Massachusetts General Hospital Files IPO Prospectus Highlighting Digital Health Innovations
Founded in 1811, Massachusetts General Hospital is the oldest and largest teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. With a history spanning more than two centuries, the hospital remains vibrant and dynamic today.
On U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals” ranking, Massachusetts General Hospital has long remained in the top five and has returned to the number one spot this year for the first time since 2012. Its sustained position among the world’s leading hospitals is due not only to its consistent delivery of world-class medical care, but also to its steadfast commitment to research and innovation, as well as its active collaboration with diverse partners.
In the new era of booming digital health development, Massachusetts General Hospital still believes that sticking to the traditional path of R&D and collaboration can help it achieve a leading position in the field of digital health. Let’s take a look at how it leverages R&D and collaboration to strategically develop its presence in the digital health sector.
Late 1960s: Entry into Telemedicine
As early as the late 1960s, Massachusetts General Hospital partnered with the medical aid station at Boston’s Logan International Airport to provide telemedicine services to airport staff and passengers via a two-way audio system.
Meanwhile, it has also collaborated with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs by leveraging this bidirectional audio monitoring system.Through this collaboration, Massachusetts General Hospital provided remote psychological counseling services to veterans. Soon, these services were extended to prisons, schools, and other settings. In subsequent developments, the hospital continuously added multiple services, such as urgent care, to this system. At that time, Massachusetts General Hospital’s telemedicine system was a resounding success.
However, with the rise of the IT industry, this closed-circuit television-based system was gradually phased out and had completely ceased operations by the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, Massachusetts General Hospital accumulated extensive experience during this early phase of telemedicine development, establishing a foundational model for its subsequent expansion of telemedicine services in the internet era, growing from a single service to a broader range of offerings.
In 2000, Massachusetts General Hospital partnered with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, another teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School, to launch TeleStroke, an Internet-based telemedicine service program.In this project, experts from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital use video conferencing and image-sharing technologies to assist hospitals with limited technical resources in diagnosing stroke patients and providing medical guidance. Shortly after its launch, 31 hospitals in the New England region joined the initiative. The project has since been expanded to other regions across the United States.
In 2011, in light of the success of the TeleStroke program, Massachusetts General Hospital adopted the TeleStroke development model to pilot telemedicine services for other medical conditions within its own hospital system.
In 2012, Massachusetts General Hospital officially launched the TeleHealth program.The project not only incorporates the already operational TeleStroke service but also has launched pilot programs for telemedicine in cardiology, neurology, psychiatry, and burn care.
In the spring of 2013, the project leader of Massachusetts General Hospital’s TeleHealth program announced a partnership with American Well, the first company to receive certification from the American Telemedicine Association.Massachusetts General Hospital will leverage American Well’s telehealth platform to facilitate virtual consultations, thereby extending TeleHealth services from the hospital setting to patients’ homes. The initial pilot program will target three patient groups: adolescents with mental health disorders, patients with heart disease, and stroke survivors with mobility impairments.
After more than two years of development, TeleHealth now offers as many as 11 services, covering areas such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and medical imaging.
At some point in the fall of this year (2015), Massachusetts General Hospital will also add a new service to TeleHealth.Because Massachusetts General Hospital has observed that many patients, when faced with medical decisions such as whether to opt for conservative treatment or surgery, often wish to seek additional consultations from other trusted physicians. This new service has been introduced precisely to leverage the hospital’s outstanding pool of medical experts in providing professional opinions to meet patient needs.
The construction of the medical information management system will be completed in 2017.
Interhospital sharing of electronic medical records is nothing new for Massachusetts General Hospital.In 1994, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital formed an alliance, establishing the Partners HealthCare system.Since then, medical information among hospitals within the alliance has been shared, naturally including the sharing of electronic medical records.
In 2012, to achieve the goal of ensuring that each patient has only one electronic medical record within the alliance and can access their own electronic medical record through the alliance’s official website from anywhere,Partners HealthCare has decided to build a new healthcare information management system.
The healthcare information management system, named Partners eCare, consists of two components.Part of it is called the revenue cycle, the primary function of this module is to assist physicians in managing their daily workflows, such as scheduling appointments and generating bills.Another part is called the clinical cycle., the primary function of this module is to document patients' electronic medical records and enter medical orders.
On July 12, 2014, Massachusetts General Hospital, as one of the first hospitals to launch the Partners eCare system, officially began using the system’s revenue cycle module. The clinical cycle module was scheduled to go live on May 31, 2016. As planned,Partners eCare will be completed in 2017.By then, all members within the Partners HealthCare alliance will begin using Partners eCare.
