Award-Winning Health IT Platforms Reflect Broader Shifts in Care Access, Payment Integration, and Patient Support

Recognition from the 2025 MedTech Breakthrough Awards spotlighted three companies—TrustCommerce, Peerbridge Health, and DrFirst, whose platforms exemplify key trends shaping the future of digital healthcare delivery. Their award-winning solutions reflect an industry-wide push toward embedded, patient-centric technologies that address long-standing friction in payments, diagnostics, and adherence.

TrustCommerce: Modernizing the Healthcare Financial Experience

TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, was named winner of the “Healthcare Payments Innovation Award” for its Cloud Payments platform. This solution allows healthcare organizations to embed secure, card-present payment capabilities directly within electronic health record (EHR) systems such as Epic, using features like point-to-point encryption (P2PE), EMV, and NFC.

In an era of rising patient responsibility and administrative complexity, streamlining payment workflows is becoming an operational priority. Cloud Payments helps organizations deliver a retail-like experience while ensuring HIPAA and PCI compliance. By reducing friction and integrating natively into clinical systems, TrustCommerce is helping to reframe the financial side of care delivery as a seamless part of the patient journey.

Peerbridge Health: Enabling High-Fidelity Cardiac Diagnostics at Home

Peerbridge Health was awarded “Best New Technology Solution for Cardiology” for its Cor and Cor MDx platforms. The wearable devices deliver hospital-grade ECG monitoring, including the ability to estimate ejection fraction and detect sleep apnea, yielding capabilities historically confined to in-clinic testing.

Peerbridge’s technology brings critical cardiac diagnostics closer to patients, offering clinicians real-time data without the need for in-person visits. With the Cor MDx platform supporting multi-lead signal fidelity and real-time streaming over BLE and LTE, the clinical utility spans more than 30 indications validated through the company’s COR-INSIGHT trial. These tools may help expand access to underserved populations, enable earlier intervention, and support chronic condition management through continuous remote monitoring.

DrFirst: Enhancing Adherence Through Workflow-Embedded Engagement

DrFirst received recognition for Timely, its mobile-first engagement platform designed to improve prescription adherence and patient support. Named “Best Overall Patient Engagement Platform,” Timely works directly within the EHR workflow to provide prescribers with tools like copay assistance, real-time benefit information, and support program enrollment.

Once a prescription is written, Timely engages the patient through secure, interactive SMS messages with no apps or logins required. This approach closes common communication gaps between providers, pharmacies, and patients, helping individuals start and stay on therapy. With more than 100 million patients touched annually by DrFirst’s network, Timely is designed to scale patient engagement across diverse settings and improve outcomes without adding administrative burden.

A Common Thread: Workflow Integration and Operational Realism

While their use cases vary, the common denominator among all three platforms is integration into existing provider workflows and infrastructure. Whether it’s secure payment collection at the point of care, remote cardiac diagnostics that deliver hospital-grade fidelity, or mobile patient engagement triggered at the prescribing moment, these solutions are designed to work within the realities of modern care delivery.

As health systems seek scalable technologies that can improve efficiency, reduce friction, and support better outcomes, platforms like Cloud Payments, Cor MDx, and Timely represent the direction many organizations are moving toward: embedded, interoperable, and patient-focused.

With recognition from an independent body like MedTech Breakthrough, these companies join a growing cohort of health IT innovators helping redefine how care is accessed, financed, and supported both inside and outside the clinical setting.