Achieving the best health outcomes for patients and keeping costs down is the goal of all healthcare providers. A technology platform that helps clinicians and patients manage care together is what will help providers reach their goal.

Managing patients with chronic conditions is a significant challenge for healthcare providers. Successfully tackling chronic condition management takes more than just information technology, said Sumit Nagpal, president and CEO of Lumira. “We must go from managing illness to managing wellness,” he said. “That’s how we think about healthcare.”

To facilitate that revolution in care, Lumira uses technology to connect patients to their own health data. The company’s approach has shown promise in both the U.S. and the U.K., where healthcare organizations partnering with the company have focused on patients with type 2 diabetes.

“We break down the interoperability barriers between vendor systems, make information flow in a frictionless way, and have it appear inside electronic health records, inside patient portals and inside apps that patients carry so that they become aware of what’s happening with them,” he said.

Lumira’s platform melds data from a variety of sources to present patients with a full picture of their health and conditions, said Nagpal. With this technology, patients see the data collected at their doctor visits as well as their blood glucose levels read from home monitoring devices, how many steps they’ve taken in a day or how many calories they’ve eaten and how much exercise they’ve done.

“What we’re finding is with this kind of information patients become far more activated than they would be if they were simply told to test,” Nagpal said. “They are now much more engaged and much more aware of what their diet and exercise actually does and therefore they’re much more compliant.”

Lumira’s approach also adds a social networking element to encourage patients to self-manage their conditions. The social networks are made up of key influencers – family and friends – who support patients in their journey to wellness. “They become part of the care team – an extension of the care team, essentially. But on a much more personal basis they help these individuals comply with their condition guidelines – comply with their regime – because they have a personal relationship with them,” Nagpal pointed out.

And all that patient data is available to healthcare providers, too. The care team has full access to patients’ electronic health records data and all the home monitoring data. If the team gets an alert that a patient forgets to do a task or if a test value comes back too high or low, the care team can intervene, thereby avoiding worsening health conditions and costly acute care. “From a cost perspective,” he said, “this is a game changer.”

The IT is essential to facilitating improved health outcomes and reduced costs, said Nagpal, but it’s engaged patients that are key. “Activating patients to become more engaged in managing their own health – that’s how you actually help hospitals, doctors – the entire healthcare economy – succeed, and that’s the journey we’re focused on.”