Q: Can you tell us about your company and the challenges you are solving within the remote monitoring space?

A: Memora Health is a private venture-backed company that was incorporated and began business operations in June 2017. We are headquartered in San Francisco, CA with one additional office in New York, N.Y. Memora Health has approximately 70 employees, all of whom are based in the U.S. To date, Memora has raised three rounds of institutional financing–$50.5 million total, mainly from venture capital firms. 

Our digital health solution was designed to provide a better way to support patients outside of a clinical setting. Our platform is AI-powered and HIPAA-compliant, and intelligently combines device-based and patient-reported data to comprehensively monitor patient performance. 

Beyond just device-based data collection, Memora’s communication platform includes care journeys that are deployed through an intelligent SMS-based communication engine, as well as virtual visit and phone call capabilities to fully support patients in a home-based setting. Memora’s partnerships range across health systems, home health and digital health companies and health plans. 

Memora takes a patient-centric, engagement-first approach to successfully implement, sustain, and scale its programs while supporting patients in their care journey. This approach couples virtual care infrastructure, remote monitoring/devices and care journeys in a way that has not been achieved by most competitive platforms. Memora's users find our platform to be the most comprehensive in the industry for meeting the needs of an entire patient panel/population with varying engagement needs.

Q: How does your company differentiate from other remote monitoring vendors?

A: Many RPM initiatives fail because a one-size-fits-all approach does not match the unique needs of the patient population. They also fail because the data generated from devices is neither usable nor actionable, and patients cannot engage over long-periods of time. Initiatives for RPM are also difficult to scale outside of their primary use case to support other service lines across the initiative. 

Memora Health differentiates from other vendors in several ways: 

First, our solution is designed around the concept that there will be patients who immediately need device-based monitoring and those that will need to “dial-up” monitoring intensity based on the signals identified from them directly. Our AI-based communication platform that backs the remote monitoring systems enables rapid scaling of patient-reported data collection, even for device-less or “BYOD” monitoring across expanded populations. This allows clinicians more flexibility to dial-up or dial-down the intensity of monitoring based on patient need while mitigating costs at the same time. 

Second, we perform intelligent data reconciliation so the care team is spared the “noise” that RPM devices can generate. This approach ensures that clinicians are able to continue delivering care without constant notifications from monitoring initiatives. Memora’s intelligent back end reconciles and validates device-based data with patient-reported data to significantly mitigate the overwhelming volume of device data and poor signal-to-noise ratio that clinicians frequently experience. 

Third, our patient-centric, engagement-first approach is coupled with advanced natural language processing (NLP) technical capabilities. Our NLP analyzes patient responses and offers proactive, helpful guidance. In fact, we regularly receive qualitative feedback from patients that they believe our NLP is a live person. We were intentional in designing our solution this way, with messages that are grounded in motivational interviewing techniques. Together with our easy, non-app-based front end (SMS), we are well-positioned to overcome low patient activation, adoption and engagement rates typically seen in RPM initiatives. 

Last, Memora Health works with customers to develop impactful messaging programs across the clinical spectrum. This differentiator serves as a force-multiplier for providers that seek an enterprise solution to long-term patient engagement that includes RPM within that strategy. Memora Health has experienced success in and has built care journeys across dozens of service lines, including oncology, cardiology, obstetrics, and gastroenterology.

Q: What are some of the biggest changes your company has seen around how health systems are approaching remote monitoring since 2020?

A: In general, we have seen health systems approach remote monitoring over the last couple of years with an increased commitment to RPM initiatives that can scale across multiple use cases, render the data generated actionable for the care team, and engage the patient consistently–even after they’re no longer being remotely monitored. Health systems have preferred a full orchestration layer in their remote monitoring programs that makes adherence to care plans and disease management easy, accessible, actionable and always-on for patients outside the care setting. Unlike EMRs and their capabilities, our prospects and clients view Memora Health’s RPM capabilities as a way to support patients throughout their ongoing care journey outside the clinical setting and across many use cases.

Q: What does an ideal client look like? How are health systems best organized for success in remote monitoring?

A: Ideally, we are working with health systems who wish to automate action on RPM data generated rather than merely capture that data, but we don’t have a highly specific client in mind or any minimum requirements . We support all providers of all types and patient counts (including digital health companies), from providers with limited budgets that wish to pilot Memora Health to those with large enterprise budgets who want to contract at-risk. 

Additionally, health systems who wish to augment their patient engagement strategies with RPM for postpartum moms, oncology patients, those with chronic care management needs or patients who need to avoid readmissions are great matches for our areas of expertise. 

We find the health systems best organized for success in remote monitoring are those who assign the same resources as any typical health IT/digital health go-live. Generally speaking, this would involve the following stages (in parallel or sequential order) of organizational planning and stakeholder alignment: 

1. Align: The health system aligns the RPM initiative through its existing governance structures and clinical IT strategies. 

2. Earn: The health system has earned the opportunity to initiate this program because other mission-critical IT initiatives have been sufficiently addressed (e.g., keeping the lights on). 

3. Integrate: The health system has plans to utilize the analytics rendered from the RPM initiative within the existing data and intelligence processes. Furthermore, the initiative will be fully integrated within the clinical workflow and easy for patients to access and engage with. 

4. Cultivate: The health system has assigned the appropriate resources to staff the RPM initiative and has sufficient vendor management capabilities for training and adoption. 

