How GetWellNetwork Grew Up

GetWellNetwork and LG partner to support digital transformation of patient engagement

What emerged from a less-than-stellar experience became an idea, then a business, and now a movement. GetWellNetwork was born in 2000 after the founder emerged from a life-threatening illness with positive medical outcomes, but a profoundly confusing patient experience.

That was 20 years ago, when the internet was just gaining momentum, when CRT televisions were the standard, and when content programming was prescribed. During this time, patients were often left in the dark as to what just happened, what is happening, and what’s about to happen to them.

When GetWellNetwork Founder Michael O’Neil was released from the hospital, he knew there had to be a way to improve positive clinical outcomes and streamline workflows by advancing communication.

“Fear of the unknown is prevalent and scary but if you gain insight on your condition, treatment, and prognosis, you are naturally more grounded,” explains Robin Cavanaugh, Chief Technology Officer, GetWellNetwork. “Michael understood from his own experience that insight can be anxiety-relieving, so he gathered a founding group that shared that empathy. Today, our mission remains faithful to the founding concept of patient engagement and empowerment.”

Cavanaugh explains that in 2000, the initial concept of patient engagement promised improved patient experiences, increased clinical performance, and also staffing efficiencies and economies. “I think it was widely appreciated how patient engagement could facilitate happier patients, shorter stays, and optimized staffing, but it wasn’t clear how to organize and deliver the information,” Cavanaugh says.

The team looked at various technologies available at the time including proprietary networks, set-top boxes, and small computers. They then considered the hospitality market where guest personalization, requests, and on-demand services were being pioneered with emerging technologies like LG’s Pro:Centric platform. GetWellNetwork deployed LG’s Pro:Centric Hospital TVs with one innovative hospital in the Baltimore area and began iterating the service, improving the platform, and learning more about the hospital, clinical teams, support teams and, the patient communities.

A major inflection point occurred with the advent of smart televisions. The capacity of these new, sleek displays to fit in small hospital rooms or on arms in dialysis chairs — and featuring previously-unimaginable processing and connectivity capabilities — were all features that GetWellNetwork could leverage to deliver the full power of the platform.

O’Neil and Cavanaugh (who is Employee #4 at GetWellNetwork), watched smart technology evolve but also kept their distance from the hardware so as to retain focus on the platform and the experience. They needed the technology, but they also needed it to be transparent. This is how a partnership with LG began.

LG Electronics has been a consistent leader in hospitality and pioneered server-based systems for that market. LG also advanced flat panel displays, but according to Cavanaugh, it was really the depth of presence in North America and the depth of partnership LG was prepared to share with GetWellNetwork that really made a difference.

“If we were going to remove hardware from our equation at GetWellNetwork, we needed a hardware partner we could completely trust,” Cavanaugh explains. “That means we needed confidence that our partner would innovate, deliver, and support our customers with a range of technologies that are robust, reliable ,and interoperable. LG consistently meets those conditions and earns our partnership with each new deployment. ”

Today, GetWellNetwork delivers a host of important technologies to the patient and caregiver community. This includes digital whiteboards for communications, prompts and alerts for treatments and prescriptions, provider information, menus for ordering and instructions for post-operative care. Cavanaugh believes GetWellNetwork’s capacity to aggregate, collate, interpret, and share the right information at the right time to the right audience in the language they’re most comfortable with is unique and compelling.

“Having a commitment to patient engagement and empowerment is one thing but having the experience, the relationships, and the expertise is what sets GetWellNetwork apart,” Cavanaugh says. “We deliver on empathy and could not do so without our partners.”

Patient engagement platforms like GetWellNetwork have facilitated considerable positive change during the pandemic. As hospital groups faced staff shortages and compliance regulations required staff to wear gowns before entering a patient room and remove the gowns after leaving the patient room, the delivery of information remotely enabled more efficient staff deployments and better workflows for clinical, orderly, and housekeeping teams.

The delivery of behavioral health treatment is an area where Cavanaugh thinks the platform will be especially far-reaching. GetWellNetwork has a portfolio of products to address behavioral health including GetWell Loop, which helps identify disease state and provides prompts, alerts, and check-ins that prompt patients to get the care they need, when they need it.

As Cavanaugh looks to the future, he sees massive change in healthcare and thinks patient engagement platforms can facilitate new treatment paradigms, new business models, and more accessible, affordable healthcare.

“The hospital environment will change radically as our systems transition to home health,” Cavanaugh explains. “That transition will allow hospital operators to optimize their facilities for the very sick and allow home health groups to optimize operations for informing, treating, and monitoring less critical patients. Our platform is engineered to support both.”

Hardware, Cavanaugh says, needs to support both environments. LG’s 15” Personal Healthcare Smart Touch TVs deliver GetWellNetwork solutions in outpatient environments like dialysis clinics: LG large format displays serve the platform in hospital rooms and various mobile devices, including the LG GRAM, serve the platform in the home.

“Consumers have fixed expectations for technology. They see advanced display and touch technologies in retail, restaurants, and hospitality, have 4K in the home, and have advanced interactivity and one-click responsiveness on their mobile devices. Asking them to take a step back on their healthcare is not negotiable,” Cavanaugh says. “This is why GetWellNetwork partners with brands with the innovation leadership and scale of LG.”

Twenty years after founding GetWellNetwork, Michael O’Neil’s poor patient experience has positively transformed the experiences of thousands of patients around the world, and the transformation shows little sign of abating. O’Neil, Cavanaugh, and the GetWellNetwork organization are determined to apply that same founding vision and empathy to making healthcare more innovative, effective, and efficient for more patients and caregivers everywhere.