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About Lisa Suennen
Yes, it’s me
Most Popular Posts
- From Russia With Love
- The Secret to Lower Healthcare Costs: Dying Faster
- You Say You Want a Healthcare Revolution
- We Are the 51%!
- Singing a New Tune: Redefining Innovation in the Medical Device World
- Rap Genius: Healthcare to a Hip Hop Beat?
- When “Cloud-based” Means Technology, Not Heaven: Report from AARP Health Innovation@50+
- A Tale of Two Doctor Visits
- Your CEO May Be A Man, But Your Healthcare Customer is a Woman
- Healthcare IT BINGO!
- I’m On A Boat! The Rising Fleet of Incubators
- Employers and Health Innovation: Will They Go Long or Advance One Yard at a Time?
- Give ‘Em That Old Razzle Dazzle
- Never Let Anyone Make You a Carrot
- What’s Done Cannot Be Undone
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Recent Posts
- The Star Thrower, or How Healthcare Looks to Consumers
- Medical Technology and Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief
- There Is No “I” in Team, But There Is In “Win”
- A Soda A Day Keeps Your Lifespan Away
- Investor Comedy Relief: The Missed Investment Opportunity
- Psilos Releases Annual Healthcare Outlook Report: A Golden Age in Healthcare Investing
- Discounts on Two Upcoming Conferences for Venture Valkyrie Readers
- Digital Health: The Cat’s Meow
- School Daze
- Showcase Your Start-up at the AARP Health Innovation@50+ Event-Viva Las Vegas
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Category Archives: Healthcare Information Technology
Psilos Releases Annual Healthcare Outlook Report: A Golden Age in Healthcare Investing
Hello all. Every year for the last five years Psilos Group, the investment firm for which I work, writes and disseminates a white paper which we call our Annual Healthcare Outlook. Today we released our paper for 2013, which is titled: The Affordable Care Act: Catalyzing a Golden Age in Healthcare Investing. The entire Outlook can be downloaded to read in full HERE.
In that my partner, Al Waxman, has authored a nice post summarizing our 2013 Healthcare Outlook, I will let his words tell the story instead of mine today:
Now that President Obama has been reelected and the Supreme Court has upheld the Accountable Care Act, healthcare reform is here to stay. So what does reform mean for healthcare investors? I believe it will usher in a fertile period for innovative, venture-backed companies that can navigate the brave new world of healthcare delivery and management.
The Accountable Care Act’s impact on healthcare IT investing is already being felt. Venture investment in 2013 is showing significant growth from last year. In 2012, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the life sciences sector, which includes healthcare IT, accounted for 25% of all … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital
Tagged al waxman, extend health, health insurance exchanges, healthcare investing, healthedge, patientsafe solutions, psilos group, psilos outlook, seechange health
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The Napster-ization of Healthcare, Coming to a Theater Near You
Two weeks ago I had the good fortune to be invited back to the South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) to participate as a judge of a digital healthcare start-up competition. SXSW, which takes place in Austin, TX, is historically an indie music gathering that has evolved into a massive mainstream music conference as well as a monumentally huge film festival, like Sundance times twenty. There are literally hundreds of bands and films featured around town. There has now evolved alongside this a conference called Interactive that draws more than 25,000 people and focuses on technology, particular mobile, digital, and Internet.
In other words, SXSW has become one of the world’s largest gatherings of hoodie-sporting, gadget-toting nerd geniuses that are way too square to be hip but no one has bothered to tell them. Imagine you are sitting at a Starbucks in Palo Alto, CA among 25,000 people who cannot possibly imagine that the rest of the world still thinks the Internet is that newfangled thing used mainly for email and porn. SXSW is a cacophonous melting pot of brilliance, creativity, futuristic thinking, arrogance, self-importance, ironic retro rock and … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Digital Health, Healthcare Information Technology, Innovation, Uncategorized
Tagged apple healthcare, Chilmark, CommonWell Health Alliance, downloaded, Epic, health data interoperability, healthcare IT, healthcare technology, innovator's dilemma, jody holtzman, napster, open systems, psilos, sxsw interactive health, the movie, Wang, x/open
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Aging in Place with Robot and Frank, the Movie
Last week I covered the Grammys, now I’m giving you my Oscar pick for healthcare-related film of the year. But first, a preface:
One of the most pervasive healthcare business trends I have seen in the last year or two is the formation of companies seeking to help people “age in place,” aka live out their golden years comfortably at home rather than in a facility. Nearly 15 years ago, when I first started in the health investment area, this was also a rich target for entrepreneurs, whose business models mainly focused on service innovations involving actual people visiting seniors at home. Psilos also made one such investment, in Caregiver Services, Inc., which has grown to a business of considerable size.
