Big companies sign on to support AHIP Innovation Lab

Five major healthcare companies are now supporting the America's Health Insurance Plans' Innovation Lab, a shared space to collaborate on technology innovations in healthcare.

GE Healthcare, Emdeon, Accenture, Amgen and a fifth company AHIP has not named have pledged an undisclosed financial amount to support the lab, which is based in Chicago. A sixth company, multimedia house AnswersMedia, will serve as a strategic partner and host the lab.

AHIP offers participants a Solutions Working Group to round out their team that includes peer-level healthcare professionals, thought leaders and subject matter experts, according to information on the organization's website.

Key areas of focus include chronic care management, coordination and adherence; consumer-shared decision-making and health literacy; primary care case management and ACO infrastructure; health information exchange, population health and big data; and telemedicine, customer-focused call centers and linking patients with clinicians across the country.

The space includes technology such as a professional video studio with a green screen, virtual sets, audio recording booths, production kitchen for filming cooking segments on eating healthy and a gym, the lab also serves as a space to test out new business models and strategies. The lab is reinforced with a server room equipped with a secure cloud, conference rooms with telepresence technology and reconfigurable workspaces. Users are encouraged to snap photos of tabletop diagrams and lists to upload to the cloud, according to the report.

Beth Walsh,

Editor

Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.

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