Hospitals, Startups

At Health 2.0, entrepreneurs share tips, frustrations with hospital tech assessment

New technologies are being scrutinized by hospital technology assessment committees and at Health 2.0, some entrepreneurs share frustrations and some advice on how to navigate the hurdle they represent.

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Even just a few years ago, getting into and maintaining a presence on the hospital technology shelf — especially for medical device companies — was fairly simple. Develop a product that a surgeon or doctor prefers, establish a solid rapport with the said physician, and voila, see sales increase even as your prices go up, up and away year after year.

The move to value-based care has put the brakes on this equation with the rise in power of the hospital tech assessment committees. Physician voice and preference still count, but it’s not the be all and end all. There are other stakeholders at the table and they want their voices heard.

“Every hospital feels that their technology review to be the gold standard and therefore nothing else counts,” declared YiDing Yu, founder and chief medical officer at Twiage, in response to a question from MedCity News about tech assessment committees. Yu and other panelists were speaking at an American Medical Association-sponsored panel at the annual fall conference of Health 2.0 in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday.

Yu noted that her company has filled out so many of these assessments that they have gotten incredibly efficient at tackling them.

“They are 30, 50 pages long…and we turn them around in a day,” she said before wistfully noting, “I wish there was a Verisign of HIPAA.”

Yu added that it would be extremely helpful for entrepreneurs if there were some kind of standardization in the marketplace for startups to get HIPAA certified or a cheaper alternative. In the mean time, however, startups need to simply grin and bear it, and keep filling out those interminable tech assessment review forms.

A co-panelist echoed Yu’s frustration and agreed with her desire for standardization, but offered up some advice too.

“What I found is that different hospital systems have different priorities, and based upon those priorities they assess risk in different manners,” said Jay Joshi, founder and CEO of Output Medical. “I found one of the best ways to approach a hospital effectively is to understand their risk tensions, and how they define risk and what they are willing to expose as risk.”

The answer to what their risk is can come from interviewing them, networking and just “getting yourself out there,” Joshi offered.

“Once you really understand the culture of the hospital and their risk profile, it makes that process [of navigating the tech assessment committees] at least tangible,” he said, even though it is “still very cumbersome.”

Another entrepreneur on stage had a slightly different take given that his company, Sling Health, is actually a nonprofit dedicated to spurring entrepreneurship among medical students and solving biotech problems.

Previously called the IDEA Labs Incubator, Sling Health, based in St. Louis, Missouri, forms cross functional teams  of medical students, as well as engineering science, business, and law students to incubate biotech companies. So far, 23 teams have completed the Sling Health program and obtained 12 provisional patents, started nine companies and raised $2.5 million, said Stephen Linderman, president of the incubator. The company has a collaboration with the AMA.

“Slowly, we try to work with hospitals from the very beginning of finding and identifying problems through to developing technologies, solutions so that we know what they are looking for and how to try to immediately tackle it upfront,”Linderman said of Sling Health’s strategy.

Dr. James Madara, CEO of the AMA, who moderated the panel, also weighed in.

“Lastly, let me just say that this also highlights the advantage that one has in self-regulation in the field. If there were self-regulated functions that allow principles and guidances to be established, CEOs of health systems and those in the C-suites of health systems would feel comforted in that what is being proposed not only aligns with what has been said, but has agreed upon principles,” Madara said.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

 

 

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