How UH is transforming men’s healthcare and finding 90% time savings with tech-assisted personalization using Microsoft Power Platform

Men have a complicated relationship with healthcare. According to the Centers for Disease Control, they are twice as likely as women to exceed two years between doctor visits and more than 40 percent don’t visit a doctor at all unless they have a major health issue. Inspired by a $15 million gift from Alexander “Sandy” and Sally Cutler, University Hospitals (UH) Cutler Center for Men has created a new way to empower men to take control of their health through a team of patient concierges known as “Joes.” The “Joe Team” is a group of care navigators who proactively engage with program members to provide streamlined access to the experts, services, and resources needed for a lifetime of physical, mental, and emotional health.

Through informed outreach and efficient triage, the organization aimed to help men be more proactive and holistic about their health by addressing concerns before they become major issues and capitalizing on health opportunities along the way. To accomplish these goals, the concierges needed technical tools that would provide real-time patient insight and communication for a group of healthcare professionals. 

Innovating tools to adapt to new communication demands 

UH is a large health system serving northern Ohio, with a broad network of hospitals, health centers, and physician offices. However, the small team at UH Cutler Center for Men felt that the system’s existing communication tools could not provide the patient insight, communication, and data fluidity that its new health concierges needed.

Joes are a stable focal point for the center’s members, fostering close relationships and delivering superior care by assisting with tasks such as finding primary care providers and scheduling follow-up visits and tests. On UH’s previous systems, Joes were unable to see or share among themselves when appointments had been made or members contacted. Leaders at UH Cutler Center for Men began conceptualizing ways to use technology to create better team collaboration. “We really wanted to be a disrupter in healthcare,” says Dr. Lee Ponsky, Executive Director of UH Cutler Center for Men; Chair, UH Urology Institute; Leo and Charlotte Goldberg Chair in Advanced Surgical Therapies; and Master Clinician in Urologic Oncology.

To develop a new tool for the Joes, UH enlisted Vish Pasumarthy, Chief Technology Officer of UH Cutler Center for Men and Director of Emerging Technologies of UH Ventures, the innovation and commercialization arm of UH. To keep men engaged in their healthcare, Joes would need seamless access to features and information, including patient registrations, interaction tracking, automated communication, custom calendars and task lists, and text messaging channels. UH wanted to build an internal app that would include those features and be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Accelerating app development and deployment using Microsoft Power Platform

Pasumarthy considered how to implement this vision and turned to Microsoft Power Platform for guidance in developing a customized app for UH Cutler Center for Men. “We had to consider what platform would really help us build an application quickly in a secure environment and how we could make it look seamless and be effective for our Joes to use,” says Pasumarthy. UH uses Microsoft solutions throughout its business, so it knew that Microsoft Power Apps would be an employee-friendly choice. 

Through Power Apps, UH easily incorporated and adjusted features that were crucial to the success of the Joes, such as text messaging. With rapid in-house deployment capabilities and a minimal learning curve, Joes were able to quickly begin using the app, giving them more time to focus on the members. Because it’s simple to work across multiple Microsoft products—such as Microsoft Azure, Azure Active Directory, and Microsoft Power Automate, as well as various external services and an external/internal API—Joes can communicate with various health providers, see real-time patient updates, and navigate the wider UH health system to provide resources for patients.

“Any other product that we could have started or dabbled with would have taken us months or even years to get to where we are today with Power Apps,” says Pasumarthy. “We really pushed the boundaries of healthcare charting and communication with Power Apps, and we’ve been lucky to have the support of the IT group and a tight tie to UH Ventures.”

UH Cutler Center for Men is noticing clear improvements in efficiency as the technology evolves. “We’re seeing that Joes can quickly reference when appointments are taking place and then do the outreach to say, ‘Hey, how did that appointment go yesterday?’ We’ve made that process automated and seamless by using Power Apps,” says Jennifer Muehle, Program Manager at UH Cutler Center for Men. The technology has also resulted in time savings of approximately 90 percent. “Things that used to take Joes 25 or 30 minutes are now done in only a couple of minutes,” says Pasumarthy.

Driving innovation to revolutionize men’s healthcare

As UH Cutler Center for Men prepares to expand with the opening of its flagship physical location in mid-2023, its dedicated staff remains focused on transforming the male approach to health. UH wants to continue developing personalization and technology in healthcare, and next steps include using Azure Cognitive Services to expand automation using AI. “Part of our ethos is to continue to design, evolve, and use products that solve high-value problems, and we want to build and enhance service experiences through advanced technologies,” says Kipum Lee, Vice President of Innovation and Product Strategy at UH.

UH Cutler Center for Men hopes to show other healthcare providers that a new, personalized, and integrated approach can empower patients and improve health outcomes. The team wants its technology-assisted Joes and other program developments to transform the healthcare industry. UH believes that the right technology can provide better care for longer, healthier lives. “Our hypothesis is that with these tools, we will better engage men in healthcare and ultimately save lives. That’s what drives us. That’s what excites us,” says Dr. Ponsky.