Brigham and Women's Hospital Files IPO Prospectus Highlighting Digital Health Innovations and Clinical Excellence

Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area of Boston, Massachusetts, adjacent to the Harvard Medical School campus, is the second-largest clinical teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. It is a renowned hospital nationwide that integrates teaching, clinical care, and scientific research, with a history dating back more than 180 years.

1966, Boston Lying-in Hospital(Boston Lying-In Hospital, established in 1832)Free Hospital for Women(The Free Hospital for Women, established in 1875)Merged to establish the Boston Hospital for Women;In 1980, the Boston Hospital for Women and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital(Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, established in 1913), Robert Blake Brigham Hospital(Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, established in 1914)The merger of three institutions gave rise to today’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.Throughout its development, it has been ranked among the best hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report for 18 consecutive years.Let’s explore what makes it distinctive.Top Recommendation: Healthcare InformaticsHIS (Health Information System) Medical Information Management System — Partners HealthCareAs early as 1994, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) established Partners HealthCare. This is a non-profit healthcare organization dedicated to patient care, experimental research, teaching, and medical services for local and global communities.Members of Partners HealthCare include community specialty hospitals, managed care systems, physician networks, community health centers, home care agencies, and other health-related institutions. Current members include: Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, McLean Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Cottage Hospital, Community Health Plan, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, North Shore Medical Center, etc. The specific list is as follows:

Portal — Partners Patient GatewayPartners Patient Gateway is a healthcare portal developed by Partners HealthCare for all its members.What Can Partners Patient Gateway Do?

• Providing More Convenient Services for Patients:Partners Patient Gateway enables patients to manage their own health, allowing them to update prescriptions, schedule specialist consultations, access high-quality services, and obtain more health information.

• Provide more information for family members:Partners Patient Gateway is a comprehensive medical resource hub that provides access to patients’ medication records, allergy history, immunization records, and test results. Parents and guardians can obtain valuable information from the platform to collaborate with physicians in caring for patients.

• More Ways to Manage Health:Partners Patient Gateway connects patients with physicians, enabling active patient engagement throughout the care process. Instead of making repeated phone calls, patients can directly ask their doctors basic, non-urgent questions via the portal and access personal health information, such as guidance on when to undergo mammography or prostate screening.

• Learn More About the Physician:Once patients log in to the Partners Patient Gateway, their physician’s office will send them relevant information—such as test results, new prescription requests, appointment reminders or changes, and even health questionnaires—instead of contacting them by phone, except in urgent cases. Patients can also access their doctors’ office hours to facilitate appointment scheduling.

EHR (Electronic Health Record) Electronic Health Record—Partners eCare

In July 2012, the Partners HealthCare team announced a collaboration with Epic(A leading provider of healthcare information technology)collaboration, with the expectation of implementing an integrated electronic health information system by 2017.After more than two years, on May 30, 2015, Brigham and Women's Hospital launched its new electronic health record system, Partners eCare.Brigham and Women's Hospital is part of Partners HealthCareThe first member to propose integrating clinical and administrative functions into the electronic medical record system, guiding the development of medical informatics while also prioritizing the enhancement of system security features, thereby enabling Partners eCare to better serve patients and physicians.Partners eCare Features:

• More Convenient:Partners eCare stores clinical information for every patient (such as medical history and allergy details), enabling physicians at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to access patients’ electronic health records. For example, a patient who initially received treatment at a mobile urgent care station, underwent mammography at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, and had an endoscopy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital would have all their treating physicians able to access this unified electronic health record, thereby avoiding repetitive questioning during patient visits.

• More concise:All patients receiving care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital after May 30 will have access to the new electronic health record, which includes a range of registration information, appointment schedules, and billing payment details. Costs incurred by patients at different stages of treatment will be consolidated into a single bill, unlike the previous system where hospital fees and physician fees were billed separately. Additionally, bills will be issued by Partners HealthCare rather than by the hospital itself. The payment process for all bills has been streamlined, allowing patients to complete payments via a single phone call, website visit, or email.

