At the InterSystems READY 2026 conference, this session detailed InterSystems’ comprehensive strategy for responding to federal Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) opportunities for customers. The overarching mission of the initiative is centered on four core pillars: making rural America healthy again, ensuring sustainable access to care, fostering robust workforce development, and driving innovative care through advanced technology. The focus on sustainable access is crucial, as transient solutions will not address the underlying systemic issues.
By emphasizing workforce development, InterSystems is working to ensure that the personnel required to operate these advanced systems are available and adequately trained in the specific contexts of rural healthcare delivery. The fundamental approach involves bringing essential services directly to patients, largely through the expansion of virtual care capabilities, a commitment InterSystems is making.
The presentation highlighted several approved funding purposes critical to the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), emphasizing the need for broad, impactful change across the rural health ecosystem. These purposes focus on improving patient care, extending specialty care amid constrained resources, promoting technological adoption, and enhancing system sustainability. Key areas include implementing effective chronic disease management programs, which are vital given the prevalence of long-term conditions in many communities, and optimizing provider-payer relationships to ensure financial viability and appropriate reimbursement for rural providers.
A significant focus is placed on patient empowerment through technology, ensuring individuals have the tools to proactively manage their health, shifting the paradigm from reactive to preventive care. The RHTP program seeks to bolster the healthcare infrastructure through dedicated training and technical assistance, alongside crucial workforce recruitment and retention efforts to stabilize the rural health labor market.
The desired outcome is improved patient results driven by technology, leading to the “right-sizing” of care delivery—optimizing resources to match community needs rather than over- or under-serving them. This transformation also supports vital substance abuse and mental health programs, which often lack sufficient resources in rural settings, facilitates the expansion of value-based care models that incentivize quality over volume, and ultimately, ensures sustainable access for all rural communities.
Central to InterSystems’ strategy is the InterSystems Regional Health Connections solution, a suite of modular offerings designed to tackle the most critical regional health needs. This platform is structured around four primary components: a patient engagement front door, which serves as the intuitive entry point for all patient interactions, streamlining initial contact and information gathering; a robust system for care coordination and referrals, essential for connecting patients with necessary primary, specialty, and auxiliary services; a comprehensive notification platform for timely communications and alerts to both patients and providers; and an analytics platform used for measuring performance and identifying population health trends.
These modular offerings are underpinned by critical foundational components that ensure data integrity, interoperability, and system coherence. These include a longitudinal health record that provides a holistic, long-term view of a patient’s health journey, aggregating data across multiple care settings; provider data management, which will be particularly useful for centralized state-level information systems, allowing states to maintain accurate records of licensed and credentialed practitioners; an Enterprise Master Person Index (EMPI) for accurate and de-duplicated patient identification across disparate systems, a necessity for coordinated care; and a powerful data integration engine to ensure seamless data flow and normalization across the entire ecosystem.
Dr. Li acknowledged the significant access barriers faced by rural populations, including logistical challenges such as transportation difficulties, deeply ingrained cultural norms—particularly a culture of independence that can discourage seeking necessary medical or mental health care—and the pervasive lack of specialist availability, which requires patients to travel long distances for specialized treatment. InterSystems illustrated how its technology aims to dissolve these barriers using a detailed vision demo centered on virtual care and AI assistance.
The demo showcased the InterSystems Personal Community app, a key offering designed to support patient engagement and self-management. In the scenario, a patient initiates care by entering symptoms into the app. A virtual assistant immediately engages, helping the patient navigate preliminary questions and providing recommendations for next steps. This interaction automatically generates a test request, which is then sent digitally to a care manager for review and approval.
Critically, InterSystems’ workflow is highly automated yet maintains “humans in the loop” (a major theme of this year’s READY 2026 conference) at key decision points, such as test request approval, to ensure clinical oversight is maintained during automation and to protect patient safety. Upon approval, the patient is notified of the availability of their diagnostic test kit and the process to follow.
Once at-home test results are returned, the system automatically triggers alerts to care providers who need to be aware of the outcome and suggests necessary follow-up actions per protocol. For elevated or concerning results, AI assistance plays a pivotal role by immediately alerting the patient, explaining the implications in an easy-to-understand manner, and clarifying how to use any associated monitoring technology.
The system further aids in scheduling a visit, notifying both the patient and the facility, and keeping all parties updated with real-time status changes throughout the appointment process. Prior to arrival, the patient completes pre-arrival forms designed to capture essential clinical and administrative information, including key Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) data to inform holistic care planning.
Remote patient monitoring devices are an especially vital component for rural patients, who may face long travel times or have conditions requiring continuous oversight. InterSystems’ platform is engineered to seamlessly integrate continuous data streams from these devices into the patient’s record, enabling comprehensive, whole-person care management that extends beyond episodic clinic visits. Leveraging AI, the system automatically summarizes a complete health risk assessment based on all collected data, identifying potential risks and trends.
Care providers maintain clinical control by reviewing and formally approving this AI-generated assessment. Patients can easily interact with their customized care plans via the Personal Community mobile application, which allows them to add self-directed tasks, such as reviewing assigned educational materials or tracking personal goals. A crucial link to community support is forged by connecting patients to appropriate community resources—like food banks or transportation services—based on their SDOH responses. This integrated approach demonstrates how InterSystems plans to leverage AI and its existing robust platform to ensure rural patients can access the necessary care they need, fulfilling the video’s role as a vision demo of achievable possibilities with currently available, modern technology.
In addition to the patient-facing tools, Dr. Li provided a demonstration of a state Medicaid health portal dashboard, showcasing its capability to provide population-level insights. This dashboard provides comprehensive data on major health conditions affecting the population, including diabetes, hypertension, obstetrics, and mental health, presenting statistics for patients in a specific state.
The portal allows users to examine population engagement levels, critical quality metrics—such as the percentage of patients with controlled A1C levels for diabetes management—detailed cost data, and key clinical outcomes. Outcomes tracking includes crucial indicators such as avoidable Emergency Department (ED) visits and adverse outcome trends, providing concrete metrics for policy and rural health initiative planning.
This sharp focus on measurable, positive results directly supports a critical operational requirement of RHTP: the necessity for participants to demonstrate tangible progress in the current year to secure continued RHTP funding in subsequent years.
Beyond the Personal Community app for individual patient engagement, another key offering is Care Community, a specialized solution that improves coordination and secure communication among care teams, patients, and their families. The deployment strategy for the RHTP initiative is carefully phased to ensure sustainable growth. The near-term phase will initially leverage current technology components combined with essential population health analytics capabilities.
Building on this solid foundation, the plan is to systematically expand the reach of the services to cover more communities before ultimately scaling the platform’s advanced AI capabilities. A state-by-state approach will govern implementation, as InterSystems recognizes that each state is different and has unique plans and requirements for RHTP funding. InterSystems will prioritize certain states for early focus, specifically those where the necessary underlying technology is already in place, allowing for faster deployment and proof of concept.
InterSystems’ technologies are available now to begin building rural health outreach services. Over the next few years, services are expected to become more sophisticated and responsive to the unique needs of those living and providing care in rural areas.
