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Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE)
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CHIBE Q&A: Christianne Sevinc, MPH

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Read our Q&A to get to know the Product Owner of Way to Health Christianne Sevinc, MPH

What is the Way to Health team working on right now to address COVID-19?

Way to Health is working on a variety of initiatives to support patient care due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most notably this includes COVID-19 Watch, which is a program that enables patients of low to moderate risk to be monitored at home, with escalation to hands-on care when necessary. The program seeks to reduce call center volume, decrease the risk of exposure for patients and health care providers, and offer patients with peace of mind about their clinical status.

A version of this program called Pregnancy Watch has also been deployed and focuses specifically on soon-to-be mothers.Way to Health is also powering remote registration across all emergency departments at Penn Medicine. This will enable emergency departments to quickly move and triage patients appropriately in anticipation of surges. In addition to this work, we are quickly scaling other existing patient monitoring programs to keep healthy patients safely at home.

What do you find rewarding about your work?

The cross section of technology and healthcare energizes me. As the product owner of a patient engagement platform, I’m the central gear that connects clinicians, researchers, developers and designers in the development of meaningful solutions that can improve health care delivery and help people make healthier choices in their daily lives. I love being involved in the design, creation and execution of these programs that can help so many people.

What do you wish more people knew about the Way to Health platform?

Way to Health is an extremely powerful and dynamic tool. Individual researchers and clinicians may only tap the surface of our capabilities to cover their unique request for patient monitoring or research. For example, some people may know us as “just a text messaging platform,” while others refer to us as “kind of like RedCap.” The truth is that Way to Health is like a chameleon. We can adapt it to meet so many different needs.Bill Hanson, Chief Medical Information Officer at Penn Medicine, recently compared us to a Swiss army knife. The platform combines behavioral science strategies, a rules engine that supports algorithmic care, integration with biometric and other Bluetooth devices, texting chatbot and automated feedback, data collection through surveys, and communication with Penn Medicine’s electronic health record, just to name a few