SCOTTSDALE, AZ, April 13, 2021— Life365, a leading virtual care platform provider, announced its intention to participate in offering a comprehensive suite of solutions to healthcare providers in the relaunched $250M COVID-19 Telehealth program appropriated by Congress and offered by the FCC to qualified applicants.
The FCC announced that Congress has approved an additional $249.95M in funding as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA), 2021. This is in addition to the $200M in funding provided by Congress last year under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act which was distributed to nearly 540 healthcare providers and qualified recipients. The COVID-19 Telehealth Program is designed to help healthcare providers provide connected care services to patients at their homes or mobile locations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 Telehealth Program provides immediate support to eligible healthcare providers responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by providing funding for telecommunications services, information services and devices necessary to provide critical connected care services.
“This is yet another once in a lifetime opportunity for qualified healthcare providers to accelerate the rollout of Telehealth and Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) connected solutions to their surrounding and remote communities”, said Kent Dicks, CEO of Life365. “Before COVID-19, Telehealth and RPM were slowly increasing in adoption, with numerous pilots and limited rollouts. Telehealth had an approximately 13% market penetration in the US prior to COVID-19, but with the pandemic, utilization shot to over 70% – It was the only way patients could safely see their doctors. The first round of FCC funding helped stimulate and accelerate adoption during the pandemic. This second round will help facilitate building a permanent bridge to remote care services, normalizing remote care as an everyday experience.”
Life365 offers a comprehensive RPM and telehealth platform that qualifies under the program’s eligible expenses. Their goal is to help qualified applicants quickly supply the necessary information in order to receive the much-needed Telehealth and RPM resources to service their patients and communities. Life365 has launched an easy-to-use website www.covid19-telehealth-program.com to provide applicants with information regarding the program and help facilitate the submission of their applications with a comprehensive listing of key resources.
“We’ve learned a lot from the COVID-19 pandemic regarding Telehealth and RPM adoption,” said Dicks. “Remote Patient Monitoring can no longer be just devices and connected data. Programs, and the solutions they use, must take a comprehensive, personalized approach to engage individual patients and drive efficiency. To that end, Life365 has prepared a suite of solutions in which RPM and Telehealth are just part of the tool set. Life365 also offers other needed services including health assessments, decision support tools, behavioral health, clinical support and nutrition as “Food is Medicine” to provide a more “Whole Person” personalized solution.
This additional funding provided by Congress and the FCC is very timely and designed to help address access to care. FCC acting Chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, noted that “[t]his past year has proven, without a doubt, that telehealth technology is critical to helping address inequities in access to health care services.”
For more information regarding the FCC COVID-19 Telehealth Program, please visit: www.covid19-telehealth-program.com.
About Life365
The Life365 Virtual Care platform integrates health systems with healthcare solution/service providers and logistics companies to deliver a one-stop, integrated platform for engaging a growing patient population at home – and beyond. The platform enables health professionals to remotely manage patients with a variety of disease states and offers consumer apps for self-managing their health and wellness. Life365 is headed by an experienced, industry recognized team, recently selected as a Finalist for a 2021 Edison Award for their work in addressing COVID-19. The team’s previous “Connected Health” Company was acquired by Alere (now Abbott). Life365 is the major patent holder of the next generation of Wearables, Sensors and Patches driven by Machine Learning / AI, driving the next generation of Remote Patient Monitoring to scale.
For more information regarding Life365, please visit www.life365.health.