Connected Health: Tips for healthcare entrepreneurs
BOSTON—Industry insiders took the stage Oct. 26 at the ninth annual Connected Health Symposium to share advice for innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs in the age of healthcare reform.
Partnerships
Relationships matter, said Naomi Fried, PhD, chief innovation officer of Boston Children’s Hospital. Entrepreneurs who want providers to adopt their products need to build relationships with internal physician champions. “It’s who you know and how you can work with people in the organization you want to partner with.”
Maintain reasonable expectations, she said. Provider organizations want to run pilot programs and receive feedback on products and tools before conducting wide-scale implementation. “If you start a company, you’re not going to make an enterprise sale to me on our first talk. I’m going to want to see some evidence that it works,” Fried says.
Scalability and profitability
Investors won’t invest in products that can’t make money. “Venture capitalists have keen insight on scaling,” says Halle Tecco, MBA, CEO and co-founder of Rock Health, a mobile health incubator based in San Francisco. “They’re excellent at looking at an idea and determining whether the product can serve many. Does profit always align with outcomes? Not always, but when they do, venture capitalists can bring ideas to fruition.”
Telehealth tools are a good example of products that are scalable. “In developing countries where there is no infrastructure to deliver care in physical places, remote consultations present a global opportunity,” said Amir Nashat, PhD, partner at Polaris Ventures in Waltham, Mass.
New markets
Payment reform is shifting risk from payers to other stakeholders, making patients more aware of healthcare costs and providers more willing to help drive them down.
“Healthcare reform and shifting of risk to providers offers a huge opportunity for us to think differently about our care delivery models,” Fried said.
Higher deductibles means patients are shopping around for value. “A lot of entrepreneurs are focused on that,” Nashat said. Shouldering the burden may be difficult for patients in the short run, but risk sharing will result in products that drive costs down for everyone.
Most importantly
“Understanding the problem and creating a viable solution” is most important, according to Fried. Products and tools that don’t serve their intended purpose will not gain traction.