WELL announces decision support for chronic disease

VANCOUVER, BC – WELL Health Technologies Corp., a digital health company, and its investee company, HEALWELL AI, are pleased to announce the launch of the second generation WELL AI Decision Support (“WAIDS”). This enhanced version features advanced chronic disease screening and arrives just six months after the initial launch, which was primarily focused on rare disease detection.

The upgraded WAIDS now includes screening capabilities for numerous chronic diseases such as chronic kidney disease, hypertension, and diabetes, enabling risk stratification of patients into high, medium, or low risk categories. This expansion broadens WAIDS’s utility in detecting more than one hundred rare and chronic diseases, providing clinically validated insights that identify care gaps and equip clinicians with actionable information at the point of care.

Dr. Michael Frankel (pictured), chief medical officer of WELL, commented on the new capabilities: “Adding chronic disease detection is a game-changer for our AI powered physician co-pilot tools. I have personally used this tool in my practice and found it to be of tremendous help and support. The tool compliantly scans my data and provides me with an overview of a number of key diseases as well as insights on which patients could be at higher risk or exposure to such diseases.”

The technology behind WAIDS is powered by HEALWELL AI who has been helping physicians save lives for the past four years with its best-in-class rare disease detection capabilities. This launch represents another significant step forward in WELL and HEALWELL’s ongoing collaboration to transform healthcare through data science and innovative technology.

“HEALWELL is committed to continuously advancing its data science offerings, and with WAIDS, we aim to serve as a vital co-pilot in the medical community,” said Dr. Alexander Dobranowski, CEO of HEALWELL. “The second generation of WAIDS is designed to enhance and support the critical decision-making processes of doctors, ensuring they remain central to patient care. Historically, HEALWELL’s focus has been on screening for rare and ultra rare diseases, but now with the second generation WAIDS we have significantly expanded our capabilities to finding patients with important chronic diseases. This adds tremendous value to patients, practitioners and healthcare systems.”

According to a Statistic’s Canada report in 2023 on the Health of Canadians, 45.1% of Canadians lived with at least one major chronic disease in 2021.

Chronic diseases and the percentage of Canadians who have them include conditions like Diabetes 11%, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease 10%, Heart Disease 8%, and Chronic Kidney Disease 11-13%.

These conditions are also not found alone and increasingly more and more Canadians are being found to have a plurality of these morbidities.

Chronic diseases and related health issues are estimated to cost the Canadian economy $190 billion annually, with $122 billion stemming from indirect income and productivity losses, and $68 billion in direct healthcare costs.

For more information on WELL AI Decision Support, please visit https://decisionsupport.wellhealth.ai/