Salesforce Adds Health Cloud Features

Salesforce this week announced new features and an expanded partner ecosystem for its Health Cloud at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference in Orlando, Florida.

The new features are lead-to-patient conversion, risk stratification and advanced segmentation.

Salesforce also announced a slew of new partner-developed applications for Health Cloud that can be installed via the Salesforce AppExchange:

• Fitango’s Wellness Actions Plans app, which has pre-built, interactive and customizable wellness plans;
• FormFast’s Connect app, which will let users complete and electronically sign healthcare forms in Health Cloud;
• The Healthwise for Care Coordination app, which connects a patient’s care team to evidence-based, easy-to-understand health education materials for patients;
• The high Population Screen app, which provides healthcare organizations with health assessment data and cost-effective biometrics captured from screens performed at high stations in pharmacies and grocery stores;
• The Relatient RideToHealth app which books Uber rides to and from appointments within Health Cloud;
• The Interpreta app, which integrates member prioritization and automates assignment of clinical goals with real-time analytics in the Health Cloud;
• Sirono’s app, which addresses the patient payment process; and
• xG Health’s Intelligent Care Management App, which lets healthcare organizations more effectively manage patients with chronic diseases.

“Salesforce has continued to build momentum in the healthcare space, and it’s not surprising that it’s also leveraging its partner ecosystem and Internet of Things investments to deliver additional value,” said Rebecca Wettemann, VP of research at Nucleus Research.

“What’s really interesting to watch here is how analytics and Einstein will play a role,” she told CRM Buyer.

IBM “has focused a lot of efforts on Watson for healthcare,” said Wettemann, but the lack of a CRM application to support management of data and workflows would translate into “additional integration and application costs and less agility.”

IBM may resolve that shortfall soon — it purchased Bluewolf, a Salesforce consulting partner, last year.

Health Cloud Features

Lead-to-patient conversion lets coordinators import prospective patient leads from the Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud, or from an integration with an electronic health record, a data warehouse, a patient registration system, or a call center.

Patient data in the Health Cloud can be used to create unique care plans, map patient relationships and more.

Risk stratification lets users tap built-in Salesforce Analytics Cloud capabilities to calculate risk scores for each patient based on the industry standard Center for Medicaid Services Hierarchical Condition Category model.

It will let providers view risk across the patients they serve in customizable dashboards to provide targeted preventive care and gain new insights into patients.

Advanced segmentation lets care teams use clinical and non-clinical data to filter the patients they serve to create targeted approaches for outreach.

“The classic Salesforce business flows are adapted for healthcare,” noted Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Salesforce “plays the role of data aggregator, and then its analytics or partner analytics can generate the desired approach,” he told CRM Buyer. The real news is what Salesforce is doing “to support an ever-growing ecosystem — from providers to payers.”