If Health Systems Build It, Will Patients Still Come
We’ve all heard the many anecdotes about building a better mousetrap. In the 1989 movie “Field Of Dreams”, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) heard a voice whispering “If you build it, he will come.” That ethereal message inspired Ray, an Iowa farmer, to construct a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield. While things worked out for Ray, it’s important to remind ourselves that this all takes place in a fantasy world. As health professionals we sometimes continue to live in this realm of the unreal: placing emphasis on the health systems rather than on the problems of the end-users. Building infrastructure and expecting people to come doesn’t necessarily work when it comes to the healthcare industry anymore.
Life expectancies can accurately determined by the zip code you in which you live. There are many factors builded within this including wealth disparities, access to healthy food, stable housing, environmental exposures, economic access, cultural traditions, and the lack of mobility and transportation. Addressing real-life problems at the root of poor health is about understanding life from different perspectives and by placing greater emphasis on the problems of the patient, or dare we say, PERSON. There is no one silver bullet solution.
Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of death for women, and early detection is crucial. We at Mount Sinai Health System are designing multiple programs to address this need and are also observing other players, like researchers, governments, and technology startups, adopt similar ways of thinking and methods for reaching the end-users or consumers.
In support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, State Senator Kevin Parker in partnership with The Brookdale University Hospital, NYU Langone Health, and the Mount Sinai Health System, hosted the “Free Mammography Clinics,” a series of free breast cancer screenings across East and Central Brooklyn. The screening clinics took place from October 20 to October 28. Laurie Margolies, MD, director of breast imaging at the Dubin Breast Center at the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai was thrilled with the huge turnout of women, saying:
“Encouraging women to participate in screenings right in their communities is a pivotal goal of the Mount Sinai mobile mammography program, and Senator Parker’s mammography clinics afforded us the opportunity to do just that.” — Dr. Margolies
Another way to surface better solutions is through early adoption of health technology outside of the hospital to some of the most needed communities. Freenome is targeting the 93 million people in the United States instructed by their doctor to be screened for colorectal cancer last year: of which 70 million of them did nothing at all. Existing methods, such as colonoscopy and stool-based testing, are often seen as inconvenient and uncomfortable by patients, leading many to postpone or forgo recommended screenings. Freenome has chosen to hone in on this specific type of cancer screening because they believe that by simply improving the user experience (UX) and utilizing machine learning they can detect colorectal cancer at its earliest stages when treatment is most effective. CEO and Co-founder of Freenome, Gabriel Otte, recently stated on a Venture Stories podcast:
“The ‘build it and they will come’ does not exist in diagnostics. It just doesn’t. You basically have to force people to get screened for cancer today. 90 million people should get screened and only 20 million did. These are people that are being told by their doctors to get screened. You have to make it as easy as possible for them to get screened.” — Gabriel Otte, Freenome Co-founder
Ray Kinsella built the baseball field in the middle of cornfields in Iowa and sure enough, Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) appears along with other players and fans. Kinsella realizes that his ballfield has been divinely ordained to give a second chance to people who have sacrificed certain valuable aspects of their lives. However, in today’s world, healthcare alone cannot drive patients into our doors for desired health outcomes. Ultimately, addressing real-life problems at the root of poor health is about understanding life from a different perspective and by placing greater emphasis on the problems of the end user. A refined process towards finding solutions with innovation being a core competency will only add value where they otherwise wouldn’t have exposure to in the past. This starts by meeting the end user where they are, in the community.
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The Mount Sinai Co-Lab is an open innovation program designed to find solutions to healthcare challenges that have the potential to impact health globally. Solving tomorrow’s healthcare challenges requires today’s preeminent organizations to interface with healthcare systems in ways that they haven’t needed to in the past. The Co-Lab fosters long-term partnership between preeminent organizations and Mount Sinai’s forward-thinking leadership, faculty, and students. Participating organizations are matched with a navigator, a Connector-In-Residence across the Mount Sinai Health System that helps hone in on nodes of value and activate the right Mount Sinai resources to optimize partnership.