The challenges in these human-based businesses were and remain how to scale cost-effectively and maintain quality as the business grows. In other words, how do you ensure availability of an appropriate supply of appropriate people to care for seniors at home in a reliable and effective way? Despite a burst of initiatives, start-ups in this area trailed off and the various companies across the country have consolidated significantly.… (read the rest)
Posted in Digital Health, Health and Wellness, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized
Tagged AARP Health Innovations @50+, aging in place, caregiver services, evermind inc, home monitoring technology, home sensor technology, psilos, robot and frank, senior living
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Watson and the Valley Girl
This article also ran in Healthcare IT News.
OMG and gag me with a spoon. I just read a Fortune article called, “Teaching IBM’s Watson the meaning of OMG” and I had a pretty good chuckle. The article discusses how the “final frontier” in machine intelligence is teaching computers not just words, but the subtle differences in meaning that make language rich, powerful and specific. I have often written about the intersection of language and healthcare (one of my most popular posts ever was about the application of Rap Genius’ Internet annotation concept to healthcare communication), but this Fortune article really made clear to me how far we have NOT come.
Our entrepreneurial society worships science and technology but puts so little value on the soft sciences, the communication arts. And yet, Watson has proven for us all once again that technology without humanity is incapable of solving the world’s problems, trapped as it is in its own syntax without context. Yes, man may be replaced by machine in many instances—already has in some cases—but in the end someone has to teach that machine to understand … (read the rest)
Online Diagnosers Exceed Number of Words With Friends Players–Go Figure
This piece also ran today in Healthcare IT News.
We all like to think we are one-of-a-kind, but the truth is, not so much. In the past month I have found myself among the (estimated) <5% of women who attended the JP Morgan conference, the <10% of women who are partners in private equity firms, and, apparently, one of the 100% of working people who play Scrabble-related games during working hours, but today I find myself one of the 35%. According to a new a Pew Research Center survey of about 3,000 people, released today, about 35% of Americans are “online diagnosers,” meaning people who consult the Internet to self-diagnose a medical condition. See related article HERE.
Not looking for sympathy, seriously, I am feeling sorry enough for myself to cover all of us; but I found myself, after weeks of media hysteria and the most congested head on earth, reading this article entitled How to Tell If You Have the Flu. I read this as I helped the Kimberly Clark Corporation have a record quarter due to extreme Kleenex consumption. Here is a tip: go out … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Diagnostics and Screening, Digital Health, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Medical Devices, Uncategorized
Tagged cold or flu, deloitte mobile health, flu or cold, JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, mhealth, mobile health, online diagnosis, pew internet health, quantified self, self diagnosis, tricorder xprize
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From Russia with Love, Part Dvah (aka II)
This post also ran January 2, 2013 in Healthcare IT News.
Hello and Happy New Year everyone! I am finally putting pen to paper (finger pads to computer keys? whatever) to write about the previously promised second half of my Russian visit.
As luck would have it, I happened to see my freshman year college roommate yesterday (Josie Everett), with whom I took one semester of Russian language classes when she and I were at Berkeley. For me one semester was hard enough; I decided to stick with English, as it was a much faster track to getting your order delivered correctly at Starbucks. Josie ended up getting a Masters in Russian and now is Executive Director of an extremely cool foundation, the Heart to Heart International Children’s Medical Alliance, which helps bring modern pediatric cardiac surgery programs to Russia. It was fun to share stories (and vodka shots) and talk about the trip with Josie yesterday as she spends a great deal of time in and around the Russian healthcare system about which I am just learning. Plus, now that there are Starbucks in Moscow … (read the rest)
Posted in Diagnostics and Screening, Digital Health, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Innovation, Uncategorized
Tagged 2net, alivecor, cellscope, digital health, digital october, heart to heart, heart to heart international children's medical alliance, heart2heart foundation, innovation, john spongberg, josie everett, personal training in marin, qualcomm tricorder xprize, russia digital health, russian healthcare, skolkovo, smart toilet, sti2
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From Russia With Love
(reposted due to technical glitch….)
