Valant Uses AWS Communication Developer Services to Help Behavioral Health Practices Drive Better Patient Engagement

Valant Medical Solutions, Inc. designs and develops web-based electronic health record (EHR) software to help behavioral health providers and practices streamline administration tasks and improve patient outcomes. More than 20,000 behavioral health professionals in group and solo private practices across the United States use the Valant platform to treat individuals seeking behavioral healthcare. The Valant IO system has extensive capabilities to enable providers to deliver value-based care through measurement-based assessment and ongoing outcome assessments.

Shortly after the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, Valant began offering a telehealth solution to provide virtual capabilities to practices and their patients. The solution was based on a digital communications platform that lacked a multi-user experience and many other requested features. “The platform we used offered peer-to-peer video only, and we needed group capabilities, chat, screen and file sharing, and a whiteboard,” says James Jay, chief technology officer at Valant Medical Solutions. “In behavioral health, it’s common to have parents, spouses, or other guests attend sessions, and we saw a significant demand from practices for multi-user functionality, as well as other features critical to engaging effectively with patients. We also had strong demand to integrate co-payment collection into telehealth check-in workflows in advance of sessions.”

As Valant explored new telehealth capabilities, the organization also saw an opportunity to better engage with patients by offering personalized and recurring reminders as a part of its solution. “Our solution only allowed us to provide a single static appointment reminder, and many practices were buying third-party solutions with multiple reminders,” Jay says. “We needed to address this problem as part of our strategy to offer a fully integrated platform.”

Valant was running much of its core IT environment on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and an overall positive experience led the company to expand its use of AWS services. The company chose Amazon Chime SDK, which helps builders add real-time voice, video, and messaging capabilities into their communications applications. “We already had a big investment with AWS, and Amazon Chime SDK offered the features we wanted in addition to easy implementation,” says Jay.

Using Amazon Chime SDK’s real-time video capabilities, Valant created a new desktop and mobile telehealth solution that integrates with the company’s EHR and practice management software. Through the portal, patients can schedule and initiate video visits with practices directly from their MYIO patient portal. Valant then used Amazon Pinpoint and Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) to build an appointment reminder system that allows practices to communicate with patients over email, SMS, and voice.

The portal and reminder system uses rule-based reminders that automatically send patients multiple appointment reminders with customized timing before a scheduled appointment. The system also offers communications for canceled appointments, overdue balances, portal onboarding, insurance and credit card expiration, group therapy appointments, patient management, facility closures, no-show follow up scheduling, intake/signature assignments, and clinical outcome measures assigned, that are reviewed by practices. Valant integrated the CDS services with Amazon Polly to convert text to speech for customized automated robocall reminders. “The tools we built around Amazon Pinpoint, Amazon SES, and Amazon Polly give practices a wide range of tools for communicating better with their patients,” says Jay.