GE HealthCare and Biofourmis have announced a strategic partnership to improve patient care continuity by facilitating safe and accessible at-home care.

This partnership aims to allow more patients to return home sooner and provide an alternative to facility-based care, ensuring high-quality care at home.

In addition, the collaboration between GE HealthCare and Biofourmis supports the patient journey from hospital to home, easing transitions and providing continuous care.

The goal is to enable patients to leave the hospital earlier while maintaining quality care standards at home.

This is expected to encourage healthy behaviours in patients through remote management.

Insights from Biofourmis' AI-guided algorithms, which are cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), will assist care teams in delivering efficient, personalised home care.

GE HealthCare official Ashutosh Banerjee said: “Biofourmis' demonstrated success with care-at-home solutions will extend GE HealthCare's current inpatient monitoring portfolio to support patient care from the hospital to home.

“Combining our companies' demonstrated capabilities will help revolutionise the way we approach the patient care journey, as well as help address current challenges faced by health systems, including hospital capacity issues and clinical staffing shortages.”

Biofourmis' care-at-home solutions include clinical-grade wearable devices, digital platforms, in-home services orchestration technology, and nursing services.

These solutions offer dynamic care pathways and questionnaire-branching logic, enhancing the clinical context for care teams.

GE HealthCare's FlexAcuity monitoring solutions, along with virtual care solutions like Mural ICU, Command Center, and Digital CMU, adapt to changing patient needs and will now incorporate Biofourmis' virtual care-at-home solutions.

Starting in the first quarter of 2024, GE HealthCare will distribute Biofourmis solutions to its customers in the US.

This initiative comes as hospital systems face challenges such as workforce shortages, constrained bed capacity, and increasing readmission rates.

Care-at-home programmes, which include virtual components, have shown effectiveness in reducing hospital stays and readmission rates, potentially lowering overall care costs.

These programmes also support patient recovery and safety, potentially reducing risks, such as falls and hospital-acquired infections.