HIA Technologies Inc. is partnering with WebMD Health Corp. to provide a new source of medical information, called HealthInteractive, online.
HIA, a Pasadena-based health tech company, is specifically working with WebMD Ignite, a division of its parent company that serves as a growth partner for health care organizations. HealthInteractive was built on HIA’s AI-powered interactive platform, Aivio. The application combines Aivio with WebMD’s database of medical information and an interactive digital assistant. Health care organizations can provide patients access to educational modules to learn about conditions or treatment and get immediate answers to medical questions.
“We are excited to partner with WebMD Ignite to promote this new way of delivering interactive education … to all WebMD Ignite clients,” HIA Chief Executive Vacit Arat said in a statement. “We share the vision of WebMD to facilitate a unified engagement experience for patients across their entire health journey. But we recognize there is no one-size-fits-all in health care.”
The company said its goal is to create a secure environment for patients to learn about health care topics and reduce misinformation on the internet by allowing patients to get immediate, trustworthy answers to their questions.
The AI-powered health assistant that guides users through modules cannot make up its own answers and is powered by a system called Physician-Controlled AI, which is overseen by WebMD. The system is trained to provide the health assistant with peer-reviewed content from WebMD’s database.
“Aivio guides patients through their unique journey, allowing them to take the path they want to take, ask the questions they want to ask and learn from the sources they already know and trust,” Arat said. “Partnering with WebMD Ignite allows us to focus on scaling these critical two-way interactions without creating more resource strain on the health care systems we serve.”
Currently, optional areas of medicine covered include surgery, chronic care and readmission reduction. Health care organizations can also create their own topics through the Aivio platform. Users on the chronic-care module, for example, could ask questions such as whether insulin is a good medication choice for them or if loss of vision could be related to their diabetes.
HIA originally was created as a spinoff from the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, and the AI technology developed there was chosen to be applied to health care. Health care systems that are clients of WebMD can pay for HealthInteractive as an additional content service, and the application is then free to patients of that health system. WebMD is also planning to sell HealthInteractive as an option to health care organizations that are not existing clients.
