Ambient Clinical Analytics: Empowering Clinicians to Save Lives and Simplify Complex Clinical Care

Interview with: Brian Tufts, CEO, Ambient Clinical Analytics

Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine

“Our offering uniquely combines various key elements into an integrated program for complex care. We
combine detection tools, clinical decision support tools, and workflow tools into an integrated end-to-end system that helps care coordination come to life. Hospital clinicians appreciate the importance of
systemic processes that coordinate care in a way that is both repeatable for all patients while tailored
to the individual patient’s needs.” Brian Tufts

CEOCFO: Mr. Tufts, what is the overall concept of Ambient Clinical Analytics, and what attracted you to the CEO position?
Mr. Tufts: The attraction for me is to help empower clinicians and achieve better care for patients throughout the hospital. I want to help connect the dots as patients come into the hospital and journey through the system. It may start in the emergency room, then continue to the general ward, and potentially the intensive care unit (ICU) if they are deteriorating. There are many hand-offs and a much-needed coordination of care.

Hospitals are an inherently challenging environment to work in. For me, the attraction was a company that offered a straightforward solution to both help identify patients that needed additional care and then add workflow automation to work with doctors and nurses on this additional care. We meet clinicians where they are, streamlining their day instead of adding to it. The attraction for me was finding a way to simplify complex clinical care. When I saw the offerings from Ambient Clinical Analytics my first thought was: we need to scale these offerings and get these in more hospitals so they can empower their clinicians and better care for their patients.

CEOCFO: What is the product?
Mr. Tufts: Our offering is a comprehensive program to work with hospitals to help them care for complex patients. This includes understanding the hospital’s needs, their protocols, and their systems/processes. Our product offering is a software platform that embeds into the hospital’s workflow, working alongside their electronic health records platform. We do not replace the electronic health records within a hospital, whether it is Epic, Cerner (Oracle Health), MEDITECH, etc. Ambient’s software runs alongside of those EHR systems and helps with the data visualization, data analytics, clinical decision support, and workflow automation. This helps hospitals take care of critically ill patients and helps hospital processes run smoothly.

CEOCFO: Would you give us a couple examples?
Mr. Tufts: Ambient Clinical Analytics offers a few products. We have our AWARE solution, a data visualization tool mostly used in the ICU. As a module in our AWARE offering, we often highlight our Sepsis DART™ offering. DART stands for Detection And Response Tool. We work with hospitals to embed the Sepsis DART tool in their sepsis workflow.

We can configure the tools on each deployment to meet the specific needs for each hospital. For instance, when it comes to workflow configuration we sync with nurse call notification systems to notify clinicians at the appropriate time to ensure patients are treated in accordance with hospital protocol.

In the case of a sepsis protocol, this may mean making sure the patients are getting fluids per plan, or antibiotics within a certain timeframe. Our software does not redefine a hospital’s protocol, rather we are offering them a tool to help make their processes come to life in a repeated and systematic way.

CEOCFO: Are there competing products today, and is this an area where people have tried to fix?
Mr. Tufts: There are other solutions that are in use in hospitals today, and some of them are offered as part of the broader electronic health record package. Our AWARE offering is truly unique as an ICU tool in the way it organizes and displays data for ICU clinicians. With respect to sepsis there are other solutions that work to predict or detect sepsis, however our offering uniquely combines various key elements into an integrated program for complex care. We combine detection tools, clinical decision support tools, and workflow tools into an integrated end-to-end system that helps care coordination come to life. Hospital clinicians appreciate the importance of systemic processes that coordinate care in a way that is both repeatable for all patients while tailored to the individual patient’s needs.

CEOCFO: Are many hospitals looking for a better way?
Mr. Tufts: Sepsis and sepsis care continues to get more attention. CMS has looked at this and included compliance to sepsis protocols as part of recent updates to their Value Based Purchasing (VBP) program. 2% of CMS payments are withheld annually and redistributed based on performance to certain measures including sepsis performance; which is a significant number to hospitals that often have thin operating margins. With those rules now in place bundle compliance is tracked nationally, reported nationally, with both financial incentives and penalties for hospitals on how they compare to the national average. These changes in the last couple years have put a spotlight on sepsis care, the coordination of sepsis care, and the individual hospitals adherence to sepsis protocol numbers.

