• by Ray Schultz , November 14, 2022

Twilio is offering a customer data platform designed to improve experiences and outcomes for patients. 

The new tool -- Twilio Segment for Healthcare & Life Sciences -- is a HIPAA-compliant platform that allows providers to connect in-person visits with digital touchpoints across the web, patient portal or mobile app, and communication channels such as email, phone, chat and video, the firm says.

The goal is to help those providers “utilize data siloed in legacy tools that they had access to, but were not able to truly use,” says Erik Wagner, Global Lead of Healthcare at Twilio. 

Wagner says the “real challenge for these organizations has been to unify data that resides in multiple systems, in real-time, and pull it together into a secure platform that protects the patient’s privacy.” 

The new offering will help providers deliver personalized journey based on a patient’s specific needs, Twilio says. 

“People have come to expect personalized and convenient customer experiences in nearly every aspect of their lives except healthcare where a patient’s health and well-being is at stake,” says Sandip Chandarana, associate vice president of application development at Healthfirst, a not-for-profit health insurer that has pioneered the use of Twilio Segment’s HIPAA-eligible CDP.

Chandarana adds: “Twilio’s Customer Engagement Platform enables Healthfirst to challenge that norm by providing a comprehensive and real-time view of our members’ care journey.”

Natalie Schibell, vice president and research director at Forrester, notes: “Healthcare, a previously pen-and-paper industry, collected only a few data points a year. With the help of new analytics technologies, healthcare organizations now collect hundreds, even thousands, of data points a day to further inform patient care.”

According to Twilio, healthcare firms can use the new capability to:

• Instantly resolve a prescription denial
• Determine whether a patient is adhering to their medication with real-time pickup history
• Ensure that a patient is attending annual health checkups and health visits
• Leveraging customer data coming into Twilio Flex and Twilio Segment to inform products for mobile and web apps