
According to Megha Kumar, LABS's head of global partnerships, this impact is expected to grow.
“With new partnerships at every level of the global health system we believe that our move into broader community healthcare delivery will amplify our impact 10 times over the next couple of years,” she said.
Donor-funded healthcare programs in low- and middle-income countries have traditionally focused on specific diseases such as malaria or maternal health, but Medtronic LABS is thinking bigger than individual diseases when designing the global health system of the future.
The independent Medtronic-funded nonprofit is growing to address the full range of community health needs, including hypertension, diabetes, mental health, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and maternal health.
“With over 5 billion people in these communities across the world lacking access to healthcare, we need health systems to look beyond addressing specific conditions and consider patients’ broader health needs,” said Anne Stake, chief strategy and product officer at Medtronic LABS.
“It’s time to move away from the historical ‘verticalization’ of health systems.”
Since its inception in 2013, LABS, which uses technology to improve healthcare access for underserved communities around the world, has primarily focused on hypertension and diabetes.
While disease-specific programs, referred to as verticals by Stake, have been successful in addressing individual diseases, they frequently overlook the connections between different health conditions and patients' overall needs.
“We realized that LABS’ strength in data-driven population health adds value to a range of different conditions,” she said. “It’s a pivot away from just looking at a single condition to transforming community healthcare delivery.”
And how does that transformation appear? It is more data-driven and responsive to patient needs for LABS.
LABS's success has been built on a sustainable healthcare model that combines hyper-local services with cutting-edge technology — and this will not change as the company expands.
The organization forges strong partnerships in both the public and private sectors, all while connecting patients to care via a network of community health workers who play an important role in bridging the gap between disease verticals.
SPICE, LABS' technology platform, is installed in health systems to improve patient health outcomes. SPICE ushers in a new era of community healthcare delivery based on data. One feature, for example, alerts clinicians if a community health worker sees patients in the field with worsening symptoms or alarming test results.
The dashboard tracks health outcomes and population health indicators in real time, which can help health system leaders with policy and planning.
SPICE, and LABS in general, were designed for this kind of expansion.
“We built SPICE for integrated care, with the ability to turn on and off conditions,” said Kelly Shelden, head of technology at LABS, “Our strategy from the beginning is to be the community health platform standard.”
LABS has reached over 1 million hypertension and diabetes patients and trained over 6,500 health workers in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, Sierra Leone, the United States, and India since its inception.
According to Megha Kumar, LABS's head of global partnerships, this impact is expected to grow.
“With new partnerships at every level of the global health system we believe that our move into broader community healthcare delivery will amplify our impact 10 times over the next couple of years,” she said.
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