In medicine, we are taught our ABCs, “Airway, Breathing, Circulation” as essential steps in delivering treatment to save a patient's life. It’s a reminder of THE core essential items when making an assessment and intervention.
Given the recent debates surrounding the complexity and nuances of data privacy, interoperability, and use cases, our team wanted to take a moment to comment on our “A-B-C’s”. We started following our own A-B-C’s as Pluto Health core values to guide our decisions and partnerships. We operate on the following principles:
A: Access to Services. Pluto Health was designed to bridge care gaps often left open between health systems. "A" for us means access to health services (not just data). Many tech companies in the space may focus on accessing data, but that is where impact on health outcomes falls short. We recognize that patients are more than their data points -- they have a story to be discovered and needs to be met. Our mission is to connect patients to the right care at the right time, acknowledging that too often many patients do not have a primary care doctor or that their medical care is disjointed. We deliver needed treatment and refer patients to needed health evaluations, lab testing, and health services to better manage health care.
B: Benefit to patients. We take pride in providing treatment options that work toward more equitable access. Through collaborations with health service organizations with patient touch points, community advocates, and provider groups. For example, we have developed workflows to help screen for cancer within the comfort of someone’s home and refer patients to make appointments for immunizations all at the same time. Imagine being a working single mom with no time to go to the doctor. Sometimes, this may also mean connecting patients with a life-saving therapy in a clinical trial or suggesting expanded treatment alternatives, if the patient chooses to participate.
We work synergistically to provide patients with health services more comprehensively than conventional brick-and-mortar options working in isolation. We are about making the pie bigger for patients, together.
C: Care options are made accessible. Our business is focused on helping patients from diverse populations get accessible care. This means both identifying and providing convenient and low-cost care options and treatment alternatives to patients so they can make informed choices about what best fits their healthcare needs. We measure our success based on the number of care gaps we identify and close.
Sometimes we work with research groups and pharmaceutical companies to engage diverse patient populations, who have been previously consented, to be contacted for opportunities or expand access to preventive health options. The FDA recently stated “ensuring people from diverse backgrounds to join clinical trials is key to advancing health equity”, because underrepresentation may lead to inequitable access to the development and distribution of treatments. But to be clear, we don't sell access to PHI or even de-identified data to pharmaceutical companies– that is not our business model, primary use for data, and would not meet Permitted Uses. The end goal is not about the data for us, it's about mobilizing services, sharing treatment resources (not necessarily data), and connecting people. It's not in our business model to be a data broker. We're focused on increasing access for patients and health outcomes.
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Our primary purpose is to provide health care and related services and then simply put, if the patient secondarily elects to connect to, or in rare instances, disclose their information for the purpose of exploring or participating in clinical research as a component of their overall treatment plan – we honor their request.
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Securing sufficient information is necessary to understand patient health histories so we can better support patients. It is a challenging component of our work, especially when interoperability standards are heterogeneously adopted. We have historically tried various connections, vendors, and pathways where we found that the breadth of some was varied and/or insufficient for our needs. For example, one vendor could have strength in one area, but lacked in where others were strong. We will constantly explore ways to optimize how we can best evaluate and support patients. Our experience so far is that access to medical records alone is not sufficient to tell the story of a patient. We acknowledge that people are more than what their medical records say and take a more holistic approach at understanding best next steps.
Our business model is simple–
we’re trying to make public health work.
Our ABCs help us navigate our commercial direction. Yet, as most technology-enabled health providers, it becomes necessary to navigate the multifaceted, unique, and complex nature of delivering personalized healthcare today. Luckily, our ABCs of Access, Benefit, and Care keep us centered on staying true to our core values and mission.