Hospitals understand and know their numbers. As we partner with hospitals, we work to understand their goals and objectives then identify how we can help them meet those goals with their care teams.

CEOCFO: Is there a particular size or type of hospital system that you are looking at or is it across the board?
Mr. Tufts: It is across the board. Sepsis is the leading cause of death in hospitals, and all hospitals are looking to improve outcomes in this complex space. We have worked with smaller community-based hospitals that have had success in implementing our solution and made big strides within their hospitals. Some of our customers are very large academic medical centers. Complex clinical care, including sepsis, is a challenge that all hospitals face, big and small. The software solution and broader program coordination we offer, with processes and systems behind them, are truly applicable across various hospitals, large or small.

CEOCFO: How does implementation and integration work with complex systems that tend to be in all hospitals?
Mr. Tufts: You hit a great point here, as caring for critically ill patients in the hospital requires care coordination that is already a complex system in and of itself. This includes not only the electronic health record, but the myriad of processes built around caring for these patients. When we partner with a hospital, we are working to configure our system within their current workflows and processes. Much of this work happens in the initial installation. We work as a team to ask the right questions upfront to ensure a smooth go-live, and we continue to refine our implementation tools to streamline each install. The actual software integration is a relatively straightforward challenge. I am not saying that it is simple; however, we have brilliant systems engineers and data analysts who work together with talented hospital stakeholders to ensure the data flows are appropriately working. We integrate into current processes and meet clinicians where they are; ultimately streamlining existing processes instead of adding more complexity to their day.

CEOCFO: What is one thing that you learned from your customers that had you make a change?
Mr. Tufts: I will stay on the topic of the installation and go-live process here. Over time we have learned that getting as much feedback as possible upfront and baking that knowledge into our initial configuration is extremely valuable. I suppose that sounds self-evident, however our team has continued to raise the bar in how quickly/efficiently we can configure our offering within the processes of a new partner hospital. That is important for a few reasons, including 1) it helps streamline the effort for our partner hospitals and 2) it positions our company to scale rapidly as we partner with additional institutions.

CEOCFO: What have you learned since being at Ambient; which may have surprised you?
Mr. Tufts: I was fortunately in a position to get to know the company well before I stepped into the CEO role. I met the leadership team and had an opportunity to meet with the Board of directors on numerous occasions. That being said, it is difficult to know the culture of a company and the people therein until you are truly there. I have been so impressed with the team, including the technical depth of knowledge that they bring to the challenges faced by hospitals every day.

What has been a surprise to me since joining? I will answer it simply- the amazing talent throughout the company. The coders, the software engineers, the implementation specialists, it blew me away. I am very excited about the journey forward with our team.

CEOCFO: You recently received a $5 million investment. Are you still seeking funding, investment or partnership right now, and what is the money going towards?
Mr. Tufts: We have just closed a growth funding round, so we are not actively seeking additional capital at this time. We are seeking partnerships as we work to grow the company; I always have my eyes open for collaborations that can help accelerate our growth.

A lot of the money that we just raised is going to commercial efforts to grow and scale the company. Our software offerings are complete and ready to go. Our focus now is to highlight the exciting results we are seeing with existing partner hospitals and to bring our offerings to many more hospitals this year and next. We continue to tell our story across the MedTech and HealthTech ecosystems, and we certainly appreciate forums like this one to tell our story.

CEOCFO: What, if anything, should people know about Ambient Clinical Analytics that we have not talked about?
Mr. Tufts: We talked a lot about our sepsis module, and I use that as a specific example. The company offers a broader platform, a broader opportunity to improve care across the hospital setting. I am excited to scale not only our sepsis capability but also our broader capabilities of how we can improve patient care, leveraging the data that already exists and integrating into current workflows.

Our focus is on software to support systems and processes that enable better care for critically ill patients. Hospital and hospital systems have complex workflows for these patients; our offering supports nurses and doctors throughout their very busy and challenging days. As we partner with more hospitals and hospital systems with our offering, Ambient Clinical Analytics will play a huge role in helping improve patient outcomes in the next few years. I am thrilled to work with the team to make this happen.