An Entrepreneur’s Point of View: The Future of UnHealthcare
My friend Oren Oz sent this review of our book UnHealthcare. Oren has developed an amazing platform for connected care in pregnancy. This is the future. This is his reaction to UnHealthcare, the book I co-authored with Hemant Taneja.
Oren is the CEO and Founder of Nuvo. A data scientist, entrepreneur, and dad, he was inspired by his wife’s experience during pregnancy. Oren has started and led a variety of entrepreneurial ventures, primarily in technology.
From Oren Oz:
I received my copy of UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance with some excitement. For a long time, Stephen Klasko and Hemant Taneja have been champions of a future in which healthcare joins the wave of industries embracing a mobile, digital lifestyle that helps patients thrive by letting them access care where they are. The days are coming to an end where everyone, regardless of condition, receives care in centralized locations made for sick people. This transformation in care delivery had already begun in some specialties but has become an acute need across the system in the time of COVID-19.
As an innovator who has developed INVU, a next-generation digital pregnancy care platform that received FDA clearance earlier this year, I have put years of work behind the belief that health professionals, entrepreneurs, policymakers and other leaders have to become partners to innovate care delivery in a way that is ethical and equitable.
I saw firsthand what a system that does not embrace innovation looks like. In 2014, my wife’s third pregnancy was deemed high-risk and outdated pregnancy monitoring and medical practices created additional stress. Our family had been put on a tight management program which meant many trips to the doctor’s office located in a complex full of sick people with two children at home and careers to juggle. This uncomfortable and stressful trip had to be repeated multiple times a week, for several weeks. During this time, an inaccurate analog reading nearly resulted in an emergency C-section.
The pregnancy eventually resulted in an uncomplicated vaginal delivery, but the frequent trips to the hospital and scare of the false positive stayed with me. The chasm between how pregnancy care was delivered — in centralized clinical settings using 30-year-old technology — versus the digitally enabled, personalized, and distributed care that could be developed using current technology called me to develop a better way.
I applied my background and skills as a data scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur to the creation of INVU, a prescription-initiated, protocol-driven remote monitoring platform that offers measurements of fetal and maternal heart rate via a wireless, self-administered sensor band. While the platform — which allows moms and care providers to connect and has the functionality to provide additional tests and pregnancy population management support — is unique, I’ve discovered that the intention behind it — the drive to use 21st century technology to make patients the point of care — is happening across the healthcare industry. The health assurance revolution that Stephen and Hemant champion in UnHealthcare is also improving access to mental health services and a care for chronic conditions like diabetes.
The ongoing pandemic has shown why so many have worked toward the transformation away from a system that is confusing, expensive, inequitable and based on charging fees for sick care a long time. Since we received FDA clearance for remote maternal and fetal heartrate monitoring, we have continued to work with health systems to push pregnancy care toward an accessible, digitally enabled future. As we make INVU a market reality, we have seen the excitement of providers and patients who are used to having access to technology that empowers and connects them in just about every other area of their life.
People want better, more accessible care at lower cost, which makes the vision Stephen and Hemant describe in UnHealthcare an inevitability. The question is how to bring about this reality more quickly. Happily, the task of revolutionizing healthcare doesn’t fall to any single player. There’s a role for every stakeholder. Regulators can pursue policy that fosters innovation. Payers can incentivize keeping people well over caring for sick people. Technologists can build the future of healthcare and, finally, providers can continue to demonstrate their unsurpassed inventiveness and caring. Nuvo’s contribution is INVU, a pregnancy care platform we’re developing to support a #maternitymovement. To learn more about Nuvo and to see health assurance applied to pregnancy care, visit our website: www.nuvocares.com
