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Tag Archives: healthcare IT
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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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
28 Comments
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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Smoke on the Water: Fireworks in Cleveland
I spent the early part of this week attending the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit and, despite the fact that the Cleveland Clinic stubbornly insists on holding it’s conference in Cleveland (aka The Mistake on the Lake), it was well worth attending.
Cleveland is an interesting town. Once upon a time, when old white men roamed the earth in cars driven by chauffeurs, Cleveland was the nation’s fifth largest city and had the highest number of Fortune 500 headquarters of any US city. Today, the Cleveland Clinic is the largest employer in the city, which is known also for a river that used to spontaneously combust and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the perfect song for this occasion is clearly Smoke on the Water). In a way Cleveland is the perfect place to honor aging rock stars, as they can pick up a statuette and an angioplasty on the same trip. By the way, the river doesn’t catch fire anymore I’m told. I was worried because the Clinic hosted a pretty impressive fireworks display over Lake Erie for their 1500 guests and no doubt most of us expected … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Medical Devices, Uncategorized
Tagged Catheter-Based Renal Denervation, cleveland clinic, cleveland healthcare, consumer engagement, GE Healthcare, health insurance, healthcare IT, healthcare policy, healthcare private equity, healthcare reform, healthcare venture capital, medical innovation summit, medical technology, psilos, top 10 medical innovations
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We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision
“We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision.”–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Xconomy (a great web publication of life science and technology news and analysis that targets the “innovation community”) asked me to serve as their roving correspondent to provide a view from the MedTechVision Conference, held September 15-16 at the Rosewood Hotel in Menlo Park, CA. Here is my report:
“I hadn’t given any thought to the fact that it was theoretically a ‘women’s conference before I walked into the room. I’d just promised the organizer, a friend, that I would come,” said Vance Vanier, CEO of Navigenics. “But walking into the room full of women had quite an impact; I realized how much I stood out and it was worth noting. It made me realize what women experience when they go to events like this.”
Vanier was commenting on his experience as a male attendee at the conference, which was intended to provide a platform for the many women executives in the medical technology field to wield the microphone. Some 200 women and 3 intrepid men spent two days in a room hearing … (read the rest)
Posted in Girls Rule!, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Medical Devices, Uncategorized, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity
Tagged amy belt, angela macfarlane, bikini medicine, Bray Patrick-Lake, Deneen Vojta, Denise Zarins, Dr. Betsy Thompson, ellen zane, Erica Rogers, ferolyn powell, ginger graham, healthcare IT, healthcare venture capital, Karen Talmadge, medical devices, medical technology, MedTech Vision Conference, Michelle Heying, molly coye, psilos, Robin Cisneros, Stacy Enxing Seng, vance vanier, women in medtech, women in private equity, women medtech conference, women venture capital
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96 Ways To Say “Bite Me”
Once upon a time we marveled at the fact that Baskin Robbins had come up with 31 flavors—what a smorgasbord of opportunity. Then they branched out into seasonal flavors, regional flavors, even frozen yogurt, which vaulted them upwards into having more than 50 flavors. What a joy to behold: more is definitely better when it comes to ice cream.
Same story for television. Some of you, those that are resting comfortably next to me in a nursing home, will remember the old days when we had ABC, CBS, NBC and Channel 13 as the primary TV channel choices. Then there were 13 channels, then around 20, and now my mercenary cable providers shows me more than 700. This example is a little sketchier. More than 4 channels is definitely better. As many as 700? Well, I guess it works if you figure that they are trying to capture everyone in the world’s tastes, even those that want to watch Jersey Shore and Deadliest Catch.
So what do we make, then, of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid’s (CMS) recent announcement of the updating of the diagnosis codes that … (read the rest)
Posted in Diagnostics and Screening, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Reform, Random Thoughts of the Day
Tagged cms, diagnostic codes, healthcare, healthcare IT, healthcare private equity, healthcare reform, healthcare venture capital, icd-10, icd-9, psilos
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FemBots, Rise Up!
