Iselin, New Jersey-based Indegene will buy SmartCare, a population health analytics platform, from Vantage Point.
While terms of the deal were not announced, the company said it expects the addition of SmartCare to help it fill in potential gaps experienced when transitioning into the population health analytics space.
"When we talk about patient engagement, most often what we do see, is that patient engagement is only giving access to data and information," said Indegene president Rajesh Nair, MD. But Nair said that many of his clients don't know how to transition to population health because they've never had to do it before. "It's been an ongoing challenge," he said.
[See also: Population health analytics: combatting challenges.]
SmartCare provides both the data warehousing and interoperability needed to make population health work, giving providers the "ability to give a full umbrella of care," he said.
"What we're realizing is many of our customers are trying to make the leap to this definition of patient engagement," Nair said. But to create a patient-centric model, they "need to have the foundation in place."
Nair believes there are two key elements to support authentic population health. The first is to "convert talk into actual design elements, across all departments;" the second is change management.
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"We believe the overall strategies for population health or stakeholders need to be clear; that everyone intellectually understands the changes within each department and the people are educated," Nair said. "And make sure every position, from the tools to the message, bring in the patient-centricity."
To date, SmartCare has been deployed across more than 3 million patients and processes more than 20 million claims each year. That's expected to grow as Indegene integrates SmartCare into its existing solutions, he said.
The new platform will also help clients access the analytics they need to convert to value-based reimbursement and accountable care models, Nair added.
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