Northwell Health, a 21-hospital health system in New York City, has entered a strategic channel partnership with Avizia, a telehealth solutions provider.
In a press release about the partnership, Avizia also announced a direct-equity investment from Northwell Ventures, the health system’s corporate venture arm.
“Within this enterprise-technology-focused partnership, the companies will work to expand the depth and reach of Northwell’s telehealth services,” the organizations stated in the press release.
The investment and partnership also marks the close of Avizia’s funding round, bringing the total number of invested Series A capital to $18 million.
Northwell Health aims to align the telehealth infrastructure for its 21 hospitals and more than 550 outpatient practices throughout the New York metropolitan area. This alignment will include physician offices, imaging centers, laboratories, same-day surgical centers, skilled nursing facilities, home care, emergency medical and air ambulance services.
Among the telehealth applications already in place at Northwell is an electronic intensive care unit (eICU) program, including subspecialty neuro-critical care coverage that augments its critical care teams in seven hospitals and eight ICUs. The health system also manages a telestroke program that allows its team of board-certified stroke neurologists to rapidly evaluate and assist its emergency medicine teams in treating stroke patients upon arrival. As a part of its work with Avizia in 2017 Northwell will look to extend both of those capabilities across all of its existing facilities. In addition, Northwell provides telemonitoring services for home-care patients, using a tablet-based system that pairs with Bluetooth devices to deliver real-time, vital sign and symptom data to clinicians.
“Northwell Health is working diligently to provide the best care to our community as efficiently for patients and providers as we can,” Martin Doerfler, M.D., associate chief medical officer and senior vice president of clinical strategy and development at Northwell, said in a statement. “We believe that our enterprise telehealth partnership with Avizia will allow us to develop a robust, direct-to-consumer telehealth platform that will provide care to the individuals we serve within their homes and businesses for a range of different conditions.”
