Mount Sinai Health System Launches First Enterprise-Wide Platform to Prescribe Apps to Patients
Researchers in the Sinai App Lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed RxUniverse, the first enterprise-wide digital medicine care delivery system that enables physicians to digitally prescribe evidence-based mobile health applications to patients at the point of care.
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With countless mobile health apps available to consumers, there is no standardized method for providers to know which ones will clinically benefit their patients, and no way for them to share them with patients directly. Through RxUniverse—which features a curated list of apps that have been evaluated for efficacy based on published evidence and incorporated into a digital prescription delivery system—Mount Sinai Health System aims to be the first provider network in the country to address this problem.
“RxUniverse allows physicians and other healthcare providers to seamlessly and confidently integrate evidence-based digital health tools into their practice,” said Ashish Atreja, MD, MPH, Chief Technology Innovation and Engagement Officer and Director of the Sinai AppLab, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, “Apps have typically been recommended to patients verbally, but with the myriad of mobile health apps on the market, many with no proven evidence, it is a challenge for providers and patients. RxUniverse eliminates these uncertainties and barriers to digital medicine.”
The RxUniverse platform was launched in August 2016 in a pilot phase throughout five clinical areas at Mount Sinai. Since then, participating physicians have prescribed more than 2,000 apps, exceeding 20 times the pilot goal. In response to this success, the Sinai AppLab has partnered with Mount Sinai Innovation Partners to launch a new startup company, Responsive Health, which will license RxUniverse for use by other health systems.
“As the pace of innovation in digital medicine accelerates, there will be increasing demand for the ability to quickly integrate new apps into our health care systems,” said Kenneth L Davis, MD, President and CEO, Mount Sinai Health System. “Mount Sinai is proud to be at the forefront of digital medicine and dedicated to streamlining the eHealth care delivery model to further our mission to provide world-class care to our patients.”
RxUniverse is part of a larger ecosystem called the Network of Digital Evidence (NODE Health), which provides a community forum and structure for health system technology experts, digital medicine tech companies, clinicians and patients, to come together around digital medicine and the state of scientific evidence surrounding its design, efficacy, and implementation.
“RxUniverse will empower health care providers to bring multiple digital health tools directly to the hands of our patients quickly and reliably,” said Bruce Darrow, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Information Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System.
The applications for RxUniverse do not stop at mobile health apps. Specifically tailored educational content, patient satisfaction surveys, and other tools can be digitally prescribed to individual patients, or entire populations of people.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. The Health System includes approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses across seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, a school of nursing, and schools of medicine and graduate school of biomedical sciences.
As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.
Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York and recognized as one of the world’s top Smart Hospital by Newsweek. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools for National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.
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