BOISE, Idaho and KINGWOOD, Texas—Kno2, in collaboration with Vision Source, has been selected as a recipient of the Empower Your Care Teams and Employees category of Microsoft’s 2019 Health Innovation Awards. The awards were announced at the 2019 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition in Orlando. They were created to recognize health organizations and their technology solution partners for using Microsoft’s intelligent health technologies in innovative ways, which help empower care teams, improve clinical and operational outcomes, and advance precision health care.

“The health industry is undergoing a digital transformation in which intelligent health technologies are helping communities and individuals improve care by helping them better understand and share information,” said Chris Sakalosky, vice president, U.S. Health & Life Sciences, Microsoft. “This year’s Microsoft Health Innovation Award recipients are advancing the goals of improved patient engagement and care coordination through their pioneering use of Microsoft cloud and AI services.”

Kno2 was recognized for its Interoperability as a Service solution, which was built and runs entirely on Microsoft Azure. The service is health care’s largest network aggregator, connecting and normalizing all major health information networks across the U.S. The service also includes direct messaging, live patient query for providers, referral networks, Health Information Exchange connectivity, and cloud faxing.

For Vision Source, Kno2 has helped streamline patient data flow and close patient care gaps within seven to 10 days, as opposed to the four to 12 weeks it took previously. The service also allowed Vision Source practices to exchange referrals and records between multiple EHR platforms, and reduce diabetic eye examination lag time by 80 percent. Kno2 was initially launched in a 2018 pilot for Vision Source, and has since been expanded across Vision Source’s entire network of over 4,500 private practice optometrists.

Jim Greenwood, Vision Source president and chief executive officer, said, “At Vision Source, one of our primary goals is to provide our network member optometrists with cutting-edge technologies that improve patient outcomes and create operational efficiencies. From the beginning, our team was very excited to embrace an award-winning solution that enhances collaborative care environments. The combination of Vision Source’s national network of optometrists and Kno2’s best-in-class solution represents a significant milestone with respect to reducing administrative burdens, improving efficiencies and making a difference in the health of our patients.”

Therasa Bell, president and chief technology officer at Kno2, said, “While interoperability is realizing meaningful strides in health care, it’s still defined by many different standards and protocols, ultimately creating a difficult and expensive challenge for each provider. Through Kno2 and Azure, we remove the complexity and expense from the provider and allow for a single, streamlined care coordination workflow that is easily absorbed by a provider.”