November 1, 2022 – Hippo Technologies, Inc.™ (Hippo), a global virtual care company delivering solutions for healthcare and medical education leveraging next-generation voice and video-enabled wearable computing, today announced a seed-round investment by Ochsner Health, one of the nation’s leading health systems serving the people of Louisiana, Mississippi and the Gulf South. The two organizations will leverage the Hippo Virtual Care™ platform to improve patient access to specialist services and to advance clinician productivity, community outreach and population health.
Unlike traditional telehealth, which is generally suitable for simple care consultations, the Hippo Virtual Care solution combines hands-free, voice-activated, wearable headsets at the point of care with a clinical-grade platform to deliver a “through the eyes of the clinician” viewpoint. This allows first responders, healthcare workers at a rural clinic, or caregivers at home to livestream their activity to specialist colleagues back at the hospital for real-time consults on complex cases. This immersive virtual care experience increases access to specialty care in rural areas and results in faster diagnosis and treatment, ultimately improving patient outcomes and reducing the overall cost of care.
The collaboration between Ochsner and Hippo will focus on using the Hippo Virtual Care platform to create applications and connected health technologies to support advancements that will:
- Increase clinician productivity with caregivers using Hippo voice-activated headsets and connected devices
- Improve the delivery of care and quality outcomes with remote specialty consults
- Improve the patient and clinician experience
- Extend the effective reach of virtual medical education with remote teaching and proctoring
Initially, the two organizations will focus on bringing a new model of Virtual Care to Ochsner Health’s Neurology services to connect Ochsner specialists with communities within Ochsner’s footprint. The program has the potential to expand to different uses cases and more communities across the health system to increase access for care delivery and medical education.