It is not everyday that a person gets to see something entirely foreign and new and have their eyes opened to things that delight and surprise them, but I have just returned from a week of that feeling and it was downright revelatory.
It started in November with an invitation I received from the Skolkovo Foundation, an Innovation-focused foundation established by the Russian government (yes, that Russia) to foster innovation across a variety of Russian industries. The invitation was to participate as a speaker and moderator at a conference on digital health which would occur the week of December 9th in Moscow and, while there, to help judge a business plan competition in the same area, all expenses paid. My first thought was that it was one of those scams where you end up having to buy a time share at the end, except that the invitation was co-signed by people who I know to be entirely legit and super smart: Dr. Milena Adamian, who runs the Life Science Angels Network Fund in New York, and well-known tech and health angel investor Esther Dyson… (read the rest)
Posted in Digital Health, Health and Wellness, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation
Tagged beyond lucid, digital health russia, jonathon feit, kristin baker spohn, life science angels network, marek dziki, milena adamian, missy krasner, pascal lardier, polina kolomenskaya, psilos, russia health system, russian healthcare, skolkovo foundation, valery senko, viamedix
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From Russia with Love
It is not everyday that a person gets to see something entirely foreign and new and have their eyes opened to things that delight and surprise them, but I have just returned from a week of that feeling and it was downright revelatory.
It started in November with an invitation I received from the Skolkovo Foundation, an Innovation-focused foundation established by the Russian government (yes, that Russia) to foster innovation across a variety of Russian industries. The invitation was to participate as a speaker and moderator at a conference on digital health which would occur the week of December 9th in Moscow and, while there, to help judge a business plan competition in the same area, all expenses paid. My first thought was that it was one of those scams where you end up having to buy a time share at the end, except that the invitation was co-signed by people who I know to be entirely legit and super smart: Dr. Milena Adamian, who runs the Life Science Angels Network Fund in New York, and well-known tech and health angel investor Esther Dyson. Ok, I figured, I’ll … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Diagnostics and Screening, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Uncategorized
Tagged beyond lucid, digital health, esther dyson, healthcare IT, jack young qualcomm, jonathon feit, kristin baker spohn, leon peshkin, life science angels network, marek dziki, mhealth, mike keriakos, milena adamian, missy krasner, pascal lardier, russia digital health, russian healthcare, skolkovo foundation, valery senko, viamedix
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In-Car Health Monitoring: Lemon or Lifesaver?
This article was featured in Xconomy on December 10, 2012
Patient monitoring outside the hospital has been a hot topic (and also a not so hot topic) for the past 15 years. Starting back in the late 1990s with companies like Health Hero Network, a company whose products for patient home monitoring are still in use today, company after company has sought to bring a successful product to market. The holy grail: finding an easy, non-intrusive, and continuously reliable way to predict patients’ potentially serious medical problems when it is early enough to do something about them and prevent an acute and expensive episode of illness. Some of the newer companies are focused more on the wellness and tracking side of the equation, such as helping individuals see progress from an exercise or other preventive/health-inducing regimen.
So far this whole area has been a very tough nut for businesses to crack in the US in particular. While some studies have shown great positive effect, others have not. Insurance payment for these programs has been spotty at best and non-existent at worst; most of the current vendors are stuck in pilot hell … (read the rest)
I’m On A Boat! The Rising Fleet of Incubators
This post also ran in Health Care IT News on October 1, 2012
I was hanging out with Tom Rodgers of Cambia Health the other day and we were discussing the seemingly unrelenting trend of the formation of new technology incubators and accelerators, designed to help catapult the weird and wonderful ideas of entrepreneurs into actionable companies. The idea is to take these entrepreneurs and the light bulbs that have formed over their heads, put them together with each other (often in a physical location with loft-like qualities), wrap them in a burrito of high quality resources and experienced mentors and cook for about three months until what comes out is one big yummy pile of companies ripe for gobbling up by venture capitalists.
This trend has been longer lived in pure technology and medical technology fields (YCombinator, Tech Stars, The Foundry) and more recently has come to the world of healthcare IT in a pretty big way with the formation of Rock Health, Blueprint Health, HealthBox, Janssen Labs, Start-Up Health and several others founded and in process. One can only imagine … (read the rest)
Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged Accelerator, Blueprint capital, BlueSeed, i'm on a boat, Incubator, Rock Health, Startup health, The foundry, Tom Rodgers, Unreasonable at sea, YCombinator
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