Covenant Health and Lirio Team Up to Battle Breast Cancer in East Tennessee

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 26, 2022 — During National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, two Knoxville-based companies — Covenant Health, East Tennessee’s largest health care system, and Lirio, an award-winning digital health company — today announced they are collaborating to launch Lirio’s Precision Nudging™ solution to improve mammography adherence across Covenant Health’s 23-county service area.

“One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and early detection significantly improves the chances of effectively treating it,” said Mandy Halford, MD, senior vice president and chief medical informatics officer at Covenant Health. “We are excited to partner with Lirio to leverage their AI-powered personalization engine to influence people’s health behaviors and improve health outcomes across the continuum of care. Ensuring compliance with cancer screening guidelines is the first of several areas we are looking to jointly tackle.”

Lirio’s Precision Nudging solution for mammography consists of personalized digital interventions designed to overcome people’s unique barriers to getting breast cancer screenings and move them to schedule and show up for mammography appointments when they otherwise would not. Compliance with recommended screenings has been especially hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic — the number of screenings in a Centers for Disease Control program declined by 87 percent in April 2020, about 50 percent of women in general missed appointments, and 25 percent of women have deferred care, resulting in delayed diagnosis and treatment.

“Covenant Health is nationally recognized for transforming healthcare delivery with the help of advanced information technology solutions,” said Marten den Haring, CEO of Lirio. “It’s a privilege to partner with our region’s premier healthcare network to advance their vision of providing patient-centered, coordinated care.”

Lirio’s solution has been proven effective in other regions, moving as many as 84 percent of women overdue for mammograms to schedule and attend breast cancer screenings when they otherwise wouldn’t. There is strong evidence that suggests Lirio’s solution has a positive impact on populations regardless of age, income, race, or ethnicity. Mammograms are free for most women, generate service line revenue for health systems and improve the overall population health of the communities they serve.

“We measure our success through health outcomes — not just in terms of the value we can deliver to health systems, but also the meaningful difference we can make in the lives of individual patients,” said Amy Bucher, chief behavioral officer at Lirio. “We’re eager to work with Dr. Halford and the team at Covenant Health to improve the lives of women in our home state.”

Covenant Health has 10 breast centers located across East Tennessee, with many designated as Breast imaging Centers of Excellence by the American College of Radiology.  Learn more about mammography screenings and see our Covenant Health Breast Center locations.