AMC Health review

AMC Health, with headquarters in New York, specializes in virtual healthcare solutions, under the leadership of their CEO, Nesim Bildirici, who is also the original founder. This company has plenty of years of experience in this space since 2002, with a variety of customers, including serving the medical needs of US veterans through the services offered through the VA (Veterans Affairs). It has also participated in multiple clinical trials.

Nesim led the development of these solutions, borne out of the frustration of his father’s care, where he saw firsthand the problems in managing a chronic health condition, namely heart failure, with fragmented care between multiple providers, managing multiple medications. He also felt that his father would have lived longer, and better with access to remote patient monitoring that could offer the correct intervention in a more timely fashion than what traditional care models typically provide.

• You can learn more about AMC Health here

Features

Traditional medical care has occurred in a medical setting, including a doctor’s office, or at a hospital. Also, house calls by doctors have become a relic of the past, along with the little black bag that doctors used to carry their stethoscopes and other instruments in. However, healthcare is increasingly complex, with an aging demographic, with patients requiring more care, and for at least some diagnoses, more frequent interaction between the patient and their provider for managing their condition. Also, hospitals are under constant pressure to reduce preventable readmissions, particularly for the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) for common diagnoses including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia and congestive heart failure (CHF).

Most providers in the telemedicine space focus on virtual patient visits, via a webcam or smartphone, for on demand medical care. However, AMC Health goes beyond this to focus on their Virtual Care Platform solutions, that is FDA Class II approved (this class of medical device is designed for “sustained contact” with the patient, and includes blood pressure cuffs, contact lenses, syringes, and blood transfusion kits). 

AMC Health offers a variety of connected Bluetooth devices, over 200 in total. The idea is that the data is acquired by the patient in the convenience of their home, and then this gets transmitted, in a real time fashion, to the AMC Health’s cloud-based servers. This data can then be reviewed by case managers on a 24/7 basis via the CareConsole patient management software. Furthermore, this data is also available for the patient to review via a customer clinical management system through a number of offerings, including the web via a patient portal, text message, mobile platform, and video.

Unlike other telemedicine solutions that focus on providing care on demand in response to a specific event, such as a new symptom, AMC Health’s approach is better suited for the long term management of chronic health conditions. The company’s list of the clinical problems this is well suited for is wide ranging and includes hypertension, asthma, diabetes, heart failure, HIV, and medication noncompliance.

Recently, in the Fall of 2019, AMC Health unveiled their next generation solution, their 360-degree Patient View. This includes an update to their web-based clinical application called CareConsole, along with improvements in their social media interactions and programs to better engage with the online community. Through their direct synergy with a number of health plans, and the application of machine learning, this includes improvements in accuracy to the embedded algorithms for better targeted alerts. It also endeavors to reduce ‘Alert fatigue,’ which is when real alerts that should be responded to get ignored as there have been too many false alerts that clinicians responded to and the clinically meaningful alert gets lost in the multitude of alerts, some real, and many not.

Drawbacks

The drawbacks of AMC Health include a lack of end user, and clinician reviews. Also, the lack of an idea of the pricing, or the plans offered, does leave us wondering about the pricing models, and if they include a subscription, and how financially the devices are acquired. However, we will include that there is a general lack of transparency in pricing for healthcare, and the company does include on their website that “AMC Health works with all regional and national health plans and insurers, to include Commercial, Medicare and Medicaid plans,” which should help with the out of pocket cost to the patient for this technology.

Furthermore, there is no definitive list provided of all the Bluetooth devices that are supported, and if all are exclusive to AMC Health, or if some are third party devices could be used through another provider.

Support

Information about support for the product is not forthcoming for neither patients, nor providers on the company’s website.

Pricing

With a variety of solutions, for multiple different clinical problems, and a focus on enterprise, it follows that there is no specific pricing available on the AMC Health website. 

Final verdict

AMC Health takes telemedicine to the next level, with their suite of FDA Class II approved Bluetooth medical devices, which connect to their software solutions, and in turn to patients through a number of options, including a website and mobile offerings. Through a combination of machine learning, and clinician input, there is the promise of better management of a number of historically complex medical diagnoses. 

The lack of more specific details on the company’s website, including the list of specific supported devices, the pricing in terms of the subscription models, and the lack of user reviews does leave us wanting for more. However, with their almost two decades of experience, and peer reviewed published literature to support their claims, AMC Health is clearly a valued provider of telemedicine services.

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