Introducing the first Innovation in Caregiving Conference

Dhruv Vasishtha
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read

Bringing together enterprises working to support caregivers within an innovation ecosystem

Tl;dr: Yeva is bringing together an interdisciplinary group of individuals, all at enterprises actively working on innovations to support caregivers on November 7th in Boston. Participants include C-suite health care executives, TED speaker clinicians, published caregivers, venture backed startups, investors, advocates, and government officials.You can find more information regarding the conference at www.yeva.co and purchase tickets here.

In January 2017, Andrew Bright and I took our personal experiences as caregivers for our parents and launched Yeva, a technology startup aimed at supporting others who had been in our shoes. We pivoted many times but always believed that by supporting caregivers, our health care system can improve patient outcomes, caregiver outcomes, and lower health care costs. In its most recent iteration, Yeva was a purpose built digital experience for caregivers to asynchronously support each other by sharing stories and best practices.

The most recent version of Yeva

Since we started we learned many lessons. But most importantly, and disappointingly, we discovered that now was not the time to build a venture funded startup on the thesis that supporting family caregivers lowered costs and improved care outcomes. In many of our sales pitches — even with the most forward thinking payers, integrated health systems, and Post Acute providers — leveraging caregivers to lower costs was not as high a priority relative to lowering utilization, BPCI, and MACRA quality improvements.

Then it clicked. What if we brought this interdisciplinary group of individuals, all at enterprises actively working on innovations to support caregivers, together? That is what we will be doing this year during National Family Caregivers Month.

However, we noticed there was a small but growing community of providers, payers, entrepreneurs, investors, clinicians, foundations, and advocates who agreed with us and were actively supporting caregivers to impact care. They were also very fragmented. Andrew and I began to incidentally share knowledge in our conversations — repeating an insight from Brian Holzer (President of Kindred Innovations) to John Banta (Executive Director of BCBS Venture Partners), sharing data from Jay Patel (CTO at SeniorLink) with Sachin Jain (CEO of CareMore Health System) and Rita Choula (AARP Public Policy Institute).

The moment we felt that this idea would have interest from enterprises

Then it clicked. What if we brought this interdisciplinary group of individuals, all at enterprises actively working on innovations to support caregivers, together? That is what we will be doing this year during National Family Caregivers Month.

I am so excited to introduce the first Innovation in Caregiving conference, November 7th at the Cambridge Innovation Center in Boston. You can find more information regarding the conference at www.yeva.co and purchase tickets here.

The goal of this conference is two-fold. First, to create an innovation ecosystem amongst enterprises that are actively working with caregivers or looking to support caregivers in the future. Second, to generate momentum for the adoption of caregiver targeted innovations by highlighting technologies currently impacting them to lower costs and improve outcomes.

We are extremely excited by the speakers who have already signed up to participate. They cover a diverse set of perspectives from C-level healthcare executives, to a TED speaker clinician, to published family and professional caregivers, to high growth startups, and prolific investors. We are also extremely grateful to the sponsors who allowed us to get the ball rolling on the conference: Lacuna Health (formerly Kindred Innovations), Health Management Associates, HouseWorks, and The Caregiver Action Network.

If you are interested in attending the conference, you purchase tickets here. If your are interested in learning more or sponsoring the conference you can email me at dhruv dot vasishtha at gmail dot com.

A preview of our speakers

On a personal note, as we have stopped technology development for Yeva, I recently joined PatientPing (backed by a16z, First Round, GV, F Prime, and LTP Growth Equity) as a Senior Product Manager on their hospital product. I am currently working on technology for clinicians and case managers to share utilization and clinical information with each other to improve care coordination for those who present at the ED. Please do reach out if you are working at the intersection of health care technology for hospitals and providers.

Yeva is bringing together an interdisciplinary group of individuals, all at enterprises actively working on innovations to support caregivers on November 7th in Boston. Participants include C-suite health care executive, TED speaker clinicians, published caregivers, venture backed startups, investors, advocates, and government officials.You can find more information regarding the conference at www.yeva.co and purchase tickets here.

Dhruv Vasishtha

Written by

Entrepreneur, caregiver, health tech PM, unfortunate Knicks / Jets fan.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade