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ChristianaCare has grown into one of Delaware’s most prominent organizations using tech in innovative ways, including its reimagining of doctor’s visits via telemedicine before the COVID-19 pandemic made the practice a commonality for non-emergency medical care.

And now, for the fifth consecutive year, it has earned the “Most Wired” designation in Ambulatory and Hospital Care from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), a professional org for CIOs and other senior healthcare IT leaders.

Some more of the healthcare systems recent innovations include the use of iPads to communicate with COVID-positive patients within the hospital and virtual reality to improve quality of life for cancer patients and train residents to help prevent opioid deaths.

ChristianaCare’s telemedicine program has also gotten a boost with a $714,000 grant, funded by the FCC’s COVID-19 Telehealth Program via the federal CARES Act, to expand access to its CareVio care management program to low-income communities.

Randall Gaboriault, chief digital and information officer and senior VP of innovation and strategic development at ChristianaCare, told Technical.ly in December that the healthcare system was in a special position to make big changes to the way healthcare works because of its Delaware location — a small, diverse health ecosystem that in many ways is a microcosm of the United States.

“We have the ability to change and transform healthcare in our backyard in Delaware,” Gaboriault said. “We believe we can move faster than others are moving in their ecosystems. It’s the Delaware advantage.”

“We are the caregivers behind the caregivers,” said Randall Gaboriault, chief information officer and senior VP of innovation and strategic development at ChristianaCare, in a press statement. “There is not one goal, not one objective, not one target, not one question that can be answered or solution that can be delivered that doesn’t require the change to be supported, enabled, built, created and produced by Information Technology.”

A Delaware health system has customized an Amazon Alexa mHealth app to give patients personalized care management information at home.

Wilmington-based ChristianaCare announced this week that the Home Care Coach mHealth app will be prescribed for home care patients to use on the voice-enabled digital assistant platform. The app was designed at ChristianaCare’s Health & Technology Innovation Center.

“We have a bold vision of the future: All care that can be digital will be digital, and all care that can be done in the home or in the community will be done in the home or in the community,” Janice Nevin, MD, MPH, CEO of the three-hospital health system, said in a press release. “Engaging patients digitally is more important than ever right now, as it will help them reach their health goals, improve their experience, and shape the future of health care as we know it.”

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With healthcare providers adopting telehealth and remote patient monitoring platforms to extend care into the home, they’re looking for tools that can guide patients along a care path and keep them in touch with their care providers. They’ve been keeping a close eye on the evolution of digital assistants like Alexa, Cortana and Siri for the last few years.

Last year, Amazon announced that Alexa supports HIPAA-compliant services and formed a team of healthcare providers to develop healthcare uses for the platform.

Now others are jumping onto the bandwagon.

“Voice assistants are in millions of homes in the US,” Randy Gaboriault, ChristianaCare’s chief digital and information officer, said in the press release. “By leveraging this technology, we are creating a new model of care within patients’ homes to support the best health outcomes possible.”

Randall Gaboriault. Chief Digital and Information Officer of ChristianaCare (Wilmington, Del.). Mr. Gaboriault is the chief digital and information officer at ChristianaCare, a two-hospital health system, as well as chair of the Delaware Health Information Network, a statewide health information exchange. He joined ChristianaCare in 2010 after serving as senior vice president and chief information and strategic development officer of Teleflex. In his current role, Mr. Gaboriault helped the health system earn a multimillion-dollar Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Award.

Randall Gaboriault, MS, chief information officer and senior vice president of Innovation and Strategic Development at ChristianaCare, is a 2019 inductee into the CIO Hall of Fame by major tech company IDG...

“Technology touches every single interaction we have with our patients, and it creates an efficient way for us to connect with our neighbors and deliver the world’s best care, powered by a foundation of technology and empathy,” said Randall Gaboriault, chief information officer and senior vice president of Innovation and Strategic Development at ChristianaCare...