Biofourmis, a leading global technology-enabled care delivery provider, today announced a four-year engagement with Augusta University Health (AU Health) to expand its Virtual Care at Home program across the continuum. The collaboration will focus on improving throughput in the emergency department (ED) and inpatient setting, reducing hospital readmissions, enabling optimal clinical outcomes, and improving the experience of patients and their families.

Based in Augusta, Georgia, AU Health is a world-class healthcare network, offering the most comprehensive primary, specialty and subspecialty care in eastern Georgia and western South Carolina. AU Health, which includes the Medical College of Georgia, provides skilled, compassionate care, conducts leading-edge clinical research, fosters the medical education and training of tomorrow's healthcare practitioners, and offers the region's only Level 1 trauma center.

AU Health's Virtual Care at Home is the first and only program of its kind in the state. AU started the program in February 2021 to conserve facility resources for critically ill patients in its hospital due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Biofourmis engagement arose based on a need to grow the program after AU's early success managing a total of more than 740 patients across more than 4300 patient days. The program has generated positive outcomes for AU Health, including readmissions less than 7%, reduced length of stay for patients by an average of 1.2 days, and positive patient response. AU Health's senior leadership team recognizes they can further extend care access, conserve hospital facility resources, and deliver a better experience to patients who would prefer to remain in their homes and still receive hospital-level care.

"Biofourmis stood out as a technology-enabled care delivery solution with demonstrated results that can help us scale our program across more patients and conditions while still supporting the personalized, compassionate care that our communities recognize us for," said Matthew Lyon, MD, service chief for Virtual Care at AU Health. "This collaboration also provides the opportunity to expand our program to include outpatient and post-discharge chronic condition management so we can prevent even more hospitalizations and readmissions and improve the overall quality of life for our patients."

Industry-Leading Predictive Decision Support

AU Health will implement BiofourmisCare, a comprehensive, turnkey virtual care solution for patients with acute, post-acute and chronic conditions. AU Health's team will utilize the BiofourmisCare monitoring equipment, virtual care solution and analytics platform to monitor patients who are enrolled into the program.

A wide range of low- to high-complexity patients from ages 12 to 90 years can be enrolled in the Virtual Care at Home program, typically at the point of discharge from the hospital as well as in the ED for hospital-level acute care needs. Conditions managed include pneumonia, heart failure, cellulitis, asthma, COVID-19 and others. Patients will receive around-the-clock monitoring of vital signs and virtual care visits from their AU Health providers through the program.

A deciding factor driving the collaboration was Biofourmis' FDA-cleared Biovitals^™ Analytics Engine, which leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data collected in real time to identify shifts in patients' health that may require proactive interventions.

AU Health providers and clinical teams using the BiofourmisCare solution to monitor patients will have a real-time view of their patients' status and trajectory through a continuously updated visual dashboard. They receive notifications when the predictive analytics engine first detects a potential issue, enabling clinicians to intervene. Data connectivity is available to patients even without access to broadband Internet service at home as BiofourmisCare offers data transmission capability through its exclusive cellular network adapter. This was another important factor when AU selected Biofourmis due to the larger number of rural patients that AU Health services. 

"The BiofourmisCare solution will help our teams work more efficiently and will ensure patient safety by prioritizing patient rounds based on current and forecasted changes," said Lauren Hopkins, assistant vice president of Virtual Care & Community Engagement at AU Health. "The Biofourmis monitoring equipment coupled with increased resources that we will deploy into patients' homes will create a more robust program to continue to support the hospital and our community's health needs."

The solution will also support research initiatives at the academic health system that will study how to best deliver the highest quality care that is also cost-effective and engages patients.

"AU Health's strategic expansion of its Virtual Care at Home program will help them maximize the value they receive from our end-to-end solution," said Kuldeep Singh Rajput, CEO and founder of Biofourmis. "A comprehensive, continuum-wide, tech-enabled approach to delivering care at home will help achieve the outcomes that reduce the need for facility-based care and associated costs while ensuring those facilities are available for critically ill patients who truly need them. Together, we will harness the power of technology and data to bring the right care to every person, no matter where they are."