At Vim, we’re all about driving advancement in healthcare technology and breaking down barriers to help the brightest innovators in the space test the limits of their creativity. That’s why we were delighted to support one of our newest partners, Pearl Health, for their bi-annual company hackathon this month by giving them early access to Vim Canvas, Vim’s developer platform and SDK, for one of its hackathon teams to leverage.
Pearl Health is a provider enablement and value-based care technology company that helps primary care providers and healthcare organizations succeed in value-based care.
To get the inside scoop on this epic 72-hour event, we sat down with Moses Ting, Director of Product Design, Abdullah Al-Dhalaan, Senior Software Engineer, and Phil Shiu, Senior Software Engineer at Pearl Health to discuss Pearl’s second hackathon, including the Vim project.
Before we dive in, here is a quick rundown of the Vim project during Pearl’s Hackathon event:
Goal:
Explore ways to bring Pearl’s robust technology portal experience into the EHR and at the point of care to enhance and improve their provider partners’ workflows.
Timeline:
72 hours
Participants:
R&D: Engineers, Data Scientists, Product and Experience Design
Tools:
Vim’s Developer Platform (Vim Canvas), Vim’s SDK, Vim’s EHR Sandbox Environment
Resources/Partners:
Vim’s R&D Team, Shared Slack Channel with Vim
Required Deliverable:
A proof of concept in-EHR experience for Pearl’s provider partners
Q&A with the Pearl Team:
Q: Moses, what was the inspiration behind this hackathon?
Moses: Serendipity and listening to our customers. Four days before the hackathon, I happened to be chatting with my colleague Angie Inlow, who heads up Enterprise Partnerships at Pearl Health. She has an amazing understanding of our larger customers and shared two patterns she’s been noticing:
That was the eureka moment. I said to my colleague: “You know what would be a fun hack? What you just told me. Instead of care team members logging into Pearl, why don’t we bring the most important user interactions into their EHR.”
So I submitted the idea and got really lucky when Phil and Abdullah from our engineering team decided to join the hack. Ideas are only ideas until they get built.
Q: That’s an awesome vision. What were some of the key goals you had for the event?
Moses: Besides having fun with our ideas, our VP of engineering Ryan Donahue provided some great guardrails for this hackathon event. From adding value to our customers to reducing technical debt, hacks were encouraged to be shippable in a foreseeable timeframe and to stay anchored to Pearl’s mission of empowering primary care providers.
For the Vim-specific project during the hackathon, we were excited to play with Vim Canvas and learn what we could do with it. Could we bring the best of our Pearl app into Vim? Can we build a proof of concept in just three days? The support we got from Vim’s engineering team right from the start was phenomenal, and it helped us make steady progress early on.
Q: How did the overall hackathon reflect your team’s approach to its product roadmap and solving problems for end users and partners?
Moses: Hackathons let us look at problems differently and become better at how we approach roadmap planning. Case in point, this project was a masterclass in learning what we can do with Vim. This knowledge will no doubt inform us of what user problems we can solve in the foreseeable future.
Q: Speaking of problem-solving, Abdullah, why did you choose Vim’s new developer platform and SDK as the project you would work on during this hackathon event?
Abdullah: Day to day at Pearl, I work on a team that builds the infrastructure to trigger and deliver our patient insights and alerts. Because of that, I’m always aware that these only provide value if they can reach and can be seen by our users. When I saw this project idea, it was immediately my first choice because it would allow me to experiment with a new patient alert delivery route. I was concerned with the integration challenges in such a short time that the hackathon provided, but the platform’s simplicity hid all the complicated EHR details and allowed us to focus on our core challenges.
Q: What about this hackathon was unique from others you’ve led in the past?
Phil: As mentioned earlier, we had phenomenal support from Vim right from the start of our hackathon project. I honestly think their entire engineering team was there during our kickoff meeting, and they provided around-the-clock support through our joint Slack channel.
Moses: The other unique thing was how quickly we were able to move. You don’t often hear “fast” and “healthcare innovation” in the same breath, but that’s what we heard during our presentation and demo. All the credit goes to Abdullah, Phil, and the support we received from Vim.
Q: The Vim SDK was completely new to your team. How were you able to start from scratch and build a proof of concept in less than 72 hours?
Phil: We were only able to successfully build our proof of concept because of the support we received from each other in the hackathon team, from Vim itself, and from so many others at Pearl. Everyone at Pearl and Vim were very excited about how Vim can enable us to make our clinician’s lives easier, which led to many different parts of both organizations coming together to help unblock the development of the proof of concept. I wouldn’t be surprised if over 30 people helped us in some way during the course of the hackathon. The collaborative nature of our organizations was key to getting this proof of concept off the ground.
Q: Abdullah, what can you tell us about your experience with Vim’s developer platform and SDK?
Abdullah: The Vim SDK was very well documented and really easy to get started with. Almost all of our questions that first day were already answered for us. We quickly got up to speed and up and running with a functional “Hello world” app in a few hours. Once that was done, Vim gave us what we wanted, a blank canvas that we could experiment and build on top of without getting in our way. I enjoyed bringing the familiar Pearl UI into a new and unfamiliar place, the EHR. It was a fun challenge wrangling to fit that core Pearl user experience into a smaller space.
The Vim team did simplify the auth handshake for our app, which helped us get up to speed much quicker. In the real world we would have needed more time to do so.
Q: What lessons did you learn in creating your solution and building your application on Vim Canvas, and what would you do differently next time, if anything?
Phil: One of the fun parts of this project was working together to solve unknowns about how we should integrate our software into Vim. We would each take a different approach to solving the same unknown, which turned out to be very helpful because it allowed us to regroup later and branch to the approach that worked the fastest. I don’t think we explicitly planned it that way, but in the future, I would definitely like to continue to plan for overlaps in what hackathon members do because working on the same problems sparked synergies unavailable when working in silos.
Q: Partnerships between companies are often made at the highest level, so it’s amazing to see tangible collaboration between the Pearl and Vim team members who typically perform this important engineering and problem-solving work behind the scenes. On this, I did hear a rumor that the Vim logo is now a custom emoji in your Slack – a high honor. Can you confirm this? 😉
Moses: Confirmed! I looked and noticed that it was added by our CTO. My follow-up question is whether the Pearl Health logo is a custom emoji at Vim… 😀 If not, then you know who you can ping to get the right-sized image.
Q: I recently listened to a podcast episode in which your CPO, Jennifer Rabiner, was interviewed. She mentioned that one way Pearl empowers primary care providers is to help them tap into their superpowers. When you think about the outcome of this hackathon, how does it help your provider superheroes?
Moses: While we’re still working on this as a design team, one of the key principles we’ve come across repeatedly is to help providers save time. Through discussions and user interviews, we’ve observed numerous processes and procedures that steal time away from providers, time that should be returned back to patient care. The ability to reclaim time, maybe that’s the superpower.
Q: So, will your team’s stealth project and proof of concept built on Vim’s SDK and developer platform soon become an actual use case available to your provider partners?
Moses: It’s a really compelling use case and likely an important one as we consider how we want to grow as a business in the upcoming months.
Q: Final question: What is next for Vim and Pearl’s partnership? Is there anything you can spill the tea on now?
Moses: The Vim Canvas readily offers us a blank canvas to work with, so the possibilities are endless! Pun aside, it’s a unique platform that reminds me of what the mobile revolution made possible — the ability to bring (or push) information and content to where users are. In healthcare, that destination is every practice’s EHR system. As a designer, I’m excited about what we can do with this blank canvas.
Thanks to the Pearl Health team for giving us a glimpse of how Pearl creates healthcare superheroes and fosters a culture of innovation, exploration, and fun. Also, thank you for sharing your team’s experience using our developer platform and SDK, Vim Canvas, which is currently in closed beta. We are thrilled to see the Vim vision of building a more connected and collaborative healthcare system take shape.