Partners eCare is expected to be fully implemented by 2017, at which point all Partners HealthCare members will have access to this electronic health record system.# Revisiting TelemedicineTeleStrokeIn 2000, Brigham and Women’s Hospital collaborated with Massachusetts General Hospital to launch the Partners TeleStroke program.In developed countries, stroke is the third leading cause of death. Each year, there are more than 700,000 stroke cases, resulting in patient disabilities that prevent them from returning to their previous normal lives.The Partners TeleStroke program is designed specifically for stroke care, enabling telemedicine through video conferencing and image-sharing technologies. Stroke specialists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital can examine patients, diagnose conditions, and recommend treatment plans for those in remote areas, regardless of distance.Surveys indicate that 80% of strokes are ischemic. Therefore, the standard treatment involves administering tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) within 4–5 hours to reduce the risk of disability. However, many hospitals lack the necessary resources or the ability to rapidly formulate treatment plans, and some even lack the awareness to arrange prompt patient transfers. The consequence is delayed treatment for patients.The advantage of the Partners TeleStroke program lies in its ability to enable member hospitals to provide patients with rapid and safe treatment protocols.Partners HealthCare Connected HealthPartners HealthCare Connected Health is a healthcare system jointly implemented by the hospitals of the Partners HealthCare network, comprising three main components.

• Mobile Healthcare—Making Health Addictive

Leveraging People's Obsession with Mobile Devices to Make Them Addicted to Monitoring Their Own Health Status.(Survey evidence shows that people check their phone content more than 100 times a day)Provide patients with more personalized, relevant, and encouraging information to guide them toward achieving a truly healthy lifestyle.

• Remote Monitoring — Enabling Healthy Living at Home

Partners HealthCare Connected Health initially focused its remote monitoring efforts on congestive heart failure (CHF). Since CHF management is closely tied to fluid status control, which can be reflected by daily weight measurements, the incorporation of patient weight data into feedback loops, combined with timely nursing interventions, led to significant improvements in patient outcomes. Later, Partners HealthCare Connected Health expanded its remote monitoring capabilities to cover a broader range of chronic conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes, mental health disorders, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), by leveraging wireless sensors and mobile devices including apps.

• Personal Health Tracking—Wellocracy

In 2013, Partners HealthCare Connected Health launched Wellocracy, a platform that tracks users’ health status through activity trackers, mobile apps, and wireless sensors. Users can set health goals, cultivate healthy habits, conduct health assessments (covering daily activities, sleep patterns, emotional well-being, weight and calorie intake, and heart rate data), and share personal experiences.Supplemented by Medical DevicesVentricular Assist Device (心室辅助装置)Cardiovascular specialists in the Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital offer patients with heart failure a novel ventricular assist device (VAD) to improve their quality of life. A VAD is an implantable mechanical pump that provides pulsatile hemodynamic support to patients with heart failure. The most commonly used type is the left ventricular assist device (LVAD), which supports the left ventricle; there are also right ventricular assist devices (RVADs) for supporting the right ventricle, and biventricular assist devices (BiVADs) that provide simultaneous support to both the left and right ventricles.

For some patients with severe cardiac dysfunction or arterial occlusion, undergoing surgery often carries excessive risk; however, they do require certain treatments to improve their hemodynamics. Opting for such stent procedures can help avoid these risks.Experts at Brigham and Women’s Hospital will match patients with the most suitable ventricular assist devices (VADs) based on their individual conditions. Available options include the HeartMate II, Thoratec Paracorporeal Ventricular Assist Device (PVAD), SynCardia Total Artificial Heart, Abiomed’s Impella 2.5 (the world’s smallest ventricular assist device), and the CardiacAssist TandemHeart.Ventricular Assist Devices Are Primarily Targeted at Three Categories of Patients:

• Heart failure patients awaiting heart transplantation;

• For patients with reversible heart failure, as an adjunct during the recovery process;

