Three healthcare organizations — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Jefferson Health, Asheville, North Carolina-based Mission Health and Santa Barbara, California-based InTouch Health — have joined hands in a telehealth collaboration.

The goal of the five-year partnership is to jointly create new telemedicine solutions for various service lines.

Jefferson and Mission each previously had individual and longstanding relationships with InTouch Health. They both used the company’s telestroke solution.

Now, with InTouch’s help, they’ll pinpoint new areas where telehealth can be put to use, including stroke, acute heart failure and sepsis. The developed virtual care models will then be tested at Jefferson and Mission.

“We have … one project team at TJU and one project team over at Mission,” InTouch CEO Joe DeVivo said in a phone interview. “We have those two teams meeting on a regular basis to coordinate. The purpose is to work together to solve real-world clinical and technical problems to help virtualize care.”

DeVivo added that the distinct characteristics of each health system bring an added level of synergy to the relationship. While Jefferson is based in a primarily urban setting, Mission serves relatively rural and suburban areas.

“The markets they serve are going to be represented in how the solutions they create cover a breadth of health system needs,” he said.

In a statement, Mission Health CEO Ronald Paulus expressed a similar sentiment. “In the most rural and mountainous counties of western North Carolina, technologies like the InTouch Telehealth Network allow our patients and communities to have the same access to state-of-the-art, highly specialized care as patients in large cities,” he said.

The partnership also allows for interdisciplinary teamwork between a technology company and two health systems.

Looking ahead, DeVivo believes the collaboration will result in use cases where the organizations “solve clinical, economic and technical problems.”

He noted that he hopes patients, Jefferson Health, Mission Health and other health systems can benefit from this work.

“This is a core need and a core mission that the three of us have, which is to help specialists reach patients anywhere they are,” DeVivo said.

Earlier this year, InTouch announced plans to acquire another telehealth provider: TruClinic. Through the deal, InTouch will add the Salt Lake City company’s software to its offering, allowing patients at home to have a telemedicine visit with their own physician. Via email in early January, DeVivo did not share details on the timeline of the deal, but said InTouch hopes to wrap up things up “in the very near future.”

As for Jefferson, this is only one of its telehealth endeavors. Last spring, it tapped Teladoc for its telemedicine needs.

Photo: bernardbodo, Getty Images