The pharmacy sector is undergoing significant changes fueled by the demand for streamlined healthcare processes and innovation, influenced by factors such as the global pandemic and evolving patient needs.
Technology solutions play a pivotal role in response to these challenges that have long plagued the prescription (Rx) space, from the beginning of the prescribing process at the point-of-care (POC), through cumbersome prior authorization submissions, to patient medication acquisition and medication adherence.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the dynamic shifts in the Rx space, and how they lay the foundation for innovative point-of-care (POC) solutions like Vim.
Traditional pharmacy models are no longer sufficient to meet the complex needs of today’s healthcare landscape. With an aging population, the rise of chronic diseases, and an increasing focus on preventive care, pharmacies are facing a growing demand for efficient, personalized services.
The need for more accessible healthcare solutions has been further accentuated by global challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges that have surfaced created a demand for tech solutions in this space:
The rising cost of medications, especially specialty drugs like GLP-1 inhibitors, is a significant concern. Increasing out-of-pocket medication costs can deter patients from following their treatment plans, impacting their overall health.
Rising costs also trickle throughout the Rx ecosystem, impacting the entire value chain of participants (e.g. provider systems, payers, pharmacies, and more). On top of this, rural and underserved areas face challenges in accessing adequate healthcare services, including pharmacies. This geographic barrier further contributes to health disparities and limited opportunities for early intervention.
Medication adherence, or the extent to which patients take their prescribed medications correctly, is a persistent challenge.
Non-adherence can lead to worsened health outcomes, increased healthcare costs, and even preventable hospitalizations.
Patients often struggle to manage complex medication regimens, resulting in missed doses and treatment inefficiency.
Traditional pharmacy workflows are often ripe with inefficiencies, including manual prescription processing, time-consuming administrative tasks, and a lack of seamless communication between healthcare providers, pharmacies, and patients.
A good example of this is the prior authorization process, one that CMS has been hyper-focused on through various mandates and new regulations over the past few years. The cumbersome prior authorization process can delay patient access to necessary medications, and create a burden for providers, support staff, and pharmacists alike.
Vim’s mission is to power affordable, high-quality health care through seamless connectivity.
We entered the Rx space knowing that setting out to solve the challenges around medication costs, adherence, and accessibility would be a good fit.
Our in-EHR cloud-based point-of-care connection platform, expertise, and customer relationships could allow for this problem to be addressed in an entirely new way.
Earlier this year, we asked our customers a simple question about their prescription processes. What could make it better? Then, we set out to change how Rx workflows are managed.
We collaborated closely with our customers powering other value-based-care workflows through Vim’s platform, laid out their current state processes, and co-designed an Rx-focused solution that would remove as many pain points and manual steps as possible.
The result is a point-of-care solution we named Vim Rx Assist. Vim’s Rx Assist in-EHR application seamlessly surfaces our customers’ patient-specific medication recommendations and insights at the point of care, saving time and reducing administrative burden.
Rx Assist is an easy-to-use application that simplifies medication workflows, helping to lower the total cost of care and improve medication adherence and accessibility.
Vim Rx Assist helps eliminate the manual and out-of-workflow hassle often associated with medication adjustments and interactions between providers and pharmacy teams. Our in-EHR application helps in the following areas:
Vim’s capabilities today, and what we can build tomorrow, extend well beyond medication management. Our platform can help customers address broader issues, such as Social Determinants of Health (SDoH), and access to care.
The point-of-care solutions offered by Vim can help beyond accepting a suspect diagnosis and prescribing a medication; our technology can initiate relevant care management program referrals, highlight benefit flags, and work with customers to identify the best ways to close the care loop for their patients.
While we are focusing initially on managing Rx costs and patient regimens within our newest product offering, we are excited about the ‘art of the possible.’
