We’ve reached the halfway point in 2016, and so it’s wise to take a moment to reflect on the year in digital health to date. Thankfully, the fine folks at Startup Health just released a midyear report with interesting insights on our market. Here’s the short version:
- Funding for digital health companies this year is the strongest to date, at nearly $4B by midyear alone.
- Reflecting the growing consumerism in healthcare, patient and consumer experience plays comprise the most active sub-market within digital health.
- Seed and series A rounds are about equal in number, suggesting that early-stage betting in our sector is not slowing down.
By all accounts, it’s a record year for digital health. Amidst all of this activity, we need to ask important questions about the jobs we’re trying to do, and for whom. Each digital health company and the sector as a whole is due for an annual check-up. While the industry indicators point to robust activity, is our collective activity getting the job done?
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
Most importantly, we need to ask and ask again: are we seeking the right results?
I’m not the first to ask this question, and am determined to not be the last. Our care partners save lives, so we have to be sure that we understand the experiences required to do the job to be done. The most high-profile example of this concern recently came in June from Dr. James Madara, the CEO of the American Medical Association. Here is a quote from his annual address to the AMA Annual Meeting:
More and more we’re seeing digital tools in medicine that, unlike digital tools in other industries, make the provision of care less, not more, efficient. And these digital tools often don’t connect with each other — interoperability remains a dream. We were told that interoperability was the future; we didn’t expect that it would always be in the future. The age of digital snake oil.
I am the CEO of a digital health company, which is exactly the reason why I believe Dr. Madara’s comments are helpful to our cause. Every CEO of every digital health company should be worried about whether they’re getting it right. The best way to be sure is to honestly answer this question: “Are we doing the work to understand the job they’re trying to get done?”
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Our industry can answer this request. To do so, we must share the goals of the medical profession if we are to meaningfully change the trajectory of healthcare spending and outcomes. We must put these goals before our own. In doing so, we can see that the right people to serve are clinicians, community resources, and patients together, with deep understanding of each other’s needs and jobs.
Let’s take it one step further. We know that some patients need more care than others. Neither they nor their clinicians have the tools they need. Don’t just take my word for it; Veenu Aulakh, executive director of the Center for Care Innovations in Oakland, recently told Kaiser Health News that there’s “a disconnect between the problems of those who need the most help and the tech solutions they are being offered.”
If you work for a digital health company, are you answering this call to action?
Let’s come together to reimagine the process for clinicians and patients.
As in most industries that undergo digital transformation, early investment is often centered on applying new technologies to existing processes. In healthcare, you need look no further than the billions (early investment) spent on electronic medical records (new technologies at the time) that digitized existing processes with incremental improvements to those processes. Clinicians will debate whether the improvement exists at all. Depending on your vantage point, that’s hard to say for certain when you consider the other non-clinical participants on the care team, who lack access to electronic medical records.
Looking to the future, should the next phase of digital health be more of the same or can it be different? I’m paraphrasing from some great thinking done at Accenture on digital strategy. They define “digital” as “the application of information and technology to raise human performance”. That is the most important job for us to do on behalf of care team members – to reimagine processes so that our technologies can help to raise human performance.
Photo: Flickr user TheRunningStart1
