Clear, a company well recognized for its biometric identity tech used in airports, is expanding its reach in healthcare and ramping up partnerships with major health IT companies like InterSystems and Epic.
The company is working with data technology vendor InterSystems to simplify patients' access to their medical histories and improve data management. Clear is integrating its verified identity technology with InterSystems' health gateway service to enhance the patient check-in and preregistration process, the companies said in a press release.
"Clear's verified identity technology has transformed the airport experience for millions of travelers,” said Don Woodlock, head of global healthcare solutions at InterSystems, in a statement.
In the same way, the integration of Clear's technology with InterSystems' health gateway system will improve the patient and provider experience and give clinicians a "clear and complete picture of the patient even prior to their first visit," Woodlock noted.
The joint offering between Clear and InterSystems is currently in an early access program with select healthcare systems in the U.S., the company said.
Medical professionals frequently encounter incomplete medical data due to limited interoperability across different healthcare systems. As a result, a patient’s complete medical history may not follow them to every care visit.
InterSystems has developed interoperability solutions, including its health gateway system, to address this issue by gathering, de-duplicating and aggregating patient data from national networks such as Carequality, eHealth Exchange and CommonWell. The partnership with Clear further enhances this service by incorporating identity verification technology that streamlines patient check-in and pre-registration processes for better patient data management.
“Connecting a patient’s identity to their medical history is a challenge that Clear is uniquely suited to help solve,” said Clear CEO Caryn Seidman Becker in a statement. “Through our partnership with InterSystems, we will reduce friction for both patients and providers by securely confirming your identity.”
The collaboration with InterSystems follows Clear's integration with EHR giant Epic as part of a pilot project with Wellstar Health System to streamline the patient check-in progress. Clear rolled out check-in kiosks at one pilot Wellstar location, and the health system plans to expand the technology to four other locations later this year. That partnership was announced last month.
Wellstar, one of the largest healthcare systems in Georgia, says it co-developed the integration and is the first health system to utilize the Clear verified technology application, which will eventually become an out-of-the-box integration available to other health systems that use Epic's EHR system.
The Clear check-in technology provides patients with frictionless on-site check-in by simply verifying their identity ahead of time, according to both organizations.
Becker said the collaboration with Wellstar brings Clear one step closer in its effort to "replace the clipboard in healthcare" by utilizing technology powered by patients' interoperable health identity. “Identity is foundational to making patient experiences safer, easier, and more efficient in healthcare," she said in a statement.
The company cut its teeth in a highly regulated industry—aviation security—and now boasts 22 million members. Clear first moved into healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic when it developed its HealthPass as a digital vaccine card.
Last year, the company inked a partnership with Verato, a cloud-based patient matching platform, to accelerate the adoption of digital identity in healthcare. The two companies are working to connect the identity verification process at the digital "front door" with back-end data management platforms. The technology connects patients’ disparate health information, from insurance information to credit cards and electronic medical records, using a single sign-on, HIPAA-compliant account, the companies said.
During HLTH 2023 last year, Clear unveiled a partnership with b.well Connected Health to embed its technology to help patients better access and control their fragmented health data with a single, connected account.