Sweetch, the first AI digital therapeutics solution that helps predict, prevent and improve outcomes among people with diabetes is partnering with integrated health care system WellSpan Health. The partnership’s first phase will provide Sweetch’s mobile health app to WellSpan Health’s 15,000 employees, including 200 primary care and specialty physicians and advanced practice clinicians in central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland.
“This is the tool we have been looking for to augment our wellness assessment program,” said Charles Chodroff, MD, WellSpan Health’s Senior Vice President, Population Health and Chief Clinical Officer. “We have been leaders in developing effective wellness programs for our employees and the local business community for many years and have been providing detailed personalized assessments identifying chronic disease risk factors. This new smartphone platform will take our program to the next level, by helping to target those individuals who are at the greatest risk by giving them a super-personalized tool, which automatically adapts to each individual’s life habits.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates 33.9% of U.S. adults aged 18 years or older have pre-diabetes. That’s 84.1 million people in the US alone. Medical expenditures of people with diabetes are approximately 2.3 times higher than expected costs if they did not have diabetes. Effective interventions that prevent or delay type 2 diabetes and diabetic complications result in substantial long-term savings in healthcare costs.
Using its proprietary machine learning algorithm, Sweetch accurately quantifies personal diabetes risk which is critical for enabling early and effective prevention. On the personalized prevention front, Sweetch’s mobile health app with its connected bluetooth digital scale monitors and analyzes the user’s personal, environmental and behavioral digital bio-markers. This results in contextual, real-time specific and detailed recommendations that guide the user towards achieving disease prevention goals. This could include advising the user to take a five-minute walk to a nearby coffee shop in the middle of the day based on his calendar availability, to achieve their 20-minute activity goal. By applying predictive analytics, Sweetch continuously optimizes the user’s goals and messages, in order to predict which of these messages will trigger action with an emphasis on long-term engagement.
“We are very excited to work with the WellSpan Health team,” said Dana Chanan, CEO and Co-Founder of Sweetch. “Diabetes is one of the world’s most common and costly chronic illnesses, affecting one in 11 adults globally. AI and machine learning is a must-have for fighting this epidemic. We see a great opportunity to collaborate with a leading healthcare organization that has its mission to improve health through exceptional care for all, lifelong wellness and healthy communities.”
In a recently published clinical trial conducted by Johns Hopkins, Sweetch demonstrated clinically significant effects on weight reduction, physical activity increase, and Hemoglobin A1C reduction. The Sweetch solution offered through WellSpan Health is composed of a mobile app and wireless Bluetooth-connected scale.
