All Atrius Health innovation projects stem from real pain points that plague our patients and our system.

Our role is to continuously design the future of health care. So even when we’re steeped in development, we’re always thinking about other problems that need solving and what we want to tackle next.

Here are a few projects on the horizon:

Planning for unplanned acute events

Today, the health care system takes a reactionary approach to acute events. After a patient gets really sick and lands in the hospital, we do everything we can to make them better. This type of care is undoubtedly valuable – but it’s insufficient. We are exploring the feasibility of combining predictive tools with appropriate clinical interventions to not just manage a patient’s risk, but to actually lower it.

Enhanced chronic disease management

Even with the tools currently available – data about past patient behavior, chronic disease registries, population health managers – we can only do so much to help patients adopt healthy behaviors and manage their chronic diseases. With about 75% of medical spend going to chronic disease-related care, we can’t accept the status quo. We intend to invest in the collection of meaningful data about patient needs, desires, and goals so that we can implement interventions tailored to each patient.

Primary care reimagined

There is consensus in the industry that primary care needs rescuing. We have taken several steps to chip away at this problem but we envision tackling a larger-scale redesign of primary care – including how primary care teams work internally and with specialty departments, how primary care engages patients, and even the layout of the primary care office.