Two Major Portals
Massachusetts General Hospital offers two primary patient-facing portals: Partners Patient Gateway and MGH Virtual Visit.
Partners Patient Gateway is a shared healthcare portal developed by Partners HealthCare for all hospitals within its network. After registration, patients can use the website to schedule appointments, request hospital transfers, and access medical information such as prescriptions and test reports. The website also sends SMS and email reminders to help users manage their health.
Since Partners Patient Gateway does not offer virtual consultation services, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) independently developed the MGH Virtual Visit website as a supplement. Users of MGH Virtual Visit can schedule appointments and conduct virtual consultations through the platform, thereby eliminating the need for in-person hospital visits. However, virtual consultation services are currently available only to patients of select affiliated hospitals, as MGH Virtual Visit is not open to all patients.
Focus on Monitoring & Diagnostic Mobile Medical Devices
Massachusetts General Hospital places significant emphasis on the research and development of mobile medical devices, with each disease-specific research center maintaining its own R&D projects in this field. However,Massachusetts General Hospital places different emphases on the development of monitoring-oriented mobile medical devices and diagnostic-oriented mobile medical devices.
For mobile medical devices in the monitoring category, Massachusetts General Hospital tends to favor collaborations. For instance, around 2004, Massachusetts General Hospital partnered with TIAX LLC to help the company develop the SENSORS system.The primary function of this system is to utilize wearable devices equipped with biosensors to collect various physiological indices of soldiers on the battlefield, transmit these data back to a computer, and then analyze the psychological stress faced by the soldiers based on the received data. For example,In 2012, Massachusetts General Hospital partnered with Zephyr Technology to help the company test wearable monitoring devices.
For diagnostic mobile medical devices, Massachusetts General Hospital tends to conduct independent research and development.AsD3, launched in the first half of this yearThe portable cancer diagnostic device based on the Digital Diffraction Diagnosis (D3) system was independently developed by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital. D3 can transform a smartphone into a cancer diagnostic tool. The operational steps are shown in the figure below:
A: Sample Collection and Preparation
B: Place the sample into the imaging assembly of D3 (the insertion location corresponds to the "Sample insert" section shown in Step B of the figure)
C: Mount the imaging module containing the sample onto the smartphone camera. After launching the dedicated D3 app, the phone transmits the images captured by the camera to the cloud server. The cloud server analyzes the images and sends the results back to the phone.
App, Catering to Both Doctors and Patients
Although it is a hospital,Massachusetts General Hospital has its own specialized IT team, including the Computer Science Laboratory. Founded in 1964, the laboratory has been dedicated to leveraging computing technologies to help the hospital improve healthcare services.The laboratory’s contributions are evident in the evolution of early electronic medical records (EMRs) to the systems still widely used by many large hospitals today.
Later, with the rise of smartphones, the laboratory began developing apps for physicians and patients at Massachusetts General Hospital. It has since launched several popular apps, such asMojo 2, launched in April 2014 to help physicians rapidly access medical informationUpon its launch, the user base surpassed 1,000, and currently, more than 2,000 physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital are using this app.
In addition to developing apps with its in-house team, Massachusetts General Hospital also actively collaborates with other institutions possessing cutting-edge computer technology.
In 2014, Massachusetts General Hospital, in collaboration with Samsung and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), launched a wearable product hackathon to identify top talent and innovative ideas.
2014 Group Photo of Competition Organizers and Award Winners
This year (2015), Massachusetts General Hospital, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, participated in Apple’s ResearchKit project to jointly develop a health management application called GlucoSuccess.This application not only assists patients with type 2 diabetes in managing their health but also collects user data to support scientific research on type 2 diabetes by physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital, thereby facilitating the development of new therapies.
GlucoSuccess User Interface
A Well-Funded Incubator
In 2014, Massachusetts General Hospital established the HealthCare Transformation Lab., with the aim of soliciting high-quality research projects from the external community and translating them into practical medical technologies. Notably, this is the first research center at Massachusetts General Hospital to explicitly designate digital health as one of its key research priorities.
Given Massachusetts General Hospital’s robust R&D capabilities and ample funding, data shows that its research budget has exceeded $786 million this year. It is only a matter of time before the hospital’s incubator yields epoch-making scientific achievements.
Reviewing the layout of Massachusetts General Hospital, it is not difficult to find thatThe philosophy of research and development (R&D) and collaboration has always been central. R&D ensures that Massachusetts General Hospital gains access to cutting-edge technologies, while collaboration helps enhance the hospital’s brand visibility.Based on the achievements of Massachusetts General Hospital, its philosophy of R&D and collaboration is worthy of emulation by other hospitals and even enterprises.
By Zi Junwei | Edited by Mo Renying