UMass Chan Medical School and Wellinks Launch Study of Novel COPD Program

Six-month program will examine virtual care's impact on adherence, usability, clinical outcomes, and total cost of care for people with COPD

WORCESTER, Mass. and NEW HAVEN, Conn., Sept. 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- UMass Chan Medical School and Wellinks, a digital healthcare company offering the first-ever integrated, virtual Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) management solution, today announced the launch of a new program, Healthy at Home, aimed at examining virtual care's ability to prevent acute care needs among people with COPD. This study is led by UMass Chan's Program in Digital Medicine and features Wellinks as a core element of an innovative approach towards chronic care management for COPD. Over the course of six months, researchers will evaluate the program's feasibility and impact on patient-reported outcomes, health care utilization, and total medical expenditure. Full results from the study are expected in mid-2023.

"Through our Healthy at Home collaboration with UMass Chan Medical School, we're helping more people living with COPD get the care they need to stay healthy and in control of their condition," said Dr. Abi Sundaramoorthy, Chief Medical Officer at Wellinks. "As we build the clinical evidence base for virtual-first COPD care together, we look forward to sharing the results from this program to inform future innovation in COPD care."

COPD is the third leading cause of death by chronic disease in the U.S. and the fifth most costly chronic disease, with an estimated $49.9 billion spent annually. Those high costs are driven mainly by the roughly 873,000 emergency department visits and 700,000 hospitalizations caused by COPD exacerbations each year; one-in-five people with COPD who are discharged from the hospital are readmitted within 30 days. Evidence shows multimodal interventions that include frequent assessment, care management, and pulmonary coaching or rehabilitation have the greatest impact on reducing acute care needs and lowering costs. There is significant unmet need, however, for providing proactive care to avert or diffuse an acute exacerbation.

The Healthy at Home program aims to demonstrate how novel care models can deliver proactive, preventive care to complement current strategies to manage and treat COPD. The model introduced by the Healthy at Home program is expected to be an effective approach to improve quality of life for people living with COPD and lower overall health care costs.

"The core mission of the Program in Digital Medicine is to empower patients with health technology tools to help remove barriers to care, emphasize preventive care, and improve self-management, which are critical to improving clinical outcomes and patient quality of life," said Apurv Soni, MD, PhD'21, assistant professor of medicine and co-director of the Program in Digital Medicine at UMass Chan. "We are proud to be collaborating with Wellinks on the Healthy at Home program to assess the true impact of integrating virtual management into the care journey of people living with COPD, and to continue finding ways to improve care quality while reducing unnecessary costs. Our Academic Medical Center is ideally positioned to pursue promising studies like this because of the support from leadership of our health partner, UMass Memorial Health, and their commitment to innovation as highlighted by launch of the Center for Digital Health Solutions."

The Healthy at Home program will enroll 100 adults diagnosed with COPD who are part of a UMass Accountable Care Organization (UMMACO) and at risk of requiring acute care within the next six months. The study will evaluate the impact of the various components of the program:

• Mobile Integrated Health service to triage peri-acute care needs. A team of paramedics will be available 24/7 to perform on-demand, in-home medical evaluations and treatments in consultation with a supervising physician. This service is available to all UMMACO patients, but this study will integrate it as part of a comprehensive approach.
• Mobile Integrated Health dashboard that informs care delivery with relevant individual data. The dashboard displays biometric data from wearable sensors, results of patient-reported outcomes, and relevant clinical data from the electronic health record.
• Wellinks' virtual-first COPD management solution, which combines virtual pulmonary rehabilitation, personalized health coaching, monitoring through connected devices to measure spirometry, pulse oximetry, and symptoms, and an easy-to-use patient app.

This study is the latest in a series of Wellinks' investments in clinical research focused on supporting the entire care journey. In March, Wellinks announced the publication of peer-reviewed research in the Journal of Medical Internet Research that found a high degree of engagement and satisfaction with Wellinks among a cohort reflective of the demographics of those living with COPD in the US. The company will also soon publish results from a recently completed 24-week study done in conjunction with the COPD Foundation to evaluate the impact of Wellinks on health-related quality of life, health care resource utilization, and member satisfaction. Recently, Wellinks also announced a pioneering clinical research study in collaboration with Hartford HealthCare examining the impact of Wellinks on reducing readmissions for people transitioning to the home after a COPD-related hospitalization.

Wellinks is on a mission to help those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) live fully and breathe freely. COPD is the third leading cause of death by chronic disease in the U.S. and the fifth most costly chronic disease. With its personalized, virtual-first COPD management system, Wellinks breaks down barriers for patients, providing the evidence-based care they need and deserve outside the four walls of the clinic. Wellinks supports patients through virtual care, including pulmonary rehabilitation, health coaching, and monitoring aided by connected devices and an easy-to-use smartphone app. Based in New Haven, Connecticut, Wellinks is led by a team of digital health veterans and backed by top investment firms including Morningside, HighCape Capital, Connecticut Innovations, and Benslie. For more information, visit www.wellinks.com and follow on Twitter (@WellinksHealth) and LinkedIn.

UMass Chan Medical School, one of five campuses of the University of Massachusetts system, comprises the T.H. Chan School of Medicine; the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing; Commonwealth Medicine, a public service consulting division; and MassBiologics, the only nonprofit, FDA-licensed manufacturer of vaccines, biologics and viral vector gene therapies in the United States. UMass Chan's mission is to advance the health and wellness of our diverse communities throughout Massachusetts and across the world by leading and innovating in education, research, health care delivery and public service. In doing so, it has built a reputation as a world-class research institution and as a leader in primary care education, perennially ranked in the top 10 percent of medical schools for primary care by U.S. News and World Report. UMass Chan attracts more than $300 million annually in research funding, placing it among the top 50 medical schools in the nation. In 2021, the Medical School received a $175 million donation from The Morningside Foundation and was renamed UMass Chan Medical School. 

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SOURCE Wellinks