As we continue developing this solution with additional features and functionality, we will work to bring together the many disparate and cumbersome parts of the overall prescription management process and empower providers with additional insights at their fingertips.
The pharmacy industry is at a crossroads, its challenges requiring a paradigm shift in how healthcare services are delivered.
Point-of-care technologies are rising to the occasion, offering innovative solutions that not only address existing challenges but also pave the way for a more provider and patient-centered, efficient, and accessible healthcare future.
As Pharmacy Benefit Managers, Provider Systems, Payers, Pharmacies, and Pharmacy-adjacent vendors continue to embrace these technologies, the industry’s landscape is set up for a transformative evolution.
The traditional medical record retrieval process or patient chart retrieval process is riddled with inefficiency and burden for all stakeholders, especially for provider organizations on the receiving end of patient chart retrieval requests.
However, the medical record retrieval process is necessary to support risk adjustment accuracy and for governmental agencies that audit health plans.
Specifically, to handle the administration of risk-adjusted payouts with the process of auditing health plans to ensure the accuracy of the data submitted.
The most common and comprehensive risk adjustment audit done for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, known as the Risk Adjustment Data Validation (RADV) audit is one of the most important risk adjustment audits that Vim’s customers manage.
Today’s medical record retrieval services often include a disorganized and time-consuming patchwork process of fragmented digital data exchange, provider manual review and extraction, and vendors deploying humans to assist provider organizations with manual record retrieval methods to source and extract relevant patient charts in support of the risk adjustment audit.
This outdated and disruptive process leads to slow wait times and significant provider abrasion.
With Vim Clinical Data Exchange, Vim partners with clinics, health plans, and health plan vendors/third-party requesters to extract data during active EHR sessions.
This new approach redefines the medical record retrieval process ensuring a seamless, secure, and scalable workflow for health plans, health plan vendors, and provider organizations alike.
In this blog post, we’ll journey into Vim’s medical records retrieval solutions product, exploring its benefits and transformative impact on healthcare providers and patients.
One of the most significant benefits of medical retrieval solutions is their ability to streamline the entire process, reducing the time and medical record retrieval effort needed by healthcare professionals to complete this process – specifically, provider organizations.
Advanced medical record retrieval solutions utilize automation and digitization to retrieve electronic records instead of more manual methods such as phone calls, emails, faxes, and portals. This saves time and enables healthcare professionals to focus on other essential tasks.
Additionally, third-party requestors often deploy retrieval agents to on-site provider organizations to facilitate the collection of patient charts – a process that is time-consuming, expensive, and not scalable.
Medical record retrieval solutions help to meet regulatory compliance requirements, such as those required for audits such as RADV, and other audits as previously mentioned.
Automation and digitization of this process help reduce the occurrence of human error, thus ensuring compliance standards are met consistently and easily.
Efficient medical record retrieval solutions can help healthcare organizations reduce expenses and maximize revenue.
By digitizing medical records and eliminating manual processes, such as sorting through paper records or faxes or providing dedicated retrieval agents, health plans and their vendors can significantly reduce administrative costs and improve operational efficiency.
These compelling benefits, coupled with Vim’s commitment to scale with our customers, led to the development of Vim’s latest product offering, Vim Clinical Data Exchange.
Modern medical record retrieval solutions and record retrieval companies have a rich tapestry of features designed to empower healthcare professionals and organizations when managing and accessing patient records efficiently.
Vim designed our latest offering, Vim Clinical Data Exchange, to not only include must-have features, but a behind-the-scenes process that revolutionizes when and how charts are extracted so that a provider’s day-to-day workflow is left uninterrupted.
These robust features simplify the retrieval process and ensure data security, compliance, and interoperability.
Here are some key features that make Vim’s solution indispensable:
Vim Clinical Data Exchange triggers during active EHR encounters – behind the scenes – with our powerful underlying EHR integration technology that transforms manual Medical Record Retrieval Solutions into cutting-edge, automated, and streamlined digital record retrieval process that ensures months-long retrieval processes are a thing of the past.
