The Health Care Blog – Page 214 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

Our Cancer Support Group On Facebook Is Trapped

May 30, 2019

Our Experience on Facebook Offers Important Insight Into Mark Zuckerberg’s Future Vision For Meaningful Groups

By ANDREA DOWNING

Seven years ago, I was utterly alone and seeking support as I navigated a scary health experience. I had a secret: I was struggling with the prospect of making life-changing decisions after testing positive for a BRCA mutation. I am a Previvor. This was an isolating and difficult experience, but it turned out that I wasn’t alone. I searched online for others like me, and was incredibly thankful that I found a caring community of women who could help me through the painful decisions that I faced.

As I found these women through a Closed Facebook Group, I began to understand that we had a shared identity. I began to find a voice, and understand how my own story fit into a bigger picture in health care and research. Over time, this incredible support group became an important part of my own healing process.

This group was founded by my friends Karen and Teri, and has a truly incredible story. With support from my friends in this group of other cancer previvors and survivors I have found ways to face the decisions and fear that I needed to work through.

Facebook recently had a summit to share that groups are at the heart of their future. We had a summit of our own with some of the amazing leaders within the broader cancer community on social media.

Snoop Last Year’s Bayer G4A Startups, Then Apply

May 29, 2019

Role of Innovation in Addressing Social Determinants of Health

May 29, 2019

Brief is Good

May 28, 2019• 1

By HANS DUVEFELT, MD

How long does it take to diagnose guttate psoriasis versus pityriasis rosea? Swimmers ear versus a ruptured eardrum? A kidney stone? A urinary tract infection? An ankle sprain?

So why is the typical “cycle time”, the time it takes for a patient to get through a clinic such as mine for these kinds of problems, close to an hour?

Answer: Mandated screening activities that could actually be done in different ways and not even necessarily in person or in real time!

Guess how many emergency room or urgent care center visits could be avoided and handled in the primary care office if we were able to provide only the services patients thought they needed? Well over 50% and probably more like 75%.

Primary Care clinics like mine are penalized if a patient with an ankle sprain comes in late in the year and has a high blood pressure because they are in pain and that becomes the final blood pressure recording for the year. (One more uncontrolled hypertensive patient.)

Is America Flourishing? A Key Question For Health Reformers.

May 27, 2019• 3

By MIKE MAGEE, MD

Today the notion that health is a preferred state of being, rather than a set of disconnected functions or services, is increasingly being embraced. A recent JAMA article promoted a health measurement system called the “flourishing index” focused on 6 key domains: happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material security.

Dr. Gro Brundtland, former director-general of the World Health Organization, wrote in the World Health Report 2000 that “The objective of good health is twofold – goodness and fairness; goodness being the best attainable average level; and fairness, the smallest feasible differences among individuals and groups.”

In the age of Trump, with forced separation of immigrant mothers and children, criminalization of abortion, and purposeful obstruction of enhanced access to health care for vulnerable populations, it becomes impossible to ignore a significant modern-day truism. Health is profoundly political.

Health is a collection of resources unequally distributed in society. Health’s “social determinants” such as housing, income, and employment, are critical to the accomplishment of individual, family, and community well being and are themselves politically determined.

Perspectives on Working with Healthcare Systems for Digital Start Up Companies | Part 2

May 24, 2019• 1

By SHAHID SHAH, MSc and BRIAN VAN WINKLE, MBA

In this two-part series, we examine several common misconceptions made by health tech start-up companies in working with Health Systems and offers advice on how to recognize and address each. From approaching systems with a solution-first mentality to not understanding the context in which health systems work, we look to provide constructive criticisms meant to support more effective partnerships between health systems and digital tech solutions.

Perspectives and Reactions from the Industry

Understand the Current System Environment We Are Working In: In some cases, technology solutions are barricading healthcare systems inside. In other cases, they are allowing us to seamlessly interact with other systems. Typically, large healthcare systems have a combination of both. For outside solutions to be effective, start-ups need to be intimately familiar with the existing (and on-the-horizon) systems that healthcare organizations are using or contemplating. Rarely will a solution not have to interact with existing software solutions – and this goes well beyond just the EMR.

Advice

Have an Integration Plan: A stand-alone solution, which doesn’t tie to one or more of the healthcare institutions key systems of record (SoR) or systems of engagement (SoE) is a useless solution. Your solution should be able to stand alone in the first few weeks, as users begin to use it and get familiar with its capabilities. However, as soon as value is realized (not necessarily achieved), it’s crucial that your solution support either SMART on FHIR, FHIR, HL7v2.x, or all of the above. If you don’t have a believable integration story fully worked out, you’re not ready to launch into the health system market. Go back and do your homework.