• For patients with irreversible heart failure who are not suitable candidates for heart transplantation, as destination therapy (DT);

S-ICD (Subcutaneous Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator)Millions of people in the United States suffer from arrhythmia, a condition characterized by heartbeats that are too slow, too fast, or irregular.(Arrhythmia has become the most common heart disease). To this end, six Partners hospitals(Brigham and Women's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, North Shore Medical Center, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and Cooley Dickinson Hospital)Patients are treated through interventional cardiology. Many patients require implantable devices such as cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators, resulting in over 2,000 device implantations annually at Partners HealthCare.However, traditional implantable devices require physicians to insert one or more electrical leads into the chest veins and guide them to the patient’s heart under fluoroscopic X-ray guidance, a complex procedure. In response, Partners HealthCare assembled a team to investigate ways to improve efficiency in intracardiac device procedures.

The result is the current new generation of subcutaneous implantable cardioverter-defibrillators. It utilizes only a single electrode implanted subcutaneously along the ribs and sternum. Because the device is implanted in the subcutaneous tissue, physicians no longer need to know the patient’s vascular and cardiac anatomy, allowing for implantation without fluoroscopy.(Note: This device is particularly suitable for patients with complex vascular structures.)Also Playing with Medical AppsMenoPro: Guiding Treatment for Menopausal Women

JoAnn Manson

More than 2 million American women enter menopause each year.(Over 120 million women in China suffer from menopausal syndrome each year, and the number of menopausal women in China has risen to the highest in the world)However, most of the available information on relieving menopausal symptoms is not presented objectively or lacks an evidence base. JoAnn Manson, Chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, together with The North American Menopause Society, developed MenoPro, a freely downloadable iPhone/iPad app for menopausal women, to help them make better-informed decisions about whether to undergo hormone replacement therapy (HRT).Powered by in-app algorithms, MenoPro supports menopausal symptom management and is free from pharmaceutical advertising or other industry sponsorship. Currently, MenoPro offers two versions, one for patients and one for clinicians.Patients can access a wealth of useful information, such as how lifestyle modifications can reduce menopausal hot flashes, comparisons between hormonal and non-hormonal therapies, and a clear overview of their medical history, including whether they have diabetes, hypertension, or high cholesterol. Based on a series of criteria, the app recommends the most suitable treatment plan for each patient.Clinicians use MenoPro’s risk calculator to evaluate treatment options for their patients, thereby supporting more informed clinical decision-making.To date, MenoPro has been downloaded thousands of times and has received highly positive user feedback.Heart Disease Pocket Guide — Echocardiography

An ECG Testing Application. The content within Echocardiography is jointly edited by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. It covers characteristics of approximately 80 cardiac cases, featuring over 1,000 real-world static ECG examples from patients with abnormalities (some requiring purchase for access). Each case includes dynamically playable videos and diagnostic references from physicians, while also allowing users to zoom, pan, and view the full echocardiographic images.Specific cases include atrial flutter, ventricular fibrillation, premature atrial contractions, bigeminal PVCs, paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia, ventricular hypertrophy, Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, complete atrioventricular block, coronary sinus rhythm, anteroseptal myocardial infarction, and more. Each case can be viewed via keyword search or video playback, and data can be exported as PDFs or shared via email.For medical students or interns, Echocardiography serves as a tool to study vivid clinical cases and enhance ECG diagnostic skills. For medical school faculty, it provides access to rare and typical cases for case-based teaching.As a hospital with over 180 years of history, its internet initiatives appear fewer compared to top-tier hospitals such as Mayo Clinic. Why, then, has it been ranked among the best hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report for 18 consecutive years? VCBeat’s preliminary analysis suggests that, beyond its established tiered healthcare model, “patient-first” operational principles, and advanced surgical equipment, its meticulous strategic layout in internet innovation—centered on health information technology, telemedicine, and mobile applications—plays a crucial role.By Zhou YanxunEditor: Mo Renying