Bias in Healthcare Against Blacks Impacts Outcomes: How to Create Impact via Input

Black people need to vote with their dollars at early points in the healthcare & AI investment chains to drive better outcomes while earning great returns in the process. There are two reasons why.

1. The healthcare system & AI disproportionately affect Black people

• Black patients are 40% less likely than White patients to receive pain management for similar levels of injury.
• Mortality rate of Black women during childbirth is 3x the rate of their white counterparts.
• Optum, a widely-used algorithm here in the United States healthcare system was shown to exhibit significant bias against Black patients. Optum assigned the same level of risk to Black patients needing additional care (whether to remain on medication or help them stay out of hospitals) though they were sicker than White patients.
• Remedying this disparity would increase the percentage of Black patients receiving additional help from 17.7 to 46.5%.
• Healthcare AI bias is rampant for many reasons.

2. Investment activity and ROIs are record breaking in healthcare & AI

• AI venture funding significantly jumped within the last two years, shattering previous records each time.
• Healthcare is a ~$9 trillion dollar global industry that is the largest of all and fastest growing.
• Healthcare AI startups have raised $4.3B across 576 deals since 2013, topping all other industries in AI deal activity.
• Strong M&A activity and IPO performance led to significant mark-ups and returns in bio pharma, medical device, diagnostic/tools, and healthtech in 2019.

What can you do?

• Vote with your dollars. Use your money as a Limited Partner (LP) in a small-vertical focused VC firm making investments in healthcare AI.
• According to Michele Colucci, Managing Partner of DigitalDx Ventures, smaller funds allow investors to play a larger role in the involvement with potential investments and are more willing to bring investors along with explaining and learning.
• Smaller funds have higher returns than larger ones and you will have more a starring role at a firm like DigitalDx where you can ask questions and create conditions for your money to go to diverse founders because the investment will be significant to the smaller fund, unlike at larger funds. This also leads to solutions being more race sensitive since your voice and input will play a role in the investment decisions and solutions.
• Diverse funds also have higher returns than their counterparts.
• If the healthcare AI portfolio companies are successful on all fronts, then ROI/exit and impact potential increases.

One way to change the negative impact bias has on the Black community is for more Black people to have a voice at the table through investment. By getting in early and helping shape the technology, you are able to improve the solutions and outcomes for everyone. Not only are high returns possible, but large-scale equitable impact is obtainable when you vote with your wallet.

Full paper published here (~6 pages).

About the author: Joseph M. Kemp is a JD/MBA Candidate at the University of Michigan (‘22) and MS in Education Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania (‘21) who is passionate about diversity, equity, inclusion, education, and technology. He is currently a Venture Fellow at DigitalDx Ventures, a early-stage, majority female-run venture firm that leverages AI in healthcare diagnostics. Before law and business school, Joseph worked in procurement, nonprofit, corporate law, and was a public sector leader.