Announcing UnHealthcare
Today, I am excited to announce the release of my new book, UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance. It is a reflection of several years deeply engaging with the healthcare community and understanding how technology can have a transformative impact. It is the beginning, I hope, of a new era in health innovation — one that sees technologists partner with healthcare stakeholders to put the patient-provider relationship back at the center of health experiences.
We’re halfway into a thirty-year cycle that transforms society through digital products and services. Over the past fifteen years, content, community, and commerce have been digitized and reorganized online. We’ve created platforms that unleashed mass personalization and evolved the way we consume media, work, shop, and connect with one another.
We’ve known for some time that care is another foundational pillar of society that will be reorganized online, and it’s clear that healthcare is finally having its internet moment. Regulatory changes like the 21st Century Cures Act are pushing interoperability and giving back to patients control of their own health information. The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the dire need for technology not only to coordinate and manage the outbreak but also to deliver routine care.
Though we are early on in the rearchitecting of healthcare, we’ve seen the magic of pairing a consumer mindset with responsible data use to create highly individualized healthcare experiences. Seeing the impact our portfolio companies — Color, Livongo, Mindstrong, Oscar, and Ro amongst others — have had as they build from first principles and the way in which doing so allows them to create fast-growing businesses is great proof of what’s to come. We believe that the next decade will see some of the most meaningful venture capital returns come from the healthcare sector.
Creating the conditions for 1,000 Livongos to bloom will be the defining role of industry leaders in the coming years. We developed Commure to provide the deep infrastructure needed to support new, better, and bolder health technologies. However, we’ll need to build these technologies with intentionality so that we can meaningfully reduce the overall healthcare GDP while creating accessible, high-quality experiences for all.
The Health Assurance System
We believe that creating a system of “health assurance” is integral to this transformation — this is the central thesis of UnHealthcare. Health assurance is a new category of innovation that is committed to bringing modern consumer experiences and accelerating rational economic behavior through innovative business models. Beyond the economic opportunity we see for health assurance, we have a moral imperative to create this system as costs skyrocket while outcomes plummet.
In a health assurance world, care moves out of the reactive, scales, one-sized paradigm it currently operates in. Instead, health assurance companies, built on open tech standards with empathetic user design and the responsible use of AI, allow for fewer, more tailored interactions with care providers. Digital and physical care will start to blend as existing and new providers alike have more ways of engaging with individuals.
Health assurance companies will begin the important job of closing the gap in access to and quality of care. Technologies like telehealth consultations, connected devices, and AI-driven chat interactions, will help extend the reach of medical professionals, especially in underserved areas and in high-demand specializations. Ultimately, the health assurance model should deliver a healthcare experience that is more affordable and price transparent and drives better outcomes.
As health assurance companies flourish, we know there will be efficiencies found with technologies that may replace jobs. Better billing software, more sophisticated health monitoring tools, easier scheduling, and reporting interfaces may change the roles of current workers. We must all commit to understanding these potential impacts and to proactively developing retaining and talent reallocation programs. Demand remains high for talented, compassionate people in healthcare and, with an increasing and aging population, that trend will not diminish.
We also know that reimagining healthcare is not something technologists can or should do on their own. I’m incredibly grateful to be working with Dr. Steve Klasko, my co-author, and health systems like Thomas Jefferson that are embracing innovation and thinking about it from an integrative perspective. Steve and I have spent the last year working together not only on our book but also on creating a framework for how healthcare systems and startups can partner to move healthcare into the 21st century.
Building the Future
As previously mentioned, at GC, we’ve been actively backing companies in the healthcare space for the better part of a decade and are deeply committed to backing companies that are creating this system of health assurance. We know it will take a diverse federation of organizations and leaders to create something we are collectively proud of. This means changing our collective mindset to not only driving down costs but also emphasizing partnership and information sharing — with patient consent — so that every provider is empowered to assure the health of the population they serve. We certainly can’t claim to have effected change if we only innovate for those already well cared for by our health system — a small sliver of the population.
The best system is one that is truly representative of the population, whether that be race, gender identity or sexual orientation, or socio-economic position. Moreover, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to disproportionately affect those that are most vulnerable, we must continually strive to create a foundation for healthcare that will make us more dynamic and resilient in the face of future healthcare crises.
As the adage goes, this is a marathon, not a sprint. I believe it is going to take the better part of the next decade to reform and redefine healthcare. But I also believe that we are well along the path to doing so in a forward-leaning yet responsible way. If you are a technologist, founder, healthcare professional, or administrator and what we’ve written here resonates with you, we’d love to partner. Join us.
— Hemant Taneja
