Electronic Health Reporter

It’s called healthcare for a reason. Technology is a powerful tool, but people are the solution. The Twine Health Collaborative Care Platform allows for the co-creation and tracking of personalized care plans that serve as common ground for continuous collaboration between patients, coaches and their clinicians. Patients get support from their care team, on their terms whenever, wherever they are: so they reach their health goals faster and focus on living.

Healthcare has lost its way. In recent years the “care” has fallen by the wayside — victim of flawed automation efforts, perverse payment models and the constant pressure to reduce costs. Technology is a powerful tool. However, if not used properly it’s impersonal and the human connections, which are critically important to caregiving, get lost. People are the solution to better healthcare.

People are the most underutilized resource in health. Twine Health changes the game by empowering them to take an active role in their care, learning along the way, and overtime building self-efficacy. Twine Health surfaces patients who need help at just the right time, allowing them to remain effective even as panel sizes grow. Coaches provide the ongoing support and expertise that is key to successful behavioral change. This also allows clinicians the time and focus to practice at the top of their license, interacting directly with patients when challenging medical conditions arise.

Elevator Pitch

The Twine Collaborative Care Platform is a new class of digital health technology that helps patients build self-efficacy via continuous support from coaches and their clinicians. Spun out of research performed at the MIT Media Lab, and proven cost effective via clinical trials and commercial pilots, Twine delivers results that cannot be ignored – 90 percent of patients reach their health goals (e.g., blood pressure < 140/90) within 3 months at 1/3 the cost of the standard of care.

Founder’s Story

John Moore, MD, PhD, is the co-founder and CEO of Twine Health. Moore’s passion for a better healthcare system started during his medical training where he was frustrated to learn that the best diagnostic and treatment capabilities did not result in healthier and engaged people. To be successful, Moore realized patients had to be in control of their own care, but also recognized the clear need for expert support. Moore came up with the idea for Twine Health during six years at the MIT Media Lab where he studied the healthcare delivery model and created a revolutionary approach to care: technology-supported apprenticeship. Bringing together advances in health psychology, learning science and human-computer interaction, Twine is designed to become the primary tool for teamwork between patients and clinicians. Before attending medical school, Moore received a BS in Biomedical engineering, and was a Fulbright Scholar.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

Patients, coaches and clinicians are looking for a better way to provide and receive care – a way to make health care healthier. Twine Health provides clinicians, and the health organizations (HCOs) they work for, an effective and scalable chronic care platform that improves outcomes, reduces costs and increases patient and clinician satisfaction. The results speak for themselves:

• Ninety percent (90 percent) of patients meet their goal (e.g., blood pressure < 140/90 mmHg) in three months (the standard of care is 30 percent in 1 year)
• Care teams spend twelve (12) minutes per patient per month supporting patients (equates to one-third the cost of standard chronic care)
• Engagement rates are 80 percent (with rates below 5 percent common for today’s patient portals)
• Practices typically start enrolling patients with two (2) hours of set-up and training (secure, cloud-based and modern in design – Twine is quick and easy to adopt and scale)

Market Opportunity

U.S. healthcare expenditures are projected to grow to more than $4 billion in the next five years. Chronic disease, often uncontrolled or un-managed, is estimated to drive 65 percent or 70 percent of these expenses. Our healthcare delivery system is being stretched like never before. Spiraling healthcare expenditures have organizations struggling to cut costs via reduced headcounts and more efficient operations, while simultaneously wanting to improve the patient and clinician experience. The problem is huge and the time is right to introduce an innovative approach to revolutionize the way healthcare is delivered.

Enter Twine Health and its collaborative care platform. By combining the reflective power of personal healthcare data with the right type of human connection, patients dramatically elevate their contribution and change their behaviors in positive ways. With Twine’s planned expansion from hypertension and diabetes across the spectrum of care by mid-2015, Twine Health is ideally positioned to significantly impact the outcomes, costs and experience of care delivery in the US.

How does your company differentiates itself from the competitors

Twine Health is designed to engage and support patients in their wellness efforts. Patients are the most underutilized resource in healthcare delivery. With Twine, each patient’s data (clinical and self-generated) is tracked, analyzed and transparently displayed providing situational learning opportunities for patients and teaching moments for coaches. Over time, as patients better understand their conditions and how to manage them, they become experts and leaders in their care.

Twine Health is delightful to use by design. The platform integrates the latest mobile, cloud, analytics and consumer devices, yet it is radically simple to adopt and use by clinicians and HCOs. By building the platform from the patient in – instead the doctor out – Twine offers a unified user experience that combines critical elements of today’s emerging HIT solutions: population health, analytics, electronic medical records, tele-health and secure communication solutions. Additionally, every action of the team (patient, coach and clinician) is captured and analyzed. As a result, Twine becomes a real-time learning system that allows providers to measure their performance and quickly iterate to success.

Business model

Twine delivers value to healthcare organizations (HCOs) by reducing care delivery costs in the short-term, and with continuous patient engagement and better outcomes, avoids admissions and ER visits in the long-term. With a cloud-based SaaS pricing model (tiered based on the number of patients enrolled) HCOs eliminate large capital expenditures, and instead scale-up as patient and clinician adoption grows.

Current needs

Twine Health is looking for innovative primary care practices and healthcare organizations interested in improving outcomes, cutting costs and promoting satisfaction among care providers and patients.

Founded

Twine Health was spun-out of the MIT Media Lab in September 2013. Six years of development and research including two randomized controlled trials, proved that Twine Health’s technology enabled, collaborative care platform delivered unparalleled results.

Number of full-time employees

Twine Health is driven by an outstanding team of physicians and engineers. We have nine full-time employees and several strategic clinical and business advisors.

Headquarters

Twine Health is located in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA.