Episode 8 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, May 7th at 1pm PT- 4pm ET! You can see it below.
Joining me were our regulars: patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano), data privacy lawyer Deven McGraw (@HealthPrivacy), policy expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), radiologist Saurabh Jha (@RogueRad) (who snuck in late), and writer Kim Bellard (@Kimbbellard). We had a great conversation including a lot of detail around access to patient records, and some fun about infectious disease epidemiologists behaving badly! If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels from Friday— Matthew Holt
Episode 7 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, April 30th at 1pm PT- 4pm ET! You can see it below. If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Joining me were regulars futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve), patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano), quality expert Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson), with guests Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal) head of innovation at Jefferson Health System, and our very own health tech “IT girl” Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa) from WTF Health. We had a great conversation about the present and future of care delivery and finance. — Matthew Holt
Episode 6 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, April 23 at 1pm PT- 4pm ET! 4-6 semi-regular guests drawn from THCB authors and other assorted old friends of mine will shoot the sh*t about health care business, politics, practice, and tech. It’s available below and is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Our lineup included: Saurabh Jha (@roguerad), Ian Morrison (@seccurve), Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano),Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), Brian Klepper (@bklepper1), and a special guest – Alexandra Drane (@adrane, founder of Eliza, Queen of the Unmentionables, CEO of ArchAngels and sometimes Walmart cashier). Lots of great conversation especially around palliative care, patient experience, the real prevalence of COVID-19 and much more.
Episode 5 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed Thursday, April 16 at 1pm PT- 4pm ET! 4-6 semi-regular guests drawn from THCB authors and other assorted old friends of mine will shoot the sh*t about health care business, politics, practice, and tech. It tries to be fun but serious and informative! If you miss it, it will also be preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Deven McGraw (@healthprivacy), Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), Grace Cordovano (@gracecordovano), Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson), and Dave deBronkhart (@ePatientDave) all discussed the recent news surrounding COVID-19, and their guesses on how it will impact the landscape of health care; from policy to practice — Matthew Holt
Indu & I have been talking about Flipping the Stack in health care for about 3 years. 2 years ago we wrote an article for a general hospital audience which appeared in the 2019 AHA SHSMD Futurescan magazine. I was talking about the changes in home monitoring that might come about due to COVID-19 and remembered this article. The one that got published went through a staid editing process. This is the original version that I wrote before which was rather more fun and hasn’t seen the light of day. Until now. Take a look and remember it is 2 years old–Matthew Holt
Over the past twenty-five
years most businesses have been revolutionized by the easy availability of
cloud and mobile-based computing systems. These technologies have placed power
and access into the hands of employees and customers, which in turn has created
huge shifts in how transactions get done. Now the companies with the highest
market value are both the drivers of and
beneficiaries of this transition, notably Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet
(Google), as well as their international rivals like Samsung, Baidu, Tencent
and Alibaba. Everyone uses their products every day, and the impact on our
lives have been remarkable. Of course, this also impacts how businesses of all
types are organized.
Underpinning
this transformation has been a change from enterprise-specific software to
generic cloud-based services—sometimes called SMAC
(Social/Sensors/Mobile/Analytics/Cloud). Applications such as data storage,
sales management, email and the hardware they ran on were put into enterprises
during the 80s and 90s in the client-server era (dominated by Intel and
Microsoft). These have now migrated to cloud-based, on-demand services.
Twenty
years ago the web was still a curiosity for most organizations. But consumers
flocked to these online services and in recent years businesses followed, using
GSuite, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Salesforce, Slack and countless other
services. Those technologies in turn enabled the growth of whole new types of
businesses changing sectors like transportation (Uber), entertainment (Netflix),
lodging (AirBnB) and more.
Figure 1. Growth in use of cloud data v s traditional data centers
What about the hospital?
Hospitals and health
systems were late comers to the enterprise technology game, even to
client-server. In the 2000’s and 2010’s, mostly in response to the HITECH Act,
hospitals added electronic medical records to their other information systems.
The majority of these were client-server based and enterprise-specific. Even if
they are cloud-based, they tend to be hosted in the private cloud environment
of the dominant vendors like Epic and Cerner. Of the major EMR vendors only
Athenahealth had an explicit cloud-only strategy, and its influence has been
largely limited to revenue cycle management on the outpatient side.
However, the hospital sector is likely to move towards the trend of using the cloud seen in other businesses.
Andy Slavitt, former Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and founder and partner at Town Hall Ventures, talks about how venture capitalists and health tech startups can help make healthcare more affordable and accessible for the 130 million Americans beyond the “Peloton crowd.” We ask Andy if he thinks “social determinants of health” is more than just an industry buzzword, get his advice for startups motivated to make a difference, and hear his predictions for what will change healthcare in this new decade.
Filmed at J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, January 2020.
Click Therapeutics is a digital therapeutics company that develops and commercializes “software as medical treatments” — basically building digital formularies of prescribable software tools the same way a traditional pharma company would create a formulary of prescription drugs. CEO David Benshoof Klein stops by to talk about Click’s array of solutions and the support they’ve received from those traditional pharma companies, including investment from Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures (which led their last funding round of $27.4M in October 2018) and a new partnership with Otsuka America, Inc. to fully fund development of an app to combat Major Depressive Disorder.
Filmed at Frontiers Health in Berlin, Germany, November 2019.
Digital mental health platform SilverCloud Health is the digital-therapeutic-of-choice for mental health services in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and serves nearly 250 healthcare organizations around the world, racking up 1.5 million therapy hours and 5 million clinical interactions. CEO Ken Cahill stops by to catch us up on SilverCloud Health’s impressive clinical outcomes and how he’s tackling challenges around reimbursement that are common for many digital therapeutics startups. His unique approach (spoiler alert: he partners with providers to approach payers for exception codes) may give some inspiration to those in a similar situation, but tune in for Ken’s full explanation and details on how the company plans to double over the next year.
Filmed at Frontiers Health in Berlin, Germany, November 2019.
Health system pharmacists are frustrated with the lack of time they spend connecting with patients. Why? Jennifer Tryon, Chief Pharmacy Officer for Wake Forest Baptist Health breaks it down for us by talking specifics about the outdated processes and old-school tech that are underpinning many health systems’ medication management programs — and holding back their pharmacists as a result. When she’s sourcing innovative new solutions for her pharmacy at Wake Forest Baptist Health, what are the pressing priorities that are getting her attention (and her budget)? Jennifer’s description of the challenges and opportunities for innovation in the health system pharmacy and medication management space is a MUST watch for anyone looking to learn more about taking their tech into this space.
Filmed at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear Clinical Meeting in Las Vegas, December 2019.
RelianceHMO is a Nigerian-based health insurance startup that aims to turn the traditional health insurance world upside-down. CEO Femi Kuti delves into how his company is using mobile phones, telemedicine, data science, and even underwriting (!) to make health insurance cheaper — and more accessible. With more than 1800 hospital partners across Nigeria, RelianceHMO is making a name for itself, but how does it plan to scale throughout Africa? And, what can payers around the world learn from their approach as they seek to make health insurance easy and affordable for Nigeria’s 190M uninsured? We love talking about disrupting payment models in healthcare and after hearing Femi’s story, you’ll understand why.
Filmed at Bayer G4A Signing Day in Berlin, Germany, October 2019.
