MeHI recently announced awards for the new Right Care 4 You grant program totaling $189,360 for two digital health companies to support pilot projects with Massachusetts employers to help reduce their healthcare costs. The two competitive grants were awarded to:

Fitbit to conduct a randomized controlled trial with UMass Memorial Health Care (UMass Memorial) employees, aimed to help prevent and manage cardiometabolic diseases using Fitbit Premium™ and Health Coaching services; and

To Vincere Health to conduct a pilot of their smartphone-connected smoking cessation solution with Boston Medical Center (BMC) employees.

“The Right Care 4 You grants are the culmination of a collaborative effort between the Massachusetts business community, public sector, and digital health ecosystem,” said MeHI Director Laurance Stuntz. “Our grantees have worked hard to develop exciting new solutions for consumers, employers, and government and we’re proud to support their work in validating the ability of these solutions to truly reduce healthcare costs.”

MITRE is one of the nine sandboxes in the Massachusetts Digital Health Network. MITRE’s digital health sandbox provides open source tools like Synthea and related expertise to support the digital health community. Through public-private partnerships and federally funded R&D centers, MITRE works across government and in partnership with industry to discover new possibilities, create unexpected opportunities, and lead by pioneering together for the public good to bring innovative ideas into existence. Learn more about MITRE.

MeHI administers the Digital Health Sandbox Grant Program which awards up to $50k in non-dilutive funding to support projects at one of our sandbox network sites. The next application deadline for the grant program will be in April 2021. If you are interested in discussing the grant application, or sandboxes such as MITRE, please email bosco@masstech.org.

Collective Medical Technologies: website

Email address: David.Kimball@collectivemedical.com

PatientPing: website

Email address: eweber@patientping.com

This webinar will cover what ENS is and how the Statewide ENS Framework works. We will highlight the advantages of using the framework and provide use case examples. The presentation will showcase the certified ENS Vendors and summarize the certification process. We will also explain how Massachusetts providers, as well as clinical and support staff, can subscribe to an Event Notification Service to receive patient alerts. Join us for this webinar to learn more about the Statewide ENS Framework.

Tuesday, March 9^th, 2021

The MassTech Collaborative and the Massachusetts Caregiver Coalition invite you to register today for “Innovations in Caregiving: From Unmet Needs to Measurable Outcomes”, the next webinar in the “Innovations in Caregiving” virtual series, occurring on April 29th at 1:00 pm. Building on the series theme of leveraging innovation to reveal unmet needs and catalyze immediate impact for caregivers, the April discussion will feature three Massachusetts companies: Torchlight, iRobot, and the human capital firm Leading Indicator Systems. Moderated by MeHI Director Laurance Stuntz, the webinar will trace a journey from uncovering unmet needs to scaling a solution across employee families to driving measurable outcomes amidst unprecedented pressures brought on by COVID-19.

If you have any questions regarding the April virtual event, the Mass Caregiving Initiative, or the Massachusetts Caregiver Coalition, please email Paul Bosco at Bosco@masstech.org.

Thursday, April 29^th, 2021

We invite you to join us at our 2021 Learning Collaborative events. At these free events, we work together to develop informative guides, customizable templates, and other resources for healthcare providers. Attendees share their own experiences, hear other perspectives, and discuss best practices. The unique Learning Collaborative format allows attendees to contribute their insights and shape both the discussion and the deliverables we create.

For 2021, potential topics include:

Help us prioritize and plan by taking a quick survey here.

Stay tuned for more information, including registration links, in future newsletters and announcements, or visit our events calendar.

The Program Year 2021 (PY2021) attestation timeline begins April 1, 2021, and ends August 3, 2021. If you have not already received 6 years of incentives, you can still take advantage of participating in this final year of the program. 

To attest to PY2021, you will need to select a 90-day MU Reporting Period that falls between January 1, 2021 and August 3, 2021. As such, we advise you to prepare to meet the Meaningful Use requirements for PY2021 as soon as possible.

Per the HITECH Act, all eligible Medicaid EHR Incentives must be paid by Dec. 31, 2021, regardless of the program year for which an incentive application was submitted. To be paid on time, applications must be validated and approved by mid-October 2021 to qualify for the incentive. As such, submit all required supporting documentation as soon as possible.

We therefore encourage you to speak with a Technical Assistant or Analyst to gain insight on how to attest correctly the first time and reduce application cycling. Our experts are here to help make your final attestation year as seamless as possible. 

We are waiting to assist you. Contact us today at 855-627-7347 or send an email to massehr@masstech.org. 

The new Mass HIway website offers a wide variety of features to provide the Massachusetts healthcare community with easy access to Health Information Exchange (HIE) information, education, and services. To assist organizations in their HIE efforts, the website showcases: