Healthcare — same old game

Somethings are worth the fight

It all started about 2 years ago. I meet this guy named Hank Lee, who has a PhD. in computer science, with a specialty in A.I. Hank currently works in the pharmaceutical industry, and is responsible for giving me the dream of wanting to dramatically change the healthcare landscape. He taught me of the opportunity in healthcare and the technological challenges that plague the industry. He pushed me to find a solution. After months of research, 7 days a week, 18 hours a day, I realized many things and a year later I started a company called HealMet.

Nothing is perfect

Number one, the industry is slow for adoption, which hurts the life cycle of many startups. Second, no one really knows what to do. Third, technology adoption is still in it’s early phase, which creates a weak market understanding, and let’s not forget the slow turnaround of the FDA. You have many extremely advanced Biotech companies that are working on moonshot ideas, cures and future medicine, which all mostly have a long long way to go. In point, most these companies focus on care management that want to make impact now, but not without neglecting other more important areas.

Business is more of an art form of creating a well oiled machine that can predict when it will need maintenance.

The thing is most of these companies are ran by PhD. graduates, which in case don’t always make the best business leaders, ultimately hindering the gap and product placement between clinical and the consumer. Business and Science are completely separate areas of discipline, but it takes understanding of both. Business is more of an art form of creating a well oiled machine that can predict when it will need maintenance. There is a reason you don’t see the Apple, Microsoft, Google and the Facebook of Healthcare; the system is not designed for growth. There is this notion to be a medical device company that you must focus strictly on insurance reimbursement and clinical adoption out of the gates; I strongly disagree with this statement to the core of what I currently understand. Consumer adoption is the most important if you care about real impact, and though the science should always remain the most important aspect of a company, most importantly, you can forget about the human element.

The rate at which he health science in changing causes the profession to be more of an art form than a science.

There is a easy answer for why healthcare is not designed for growth, it’s because it’s slow to adopt and slow change. They treat the system like they treat the science. The rate at which he health science in changing causes the profession to be more of an art form than a science. Why? Well, it’s impossible to keep up with all the new studies, insight and methods, so in all we have doctors still preforming under old notations that may longer be the best option for treatment and or care in general.

There needs to be a new way, because the old way is not going to take us into the future. I created HealMet to face these challenges, but I also created the vision to be deployed in stages, to be realistic. We are after changing the way consumers experience care at home. This is very important for many reasons. The main one being, people hate going to the hospital. No matter what anyone says, understanding your body first, is the most important thing you can do to live a healthier and longer life. A doctor does not understand or know what you have been doing every week, how you have been feeling and you should not expect them to know. We spend so much time connected now that we have forgot to listen to our bodies and what our minds are telling us; bottom line is that you don’t need to become a doctor to understand yourself and how your health relates to your daily choices.

80% of the effort in healthcare needs to go to prevention, while the remaining 10% to treatments, 6% to management and 4% to cure. Due to timing of the aging economy and how we have tackled current problems and ignore future ones, most of the effort will get sucked up into care management in the years to come, which is already the dominating factor to begin with. So to solve this issue, we must go outside the system to make it work. Investment in the space of medical devices has slowed down a lot, as investors continue taking safe bets, bleeding the industry for every dollar until there is nothing left; opportunity is flying out of the window because the old tricks are still creating cash flow. But like all good things that fail to adapt to a future market, they fall. Not because they are not good enough, or their technology not cutting edge enough, but rather they are stuck in their ways, attracted to the comfortable, scared of the new.

He is not alone, and we live in a world of the over medicated.

There is a reason that the trouble but high growth wearable companies like Fitbit are thriving, and it’s because of it’s label under health & wellness. Clinical in today’s world is just a turn off, because we associate it with death; society does not have a healthy understanding of death. My father will not go to the hospital unless he is in terrible pain, and the first thing he wants is medication, so he can get in and out as fast as possible. He is not alone, and we live in a world of the over medicated. If you want to bet on a company that see’s this problem, understands this problem, and believes that healthcare is not just based on short term results, then support a company like HealMet. We are not looking for approval of what we are doing, because the industry is proof in itself that it doesn’t know what their doing. I’m betting on something I believe in, and regardless of the funding hurtles that we continue to face, I just know that the right person will see what I see, see what we see and we’ll make the rest history.