If you are a regular follower of my blog, you know I like to write about the plight of women in business and the challenges we sometimes face in being treated equally to our male colleagues. As a regular reader you would also know that I am fascinated by how technology is being adapted and adopted to improve the human condition and that I sometimes like to make fun of some of the more over-the-top applications (see FitBit article HERE). And yet, when I read a story in the International Business Times entitled IBM Develops Brain-like Chip, I immediately recognized that my two of my pet issues were on a collision course.
According to the IB Times article, “IBM is deploying its [research] expertise in the attempt to accomplish the unthinkable: developing a chip to mimic the human brain. IBM says its new chip, called SyNAPSE, comes closer than anything done before at replicating the human brain, a breakthrough considering the system is capable of “rewiring” its connections as it encounters new information the same way the biological synapses of a human brain would.”
According to IBM Research … (read the rest)
Posted in Girls Rule!, Healthcare Information Technology, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity
Tagged brain chip, cognitive computing, Dharmendra Modha, healthcare IT, IBM, psilos, SyNAPSE, women in private equity, women venture capital
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Living on the (Health) Edge
Can you imagine if every day you went to work and 20% of the time you screwed up? I realize that this is how baseball players live their lives, with a batting average around .300 or less, but I’m talking about other people. Say you’re Beyonce and 20% of the time, when you step up to the microphone, your voice cracks uncontrollably. Or you’re a race car driver and 20% of the time you finish your day upside down with the wheels spinning. Maybe you’re a lion tamer and in 1 out of every 5 circus performances you end up inside the lion. I’m guessing you would not be in business for long. Or maybe you’re just a regular person, say a mailman, and you deliver 20% of the mail to the wrong address, or a Starbucks Barista and 20% of the time you make a latte when the customer asked for a Frappuccino, which is really bad when said customer needs their coffee STAT.
Now imagine you’re in a job that fundamentally affects other people’s lives, like say healthcare. What if people in the healthcare field made … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized
Tagged AMA claims payment, claims payment, claims system, healthcare claims, healthcare IT, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, healthedge, HealthRules, PPACA, psilos, seechange health
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The Second Coming of Healthcare IT
Once upon a time there was “ehealth.” That time was the late 1990’s and there was a temporary ripple in The Force when anything that combined healthcare and the Internet had a suddenly popularity in the venture capital investment community. Companies like the original WebMD, the original Medscape, Mediconsult.com, DrKoop.com, Medibuy, Adam.com, PlanetRx, and a host of other online pharmacies, healthcare group purchasing entities and online health portals were born and sought after by investors looking to capitalize on the collision of the Internet and the healthcare industry. The theory at the time was that you could take any traditional industry, add a soupcon of Internet, and “voila!” instant value creation.
Unfortunately, it turned out not to be so easy and by the early 2000’s, the ehealth industry died a painful death, leaving behind a few bedraggled companies, a mountain of cashed checks with venture capital firms’ signatures on them and thousands of vacant Aeron chairs. Healthcare technology became the Mike Tyson of venture capital investment: wistfully remembered for what it might have been but shunned for how it had behaved towards its fans. “Never again,” the VCs muttered, “never … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged ACA, Allscripts, ehealth, Gibson Consultants, healthcare IT, healthcare reform, healthcare services, healthcare venture capital, HIT, HITECH Act, medical technology, PPACA, psilos, venture capital
6 Comments
General Hospital
General Hospital is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production (according to Wikipedia). What a perfect metaphor this is for the real hospital industry, which is facing more drama than ever.
This week I visited two hospitals, one a very large and well-known academic medical center, the other a very small community hospital. Fortunately, neither visit was as a patient. In both cases I was there to talk about healthcare information technology and the hospitals’ respective strategies for innovation in that general area.
It is always really interesting to talk with hospitals about how they want to use technology to enhance their operations. There is an inherent tension between the desire to, on the one hand, do the right thing for patients by continuously improving quality of care and, on the other hand, to respond to the fiscal challenge that sometimes doing the “right thing” might just cost more or at least take a while to pay off. Often times the decision to provide better care can result in hospitals actually losing money, because it means that patients need … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Reform, Patient Safety, Uncategorized
Tagged healthcare, healthcare information technology, healthcare IT, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, hospital information technology, hospitals, patient safety, psilos
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