LOS ANGELES, July 2, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DEARhealth Inc., a software company focused on value-based disease management, today announced a collaboration with global biopharmaceutical leader UCB to improve care delivery for patients living with epilepsy. The collaboration will focus on improving patient experiences and their health outcomes with the hope of reducing the overall medical costs and is built on DEARhealth's software system to empower value-based disease management through Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered care pathways, integrated in the Electronic Medical Records (EMR). 

"We couldn't be more excited to partner with UCB at a time where care is transforming so rapidly. DEARhealth is collaborating with companies like UCB to share disease-specific knowledge and expertise in order to maximize value for patients and in epilepsy care," said Daniel Hommes, MD PhD and Chief Executive Officer at DEAR Health.

DEARhealth's proprietary platform aims to improve patient health outcomes and experiences while reducing healthcare costs. "In the first prototypic chronic disease, Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), the platform was assessed in partnership with a U.S. payer. It was demonstrated that the disease relapse rate as well as Emergency Department visits and hospitalizations were significantly decreased which had a huge impact on healthcare costs," said Aria Zand, MD and Chief Product Officer at DEARhealth. The software being piloted for epilepsy will optimize care coordination within DEARhealth smart epilepsy care pathways, which are automatically risk-adjusted and enable patients to regularly share information and connect with their health care provider to enable more precise, rapid, and personalized interventions.

DEARhealth targeted epilepsy because it is one of the many chronic and mental health conditions that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, make up 90% of annual health care expenditures in the U.S. And while about 1-in-26 Americans will experience epilepsy at some point in their lives, many still suffer due to misconceptions and stigma surrounding their condition. In reaching out to UCB, DEARhealth looks to leverage UCB's deep knowledge of the epilepsy patient journey and leadership in epilepsy research to develop new patient-focused solutions to be integrated with the patient electronic medical record (EMR).

"At UCB we are committed to helping patients living with epilepsy understand their options and make choices that allow them to reach their ideal," said Mike Davis, Head of the U.S. Neurology Patient Value Unit at UCB.  "This starts with supporting the patient-clinician relationship at the center of patient care. Tools like DEARhealth incorporate valuable educational and support materials into the EMR where they can be accessed by the clinician as part of a comprehensive patient care dialogue. This has the potential to change the way that patients and health care providers interact and encourage patients and their caregivers to play a more informed role in their treatment."

DEARhealth is testing the software further in collaboration with UCLA's Seizure Disorder Center to develop a next generation means for patients and their care providers to optimize epilepsy treatment through easier clinical monitoring and communication. DEARhealth's healthcare platform provides the mechanism for patients to update their care providers seamlessly and for the patient and provider to jointly tailor treatment to reach the best outcome.

About DEAR Health
DEARhealth, a health tech spin-out of UCLA, offers AI-powered Care Pathways for chronic disease management on an AWS cloud platform allowing patients and their providers to engage in real-time, value-based, health management. Patients diagnosed with a chronic disease are on-boarded on AI-powered Care Pathways which seamlessly integrate into EMRs. From the moment patients are on-boarded, their care pathway is risk-adjusted using evidence-based feature sets and machine learning to continuously navigate around predefined and disease specific health risks. On the patient-facing app, in addition to capturing PROMs and PREMs, patients and their caregivers are engaged to actively participate in their care pathway and its additional supervised modules for adherence, mental support, nutritional support, wellness and education. Providers are engaged through an EMR integrated application layer in which they are invited to manage their population and efficiently shift tasks between specialist, to primary care physician, to care coordinator or case-manager. DEARhealth works for patients, the healthcare ecosystem and the pharmaceutical- and medical devices industries to develop help drive innovative health solutions.

About UCB
At UCB, we come together every day to work, laser-focused, on a simple question: How will this create value for people living with severe diseases? Patient value is not just what we say, but how we how we live. It is our culture of care, embodied by our patient value strategy. That's because how we do business – from discovery to development to delivery – has been transformed and redesigned around the patient and their individual experience. Patients are at the heart of everything we do, inspiring us, driving our scientific discovery, and leading us to rethink the patient experience. By fulfilling our commitment, driving innovation, and providing patients a meaningful experience, more impactful solutions are on the horizon.

With a team of approximately 7,500 employees and operations in approximately 40 countries, we are a global biopharmaceutical company investing more than a quarter of our revenue in cutting-edge scientific research to meet unmet patient needs. Global headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, with U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Additional U.S. UCB sites include global clinical development in Raleigh, North Carolina, research supporting UCB's pipeline in Boston, Massachusetts and Seattle, Washington, and offices in Washington, D.C., Durham, North Carolina as part of our acquisition of Element Genomics.

SOURCE DEARhealth Inc.