Rimidi
Enabling Continuous Care Delivery for Chronic Conditions

The growing prevalence of chronic diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and Hypertension have driven skyrocketing healthcare costs in the U.S. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that six in 10 adults have a chronic condition, while four in 10 have two or more. The prevalence and cost of chronic conditions have forced healthcare providers to begin to reimagine the way healthcare is delivered—moving from the traditional, in-clinic setting to a proactive, virtual and continual model of care.

Set against this background, Georgia-based Rimidi has embraced the simple yet powerful mission of creating a continuous care delivery model for chronic conditions. The company has designed a cloud-based software solution that equips care teams with real-time patient data in conjunction with clinical data from the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to help them draw a personalized treatment plan. Today, Rimidi’s platform enables several patients—with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, non-alcoholic fatty liver, to name a few—to better manage their healthcare conditions and have a stronger relationship with their physician and care team.

Following is the conversation that Dr. Lucienne Ide, founder and Chief Health Innovator at Rimidi, and Josh Claman, the CEO of the company, had with CIOApplications. They provide insights into the company’s background, how it helps healthcare providers connect with their patients seamlessly, measures the company undertakes to address the challenges faced by their clients, a successful case study, and lastly, their roadmap.

What are the major challenges that your clients’ generally face?

A real struggle for healthcare providers is to engage patients in managing their chronic condition, provide continuous support leveraging virtual care tools, and thereby improve the patient experience. In order to maximize effectiveness of virtual care solutions like Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), it’s important that the solutions fit within the existing clinical workflow.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further driven the need for RPM. Patients today are hesitant to visit clinics for their regular check-ups. As such, healthcare providers are beginning to adopt RPM and other telemedicine solutions at unprecedented rates. In fact, when the pandemic hit, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) temporarily lifted some restrictions on reimbursement, enabling providers to be paid for more virtual models of patient care. For several small community and multi-specialty practices that have traditionally relied on in-person patient visits for revenue, the changes have helped keep their business afloat.

Please tell our readers how your solution is helping businesses overcome such challenges.

Over the past decade, the healthcare industry has been focused on shifting from a fee-for-service model to a value-based model in which providers are rewarded for the quality of care they provide – not the quantity. This is often discussed in terms of the Quadruple Aim: Lower costs, improve patient outcomes, improve patient satisfaction, and enhance provider/clinician satisfaction. Rimidi’s configurable, platform-based approach to RPM is uniquely positioned to help healthcare providers achieve all four.

Working directly within the EHR through SMART on FHIR interoperability standards, Rimidi’s solution provides improved, dynamic visibility of patient populations, with formal processes for identifying the highest risk patients and providing actionable insights for clinicians. Our platform combines all of the relevant clinical information for a particular condition from the patient record in the EHR (like what medications the patient is on and when their last important lab was) with patient-generated data from a connected device, like a blood-glucose meter or blood pressure cuff.

The platform provides configurable alerts to the care team if a patient is outside the recommended range or if they miss a test, and can automatically trigger messages to the patient to remind them to test. In addition, our platform enables two-way text messaging with the patient so the care team can provide additional support and encouragement.

A key differentiator is our Clinical Decision Support cards, which bring practice guidelines and clinical pathways to life at the point of care in the context of each individual patient. As one doctor once told us, you make it really easy to do the right thing for each patient, and hard to do the wrong thing. Our platform is helping providers address these workflow challenges while also making it easy to track activity and get paid.

Could you site a successful case study that Rimidi has recently acquired?

For years, we have worked with several large regional health systems and academic medical centers. In one instance, experts at Boston Medical Center (BMC) wanted to remotely monitor their patients’ blood pressure, specifically women with gestational hypertension. After giving birth, women who had gestational hypertension are at an increased risk of stroke. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, BMC would send nurses to patient homes post-partum to conduct regular blood pressure checks, but the process was not cost-effective and seamless. Once COVID-19 hit, providers were trying to limit potential exposure to COVID-19 and minimize face-to-face visits.

Working with BMC, we deployed a cellular-enabled blood pressure cuff that went home with new moms so that BMC clinicians could remotely monitor blood pressure and be alerted when a patient’s readings are concerning. Our clinical decision support engine then helped the nurses and clinicians to take actions based on the patients’ data. With remote monitoring in place, clinicians are able to flag concerning blood pressure measurements and follow up with the patient to prevent the likelihood of adverse events like stroke.

In the future, what are some of the developments that you are looking to make for the company?

Ultimately, Rimidi’s goal is to improve the lives of patients and providers alike by enabling more personalized, convenient care. As we look to the future, we have plans to incorporate the latest sensors and connected devices into our platform, as well as leverage Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to enhance our clinical decision support engine. In addition, we plan to broaden our horizon to other use-cases beyond chronic conditions where clinicians and patients could benefit from more seamless processes – like transplant, orthopedic surgery, and other intensive episodes of care.

Our sweet spot is the intersection of clinical and technical expertise. The platform was built by clinicians with clinical workflow efficiency top of mind and everything we do relates back to that.