5. Evolve: The health system has gained adoption of the initiative for the initial patient population and, as appropriate, has begun to scale it to other locations and conditions.

Q: What measurable outcomes have you seen from your clients who have prioritized remote monitoring?

A: Memora Health delivers value by digitizing and automating RPM care journeys that are currently either delivered manually or that have not been implemented due to a lack of resources or scalable solutions. Our value to health systems RPM initiatives is truly two-fold: We separate the signal from the noise to make data actionable for the care team, and we act as a constant support layer for driving patient engagement. 

We’ve proven ROI and clinical value in several areas. Specifically, in clinically-validated studies Memora has enabled organizations to achieve high levels of patient outcomes like patient activation (92 percent) and sustained engagement over 90 days (76 percent); reduced hospital readmissions (16 percent reduction); and high patient retention (91 percent). For the care team, Memora Health has seen overall better operational efficiency, such as 40 percent reduced clinical notifications and 31 percent call deflection rates. 

In addition to high patient satisfaction from subjective feedback, Memora Health has consistently improved its patient net promoter score, with a current score of 69 (70 is considered world-class). Provider satisfaction has also been high–clinicians using Memora Health report a satisfaction rate of 96 percent.

Q: What major functional enhancements and/or product investments are you making in the near term to keep up with the evolution of remote monitoring?

A: Over the next 12 to 18 months, we anticipate introducing a few new features, including greater device compatibility to support remote patient monitoring-assisted patient engagement and more intelligent escalations. Memora currently has workflows built into the platform to assess what type of patient is enrolled–connected device, BYOD or no device. Based on these workflows, we are currently building intelligent workflows that adjust the frequency of outreach to make sure that the patient is comprehensively getting feedback on their health status in real-time.

We’re also using data from more than 100 million interactions to build more intelligent algorithms that can identify when escalations should take place, while allowing for comprehensive filtering of patient-reported concerns. This has strict guidelines that we are following and jointly building out with several clinical teams. 

Memory is also actively scaling its presence in children's health and increasing the scope of its offering. Our goal is to decrease complexity for patients while improving efficiency and  facilitating better population management. These are guiding principles that we will continue to prioritize and build product solutions around.

Q: How is your company partnering with clients as reimbursements and use cases shift?

A: Memora's platform supports the ability to track total time spent by care teams reviewing patient-reported data and manually messaging/interacting with patients through the platform (via two-way texting, phone calls, or virtual visits). This enables time-tracking for reimbursement purposes, which flows into Memora’s comprehensive reimbursement process. Memora tabulates time and intelligently generates the appropriate codes for the billing team to submit as a claim. In addition to time tracking and coding, all patient-reported data and clinician actions are also documented in Memora for audit. We are also willing to enter into at-risk agreements to align incentives appropriately for our prospective clients. 

With regard to use cases, Memora has a comprehensive library of over 200 care journeys already built within the platform. Care journeys can be accessed through one of two ways: 

1. Journeys that Memora has built with other leading healthcare organizations are accessible to all clients. This allows users to utilize a care journey that has already been validated and is comprehensively built, allowing for a quick launch for care teams; or 

2. The health system can request custom care journeys based on external guidelines or existing processes/content that they maintain. Memora's product team will work closely with the health system to allow for this configuration/customization. Care journeys can be customized at the per-provider or per-patient level. Template care journeys that are built for the initial launch are customized entirely by Memora–per-patient adjustments can be made directly by clinical teams. 

For care journeys that have already been built within Memora (i.e. standard care paths), they can easily be re-purposed to allow the core program design to be re-used with minor modifications that are made at either the population or patient level.

Q: What are the biggest opportunities health systems should be thinking about this year when it comes to remote monitoring?

A: There are three significant opportunities for health systems with remote monitoring initiative use cases this year: 

• Postpartum support. The postpartum period is arguably one of the most challenging times in a woman’s life. There are a number of clinical problems faced by new moms, including hypertension. Health systems should consider a packaged blood pressure monitoring device service for postpartum moms to proactively identify mothers who are at risk of postpartum hypertension. Research suggests that these programs can significantly reduce readmission risk, avoid costs and save lives. 

• Oncology. About 33 percent of patients undergoing chemotherapy and/or radiation treatment for cancer exhibit symptoms that require further assessment. Health systems should consider home-based monitoring for these patients that pairs seamless engagement methods and provisioned devices to provide ongoing support for the road ahead. 

• Chronic care management. All health systems seek innovative ways to reduce emergency department utilization, particularly for their chronic care patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, congestive heart failure, diabetes and/or chronic kidney disease. For specialty care patients with conditions that are ripe for ED visits, health systems can provide virtual home health services alongside RPM initiatives that deliver high-quality care at a lower cost.

Q: How do you see remote monitoring evolving in 2022 and beyond?

A: Health systems are seeking to mature their consumer strategies, which inevitably include deeper patient engagement and insights around behaviors that can be influenced across the journey. We anticipate that health systems will begin to seek out integration partners for the investments they have made in their customer relationship management (CRM) system. Memora Health is able to integrate with these types of consumer software that can serve to modernize the health system’s consumerism efforts.

When it comes to deploying new digital care solutions, health systems have no bandwidth to implement another point solution with limited long-term value. Memora Health is designed so that a health system can seamlessly monitor patients through SMS as a baseline level of engagement. When the patient requires a device, that experience can be guided completely through Memora Health messaging. After the patient no longer requires active device monitoring, Memora Health remains the common thread of engagement for care teams and patients.