The animosity toward health insurance companies that was so widespread in decades past is waning in this era of big data and value-based payments.
With that in mind, the time seemed right for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) to open an innovation center for its members and other healthcare stakeholders to collaborate and test new ideas in healthcare and wellness.
The AHIP Innovation Lab, a high-tech, 26,000-square-foot space in a high-ceilinged former truck manufacturing plant in Chicago’s bustling West Loop neighborhood, started up quietly in December. AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignani announced the lab last month during the organization’s annual National Health Policy Conference in Washington.
AHIP describes it as an ” ‘action hub’ where the best minds from multiple industry sectors can work together to deliver creative solutions to specific problems.”
The payer association envisions the Innovation Lab as a place for groups to come together for one to three days at a time to catalyze ideas into workable plans, to make sure “ideas don’t vaporize” when visitors go back to their organizations, according to Rahul Dubey, managing director of innovation and solutions for AHIP, who conceived and oversees the Innovation Lab.
“Innovation without action is nothing more than just a good idea,” Dubey said.
From December through mid-February, AHIP members and various partners from other sectors of healthcare, including provider, pharmaceutical, IT, medical technology and consumer interests, ran eight pilot projects at the Innovation Lab, according to Dubey, who gave a tour to MedCity News. He said that all eight projects are continuing to develop.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The Innovation Lab, located in space
AHIP has signed up five corporate partners to support the Innovation Lab, including GE Healthcare, health IT vendor Emdeon, consulting firm Accenture, biopharmaceutical company Amgen and a fifth company that AHIP is not naming. The payer group also is not disclosing how much money it and its partners are investing in the lab.
A sixth company, Chicago-based multimedia house AnswersMedia, is serving as strategic partner and host of the lab. Facilities include a professional video studio with a massive green screen to produce virtual sets, audio recording booths, a fully functional production kitchen for filming cooking segments — great for educating consumers on healthy eating — and a gym for demonstrating workout techniques.
“This isn’t just a technology innovation lab,” Dubey explained. Companies are looking to test new business models, experiment with patient engagement strategies and adjust to the new realities in cybersecurity, particularly in the wake of the recent hacks of Anthem and Premera Blue Cross.
Dubey said that chief medical officers have sat in the video control room and in editing suites to give immediate feedback to on-camera talent and that AHIP-member CEOs have gotten personally involved in projects taking place at the lab.
Though plenty of healthcare companies, including payers, have their own innovation centers, the AHIP Innovation Lab not only provides a place for insurance companies to collaborate with others, it might also free people to be more creative. Dubey noted that there are often political ramifications when an idea fails in an internal lab, so people sometimes avoid taking risks.
Behind the scenes are a server room with a private, secure cloud, conference rooms with telepresence technology and large, reconfigurable workspaces. The employee break room — more of an open, central space that just happens to have a refrigerator, sink and beverage dispensers — soon will be outfitted with white boards on the top of every table for visitors to hash out ideas over lunch or coffee. For the sake of collaboration, users will be encouraged to snap photos of their tabletop diagrams and lists for uploading to the private cloud, Dubey said.
The partners all helped in designing the Innovation Lab. Dubey, who joined AHIP in 2013 after several years in the entrepreneurial world, said he visited GE’s Global Software Center of Excellence in San Ramon, Calif., to observe methodologies and best practices used by GE so he could adapt them for the AHIP lab, too.
All four named partner companies have a presence in the Chicago area. AHIP chose the Midwestern city for its central location, strong technology and business communities and presence of so many healthcare organizations, including the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
