Bruce Brandes | Lucro | Creating Innovation in Healthcare

The Future of Health, Ep. 9

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Healthcare is changing. In fact, it’s changing faster than ever before (though still slowly by other industry standards). According to Bruce Brandes, Founder & CEO of Lucro, two things are driving that change: consumers and evolving business models. Exciting, right? So what’s the problem? The problem is that innovation and healthcare aren’t usually synonymous. As Brandes notes,

most hospitals and health systems don’t have the internal process and cultural elements that are needed to make decisions faster and know how to innovate.

Even when large healthcare companies attempt to make innovative strides, bureaucracy and continued competitive pressures often thwart their efforts.

That’s where Lucro comes in. Lucro is a digital productivity platform that creates an online marketplace. Healthcare companies can create boards describing problems they’re seeking to solve. Vendors can then browse the boards and post their product as a solution. The platform allows healthcare companies to easily search for solutions and allows vendors to gain visibility into company priorities. What’s even better is the platform’s surprising simplicity.

When asked to give advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, Brandes discussed the importance of listening to the market and putting oneself on the buyer’s side. Where does your product or service fit into the larger market ecosystem? Is it a true solution to a problem or a piece of the solution?

Amazon is a good case study in market insight. Amazon’s IPO took place in May 1997, and it took a little over 18 years for the company to reach the same market capitalization as Walmart in July 2015. Incredibly, it took less than two years for Amazon’s market capitalization to grow to twice the size of Walmart’s. 18 years to achieve equivalence. 2 years to double. Amazon invested over the long term in inventive initiatives that quickly disrupted the entire retail industry by enormous proportions. They understand consumers, they dare to innovate, and they’ve seen unparalleled success.

What’s going to disrupt the healthcare industry to that extent? At this point, we still don’t know. But something will. All we know is that healthcare and innovation need to become better friends. Here at Health:Further, we understand that change starts by asking the right questions and by building relationships. That’s why we’re bringing the brightest minds in healthcare together in August to further the spirit of innovation. And why we’re excited to be partnering with Lucro in that effort.