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Category Archives: Innovation
Vision Without Execution is Hallucination
Recently Steve Case wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post called Give Entrepreneurs Room and They Will Grow the Economy. For those not familiar with him, Case was the original founding CEO of AOL and he has been an active healthcare investor, among other things, for the past 7 years. My firm, Psilos Group, has previously co-invested with Case’s Revolution Health Fund.
Anyway, it was a very good editorial and one of the statistics within it particularly stood out to me in light of my venture capital role: firms less than five years old have produced 40 million American jobs over the past three decades — accounting for basically all of the net new jobs created in that period. That is a pretty stunning fact and also one that really makes a person scratch their head about current U.S. policy towards start-ups. It is worth watching this Kauffman Foundation 3 minute video that is very instructive about start-ups and job creation.
No where is this issue more relevant than in the healthcare industry, which conveniently happens to be the only thing I know anything about. In a world where … (read the rest)
Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Uncategorized
Tagged affordable care act, ARRA, entrepreneur, extend health, Health policy, healthcare, healthcare IT, healthcare private equity, healthcare reform, healthcare venture capital, Job creation, Medical device tax, medical technology, PPACA, psilos, StartUp Act, Steve case
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Study the Boomers! An Xconomy Report on Education
Xconomy, an extremely informative and smart web publication, today released a special Report on the Future of Education They compiled the content of the report by canvassing their Xconomists—whom they refer to as some of the world’s leading innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors—for their thoughts on what students should study to be prepared for the future. The specific question they posed was this: What should students be studying now to prepare for 10 years from now?
Twenty-two of Xconomy’s advisors, these so-called Xconomists, gave a variety of interesting responses. Fortunate to be among the esteemed list of people whose opinions were included, my answer was this: Study the Boomers! The article below was the substance of my specific response, which can also be found on the Xconomy website by clicking HERE.
Study the Boomers!
The Who once sang, “I hope I die before I get old.” Despite their best efforts to exit the planet early, most of them didn’t. They and their fellow Baby Boomers represent the greatest technology and business opportunity of the 21st Century.
It is typical for each of us to be drawn to areas for … (read the rest)
mHealth: Hallelujah or Bah Humbug?
3600 people and I went to the mHealth Summit earlier this week in Washington, DC and, having spent the better part of 48 hours listening, I am still not sure what to make of this emerging healthcare sector.
Given the incredible energy and high attendance at the conference, it would be easy to get caught up in the hype that surrounds mobile health and it’s many potential uses. There were an enormous number of companies present and news of many new financings (e.g. HealthTap receiving $11.5 million from Mayfield, Mohr Davidow and others).
For those of you not yet familiar with the buzz word, mHealth is basically what you get when you cross healthcare with mobile phones. It is essentially the love child of Ma Bell, Hippocrates, Dr. Oz and Steve Jobs. For the true believers, and there are a lot of them, mHealth is the answer to the healthcare systems prayers. By bringing texting and Wifi and reams of personalized data to the fingertips of the masses, healthcare will right itself, costs will decrease and angels will sing. Can I get a Hallelujah?
The entrepreneurs in the mHealth space … (read the rest)
Posted in Diagnostics and Screening, Health and Wellness, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Uncategorized
Tagged alivecor, asthmapois, cellscope, consumer engagement, eric topol, fooducate, healthcare IT, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, mhealth, mHealth Summit, mobile health, patient safe solutions, psilos, weltel, west wireless institute
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Coming Soon to an Eyeball Near You
I have written lately about how venture investors who have had long traditions of investing in medical devices are abandoning this sector. Among the reasons given are the increasingly difficult regulatory and reimbursement environments, the lengthy time to liquidity and the anemic IPO market. But having seen a few stories lately about the newest medical technologies hurtling towards the market, I am beginning to think that the best reason to run from this field is that the inventions are getting crazier and crazier.
Exhibit A is a new type of contact lens that projects images directly onto the eye. According to its inventors at the University of Washington, this new contact lens “could enable wearers to read floating texts and emails or augment their sight with computer-generated images.” Well thank God because it was getting exhausting for me to look all the way from my eyes to my iPhone to read my email.
I hardly know where to begin on this one. First of all, I don’t know about you but damn near everyone I know is already so glued to their email device that they forget to participate … (read the rest)
Hey, Where Is Everybody Going?
If you are simply reading the paper or engaging in any random cocktail party conversation these days, it doesn’t take long before you are reading or talking about healthcare. Health and healthcare issues have been a dominant topic in the national media since the 2008 Presidential election and have been constantly in the news as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has taken center stage. Even if PPACA weren’t always in the headlines, stories about employers who are grasping for solutions to their healthcare cost crises would still be.
Given the massive amount of change currently underway in the U.S. healthcare economy that has resulted from PPACA, the earlier healthcare IT stimulus legislation (ARRA) and the acts of employers saying that they’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, we have bona fide industry upheaval on our hands. And where there is upheaval, there is opportunity. Today more than ever there is a tremendous opportunity to find new ways of doing business in the world of healthcare through changing delivery systems, insurance models, technology solutions, drug discovery, device innovation and just about everything else that … (read the rest)
Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged advanced technology ventures, cmea, fda, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, highland capital partners, medical device investing, morgenthaler, nvca, PPACA, prospect ventures, psilos, scale venture partners, versant ventures
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Eye on the Prize
There has been a lot of talk in healthcare circles about the concept of “gamification,” a super-annoying made-up word that means turning health tasks into games so they are more engaging and people are more willing to do them. People and companies are coming up with all sorts of games for kids with asthma and diabetes to learn good medical compliance and for adults who need the extra incentive to do their exercise and comply with their chronic care regimens, among others. Michelle Obama even sponsored a big contest to foster the creation of games to sponsor healthy eating and virtually every large health insurance company is now offering various forms of incentive game and points programs for taking better care of oneself. You can get frequent flyer points for taking United Airlines and “personal rewards” points, that you can turn into cash, for being insured by United Healthcare.
We Americans just love our games and nothing sells like a healthy competition. Just witness the insanity of prime time television and you will see people attempting feats that they never would have done (losing hundreds of pounds, surviving extreme … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Innovation, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized
Tagged CIMIT Prize, gamification, healthcare innovation, healthcare IT, healthcare reform, Heritage provider network prize, i2, Investing in Innovation program, Office of the National Coordinator, psilos, san diego venture group, Sekou Andrews and Steven Connell, wendy schmidt oil cleanup x challenge, X Prize
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