Note to IHI conference attendees

We are sorry if you stopped by our booth but did not get a brochure. We ran out due to popular demand! Please get the PDF file here. We focus on patient engagement throughout the care cycle to improve prevention and post-discharge followup while reducing cost. Thank you for your interest!

Ringful Health is a research driven organization with an in-house team of Ph.D. scientists and strong collaboration ties with leading academic institutions. Our research efforts build evidence base for patient-centered healthcare solutions, and translate evidence into practice using disruptive technology. We have developed a portfolio of technologies and validated content for consumers and patients. Here is a sample list of our current research projects.

Disease prevention and objective behavior analytics

Disease prevention is a key to reducing healthcare costs and improving outcomes. Consumer engagement and behavior intervention are key to disease prevention. Physical exercise, healthy eating, clean environment, and adherence to disease screening are all behavior associated with reduced disease burdens. As more and more healthcare providers become Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), disease prevention in the communities they serve becomes a priority.

Our research focus is to tailor behavior interventions based on each individual’s unique health history and behavior profile. In the future, intervention could even be tailored to each individual’s DNA. We provide the technology platform to collect data from individuals, including medical records, patient reported outcomes, and high resolution objective behavior data such as accelerometer and GPS readings. We analyze those data on both individual and population basis, and provide the personalized engagement to drive behavior change.

Physical exercise and children’s health

In collaboration with University of Texas School of Public Health, we are building mHealth applications that promote healthy behavior in large populations. Our applications are based on validated research such as the CATCH program for children’s health. Our solutions are used to translate knowledge into practice, and also collect valuable research data to understand how those programs are used in real world.

Personalized cancer screening

Working with leading cancer researchers at NCI designated cancer centers, we are developing evidence-based proactive patient engagement solutions that enable personalized cancer screening regiments. The research goal is to understand whether proactive patient engagement and process management could result in more effective cancer screening programs.

Self-care and patient reported outcomes

Patients only spend a small fraction of their time inside hospitals or healthcare facilities. To improve healthcare quality and patient safety, it is crucial to help patients manage their care at home. For instance,

• the patient could report drug adverse events from home and detect potential problems early. Studies have shown that, with proper tools and training, the patient could provide reports with quality comparable with clinicians reports, and the patient self-report could provide much more information than clinician reports due to its much more complete coverage.
• the patient could be reminded and incentivized to adhere to medication prescriptions during their daily lives.
• the patient could journal reactions to treatment options so that the physician can adjust the treatment regiment based on personalized efficacy data.

Ringful Health provides a technology platform to manage patient questionnaires and workflows, collect patient reported outcome on mobile devices, and generate analytical reports. An example of such applications is the Pain Care application we developed for consumers.

Patient tool for in-hospital stay

Incorporating patients and families into hospital-based care teams has been demonstrated to improve safety in hospital settings. The patients and families are encouraged to double check clinicians, ask questions, and activate Rapid Response Teams.

Collaborating with Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation, University of Texas School of Nursing, Texas State University, and two leading hospitals, Ringful Health is piloting technology enabled solutions for patients and families to participate in care management and clinical decision making in hospitals.

We provide a robust technology platform to disseminate evidence-based guidelines to patients and families so that they can watch out for safety violations and “near misses”, help crucial tasks in the transition of care, such as medical reconciliation, and provide clinical decision support for patients and families to understand and react to adverse events.

If you are an academic researcher and are interested in participating in any of the projects, please feel free to contact us!