Changing the perception of obesity and redefining how it is treated
Intellihealth is bringing a major advance in data-driven precision medicine to bear against one of the most challenging health issues of our time: the obesity epidemic. Although more than 42% of Americans have obesity, less than 2% of those eligible are being treated according to medical guidelines — in part due to a severe shortage of obesity specialists. Intellihealth's software-as-a-service platform, Evolve, is a recommendation engine that combines patient information from a comprehensive health risk assessment (addressing contributors such as family history, current medications, sleep and lifestyle issues, genetic susceptibility, etc.) and data from the electronic health record with total-population data sets and insights to create an individualized treatment plan featuring recommendations for diet, exercise, medications and sleep, as well as personalized educational activities based on intensive behavioral therapy. The medication decision support tool, which provides automated data-driven pharmacotherapy recommendations, is a breakthrough innovation in precision medicine not found in any other online or telehealth weight-loss program. By combining the best in medical science with cutting-edge technology, Intellihealth makes groundbreaking medical care available beyond the constraints of the physical clinic. Using the medical treatment model Evolve is based on, approximately 70% of patients achieve and maintain at least a 5% body weight reduction, a threshold associated with a significant decrease in the risk of many serious weight-related diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancers.
Patients use an intuitive mobile app to access their personalized treatment plans, which are continually refined based on information from physician visits, their electronic health records, data from wearables and connected devices, feedback from telehealth and chat sessions, and learning center progress. Advanced telehealth technology gives providers the ability to create and maintain a direct connection with patients, boosting engagement and improving the efficacy of treatment, while at the same time treating more patients more efficiently. Very few physicians receive specific training on obesity care or have significant experience treating this extremely complex multifactorial disease, so the support that Evolve provides for doctors is critical. Pharmacotherapy, in particular, is a component that physicians without obesity medicine training often lack the knowledge to integrate into a treatment plan. Evolve offers automated treatment recommendations personalized around each patient's unique data profile along with a medication support tool, which provides pharmacotherapy recommendations and prescriptive guidance, a breakthrough innovation not found in any other online or telehealth weight-loss program. The algorithm identifies, for example, which medications should or should not be used based on a patient's particular circumstances and recommends substitutes for existing prescriptions that may be promoting weight gain.
Unlike offerings from competitors, Evolve brings together automated treatment recommendations, remote patient monitoring, management tools, analytical reports, telemedicine, training and educational resources. Evolve allows doctors to draw on decades of clinical experience and vast quantities of data on how tens of thousands of patients with a wide variety of comorbidities have responded to treatment. By simplifying the many complex factors involved in treatment decisions, Evolve enables any provider to deliver the type of expert care that previously only a small number of specialists could offer. Scaling this clinically proven approach will reduce the obesity care gap and enable more individuals to access effective treatment. The core of the solution, and the fundamental innovation, is the clinical recommendation engine (patent pending), which combines patient information from a comprehensive health risk assessment — addressing contributors such as medical history, past weight loss experience, current medications, sleep patterns, lifestyle, etc. — and data from the electronic health record with total-population data sets and insights from more than 30 years of clinical practice and research by leading obesity specialists. Every data point in the assessment is evaluated by algorithms that then generate individualized treatment recommendations for diet, exercise, medications and sleep, as well as personalized educational activities based on intensive behavioral therapy.
Intellihealth's Evolve utilizes a proven medical obesity treatment model that has been developed and refined based on over 30 years of clinical by Dr. Louis Aronne, medical director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine and one of the nation's foremost obesity experts. This evidence-based, clinically proven approach combined with treatment plans customized around each patient's unique data profile make Evolve's platform three times more effective than lifestyle intervention alone. In November, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital published the results of their PCORI-funded trial in JAMA (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2772495), demonstrating the efficacy of Intellihealth's behavioral program in a population health setting. They used Evolve's predecessor platform with a behavioral intervention alone; the new and improved program leads to significantly better outcomes when used as part of a comprehensive medical approach.
Intellihealth offers a clinically proven and scalable solution to address a massive need: the millions of Americans who have obesity but are not receiving effective treatment. By combining cutting-edge digital technology, decades of clinical experience and vast quantities of research data, Intellihealth is transforming obesity treatment to transform lives.