Having a Clinician Is Nice, But Not Enough: The physician, nurse, or other clinician on your team helps credibility but we also understand the incentives associated with selling solutions, and this takes away from the altruism you think we will blindly swallow. And they are rarely businessmen or women who understand both the complexities of solving a problem that isn’t theirs and starting, let alone, running a company. Pair an MD with an MBA? Now we’re talking.

Perspectives on Working with Healthcare Systems for Digital Start Up Companies | Part 1

May 23, 2019

By SHAHID SHAH, MSc and BRIAN VAN WINKLE, MBA

Start-ups are an increasingly important “node” within the healthcare ecosystem. They are challenging status quo concepts that have long been ingrained in the healthcare system, like questioning the value of traditional EMR systems, or shifting the power of information to patients, or breaking down cost and quality transparency barriers. They may be the future of the industry, but startups have a long way to go to truly transform the system. The reasons are many, from an incredibly convoluted and bureaucratic review process and rigid risk-controlling regulations and policies, to the large-scale organizational inertia most of our healthcare systems have.

And while all of these hurdles can and will be overcome if we work together, there are still several lessons each “node” in the ecosystem can learn to more effectively work with each other.

This article is directed at the emerging digital solutions trying resiliently to help transform this stubborn industry. It provides some critical lessons in dealing with healthcare systems and is accompanied by reactions from a digital solutions expert with serial digital health entrepreneurship experience. We hope to provide perspective from two people living and breathing, and surviving, from both sides of the equation every day.

Perspectives and Reactions from the Industry

Healthcare Startups Must Understand how Provider Systems Operate: Most health systems are increasingly becoming rightfully skeptical about new solutions because they feel the solutions don’t understand the environment of their system. To help overcome the challenges of introducing your innovation into a complex business and clinical environment, startups must understand how health systems operate to include how they make decisions, contract and evaluate solutions.

Advice

(1) Recognize that Decisions are Consensus-driven and Permissions-based: Unlike other industries, where “shadow IT” is rampant and there can be one or two “key decision makers,” in health systems you’re not likely to get very far without figuring out how to build consensus among an array of influencers and then figuring out how to get permissions from a group of key decision makers. You should seek a “Sherpa” that understands enough about your solution to champion the idea of change – which is really what you’re seeking when you’re selling a new solution (the solution is just the means to accomplish the change, it’s the change that’s hard). The first thing to focus on is to identify the group of decision makers and how you convince them that the status quo should be abandoned in favor of any change – then, once you know how to convince them of some change you’ll work with the group to get the right permissions to work on the change management process – which will then influence a purchase of your solution.

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 81 | Takeover, Take Two with Jenny Schneider

May 22, 2019

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we have another takeover! Dr. Jennifer Schneider, president of Livongo, is here to give us her take on health tech news. On Episode 81, Jess asks Jenny about Daye, a startup developing cramp-fighting CBD tampons, which just raised $5.5 million, and LetsGetChecked, which raised $30 million for at-home health testing. Jess also asks about Jenny’s new book, Decoding Health Signals, which offers a blueprint for building a consumer-focused healthcare company.

New GuideWell Innovation Scale Up Accelerator Program

May 22, 2019

Required criteria for the cohort:

Company must be a health, wellness or medical device technology company that addresses critical gaps in providing affordable, accessible health care or holistic health/wellness solutions for diverse populations and communities in the United States
Life sciences companies are NOT eligible for this cohort
Women founders or key executives must own a minimum of 25% of the company’s equity
The company must be headquartered and have a minimum of 50% of its staff located in the Southeastern US (FL, GA, AL, MS, LA, NC, SC, TN, KY)
Can show proof of “Scale Up” traction through revenues, capital raised, customer acquisition, and product development (see below)
Addressing a huge market opportunity in the U.S. healthcare, holistic health or wellness industry

THCB Spotlights | Lygeia Ricciardi, CTO of Carium Health

May 21, 2019

By ZOYA KHAN

Today, THCB is spotlighting Lygeia Ricciardi. As the former Director of Consumer e-Health at the ONC, Lygeia tells us about patient access to health data and the ONC and CMS’s new rules on interoperability. But now, she’s the CTO of Carium Health, going from a “consumer activist consultant-type” to actually working with a startup. Carium provides a platform for consumer empowerment and engagement, helping to guide individuals through their health care and wellness journeys.