TMCnet News

Intel-GE Care Innovations™ and Happify to Collaborate On Groundbreaking Program To Help Family Caregivers Of The Chronically Ill
[November 23, 2015]

Intel-GE Care Innovations™ and Happify to Collaborate On Groundbreaking Program To Help Family Caregivers Of The Chronically Ill


Intel (News - Alert)-GE Care Innovations™, a pioneer in connecting the care continuum to the home, today announced a strategic partnership with Happify, a leading provider of an evidence-based intervention platform for emotional health and wellbeing, that will bring a new model of care to thousands of family caregivers of chronically ill people across the United States. Happify will provide Care Innovations with its proven programs that improve the wellbeing of caregivers through simple to use, daily interactions on their smart phones.

Care Innovations and Happify are working on the integration of their mutual programs, including those using Care Innovations Health Harmony telehealth solutions, to deliver unique, engaging solutions to their respective healthcare clientele and expect to be in market with key clients in Q1 2016. Health Harmony, through an easy-to-use technology platform, enables individuals, clinicians, care providers, and family caregivers to collaborate for better care in the home - wherever home may be.

The new programs will cater to a wide population of family caregivers who provide the bulk of care today to the more than 130 million people suffering from expensive chronic conditions in the United States. Family caregivers provide an estimated value of $470 billion in care each year and keeping them healthy and able to provide care is vitally important to efforts to reduce healthcare costs and improve outcomes in the United States. Studies have found that caregivers' emotional health and wellbeing is affected by the physical and mental burden of being a caregiver.

Happify's evidence-based interventions, which are based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, positive psychology and mindfulness, offer a variety of ways to help caregiver families manage difficult times that are inherent in taking care of another person. Happify's platform offers evidence-based interventions for mental health and wellbeing, with validated outcomes in a self-care, high-scale, low-cost model. With more than 2 million global members using its web and mobile versions, Happify's innovative user experience drives unparalleled engagement and measurable outcomes.

"Family caregivers are an essential yet overlooked aspect of the care team. A successful healthcare outcome - for the patient, the provider, and the health plan - often depends on the ability and availability of a family caregiver," said Sean Slovenski, Chief Executive Officer at Care Innovations. "Yet the physical and mental burden of being a caregiver is immense. This collaboration with Happify is intended to help family caregivers maintain a positive attitude during what can be incredibly difficult times. And if we can help caregivers be happier, we know the odds are they'll be more effective caregivers and be healthier themselves."

Studies have shown caregivers can play a vital role in ensuring their loved one's health improves when moving from the hospital to the home if they have the right information at the right time to help. In fact, when patients and their caregivers are trained to take a more active role during care transition from the hospital to the home, patients had lower rehospitalization rates compared to the control group without intervention at 30 days (8.3% vs 11.9%) and at 90 days (16.7% vs 22.5%)1. Health Harmony aims to help improve the patient's health while also simplifying the life of a family caregiver, keeping the patient at home where they want to be most.

Today, with Care Innovations Health Harmony solution, patients and caregivers receive interactive, evidence-based educational content and can securely send vital signs and other health information to clinicians from the comfort of their homes. The platform allows for the interaction of family caregivers to monitor their loved ones' health status and access valuable stress-relief and nutritional advice to manage the daily challenges of caregiving and their own health. By adding on access to Happify's innovative mobile app, Care Innovations will be able to leverage state-of-the-art programs to improve the well-being of family caregivers and offer additional programs to its clients.

"Happify is an easily accessible tool that helps people improve their emotional health and wellbeing. Happify's interventions allow family caregivers to better manage the stress and anxiety that often is associated with the experience of caring for a loved one. We're thankful for the important, noble work family caregivers carry out and we're honored to support them through Care Innovations' approach," said Happify President and Co-Founder, Ofer Leidner.

For physicians and nurses, Health Harmony aggregates and analyzes the myriad of data available from patients and their families at home and turns it into actionable insights that can help them provide better care. In addition, Health Harmony streamlines the information and communication between physicians, nurses, patients, and family caregivers to create better health outcomes and lower costs.

About Intel-GE Care Innovations™

Intel-GE Care Innovations, a joint venture between Intel Corporation and GE Healthcare, connects the care continuum to the home and makes it easier for patients, family caregivers, and professional caregivers to interact and achieve better health at home.

Experts in technology and behavior change, Care Innovations identifies the best methods for health care providers and health plans to capture and integrate near real-time data from the home into care delivery as well as the best ways to engage consumers in their own health to provide lasting positive change. Visit www.careinnovations.com to learn more.

About Happify

Happify (www.Happify.com) is a New York City-based company delivering evidence-based interventions for emotional health and wellbeing in highly engaging digital formats. Co-founded by Tomer Ben-Kiki, Ofer Leidner and Andy Parsons (News - Alert), Happify provides programs, activities and exercises based on decades of scientific research in the fields of positive psychology, CBT and mindfulness. Happify offers free and paid subscription memberships for consumers and business solutions for payors and enterprise clients.





_____________________

1 Coleman EA, Parry C, Chalmers S, Min S. The care transitions intervention: results of a randomized controlled trial. Arch Intern Med. 2006;1 66(17):1822-1828. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17000937



[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]