This automation dramatically reduces the time and effort required to access medical records, enabling healthcare providers to focus on what they do best – providing quality patient care and helping to eliminate provider abrasion.
Patient confidentiality is paramount and Vim’s solution prioritizes data security. Vim is HITRUST and SOC 2 Type II certified and we maintain the highest standard possible around encryption, access controls, and other security measures to safeguard sensitive patient information during the entire retrieval process.
This ensures that patient records remain confidential and protected, maintaining the trust between patients and healthcare providers.
Because providers are already burned out and overburdened with large volumes of administrative tasks, Vim set out to create a solution that would ensure provider organizations and their end users could have as little involvement as desired and enjoy new streamlined processes.
Providers receive the patient request from Vim and have the opportunity to review it and reject the data disclosure if needed or desired.
This non-disruptive and user-friendly interface is a hallmark of Vim’s Clinical Data Exchange solution.
Healthcare professionals of all technical backgrounds can navigate the system with ease – a user simply has to log in to their EHR environment as they do every day and patient data is securely and seamlessly collected and exchanged through Vim’s existing in-EHR connectivity.
This simplicity minimizes the potential for errors and ensures that staff can continue focusing on their daily workflows without additional burden.
In a healthcare landscape where multiple systems and platforms coexist, interoperability is critical. Medical Record Retrieval Solutions and retrieval methods must seamlessly integrate with various healthcare systems, ensuring that healthcare providers can access patient records from different sources without any hassles.
Most solutions are unable to tap into existing EHR workflows to ensure a new level of seamless exchange.
However, Vim’s revolutionary medical record retrieval solution ensures that records are retrieved automatically with no burden.
This fosters collaboration and seamless data exchange between all stakeholders and more interoperability across organizations.
Every healthcare organization is unique, and as previously mentioned, Vim allows provider organizations to customize their involvement. From simply approving requests, to actively reviewing each one and finally, collecting a retrieval receipt for their records, Vim offers a highly configurable retrieval process. This flexibility ensures its scalability across all practice environments and internal processes. It is adaptable to changing requirements with a proprietary solution that ensures simplicity around an otherwise complicated pursuit.
Choosing the right service provider can make a big difference in the efficiency of your operations when it comes to clinical chart retrievals. So, why should you hire us as your medical record retrieval service provider?
First and foremost, Vim is not just a service provider. Our solution is an entirely new approach to medical record retrieval that removes manual procedures and transforms the process for everyone involved.
Our client portfolio, intimate experience with provider in-EHR workflows, and our team of experts who understand the complexities of retrieving medical records ensure our solution is like none other on the market.
Secondly, our solution is a one-for-all all solution – meaning, we have the ability to partner with health plans, health plan vendors/3rd party requestors, and provider organizations to support medical record and patient chart retrieval in the most scalable, secure, and efficient way possible.
Thirdly, Vim’s over-the-air connectivity to thousands of provider organizations across 49 states in the U.S. allows our solution to open new doors and disrupt the status quo of lost charts, errors, and months and months of wasted time and waiting.
And with Vim’s ability to onboard new provider organizations in minutes, we can connect our customers to those hard-to-reach organizations within their networks.
Finally, our commitment to data security and compliance is unparalleled. We understand the sensitive nature of medical records and the importance of patient confidentiality.
That’s why we have implemented stringent security measures to safeguard patient data and meet all regulatory requirements, including HIPAA, HITRUST, and SOC 2 Type II. Learn more about Vim’s culture of security and compliance here.
Finally, as it is our mission to power affordable, high-quality health care through seamless connectivity our data exchange solution ensures speed and efficiency are cornerstones of our capabilities.
We leverage our advanced underlying integration technology and automation capabilities to streamline retrieval, saving our customers time and effort.
When you hire Vim as your medical record retrieval service provider, you can have peace of mind knowing that you are partnering with a trusted and reliable team that grows with our customers.
