Consumerization of Health

Forecast And Promise For 2020

This week, at the Open Innovation in Health Pop-Up during the 38th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, I hosted a panel about the consumerization of health. It was a real honor to share the stage with such an illustrious group of innovators to an audience of about 200 people. The panelists included:

• Ashish Atreja — Associate Professor and Chief Innovation Officer, Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine
• Amy Baxter — Founder & CEO, Pain Care Labs
• Anish Sebastian — Founder & CEO, Babyscripts
• Aman Bhatti — Vice President, US & Global Medical Affairs, AliveCor
• Tom Rhoads — Founder and CEO, Spencer Health Solutions
• Esther Dyson — Executive Founder, Way to Wellville

Consumers now expect all services to be tech-enabled, and it’s driving change from a provider orientation to one with more consumer control. From on-demand services to the ease of making appointments, consumerization is shifting the convenience of care.

The leaders and companies who participated on the panel are offering innovative ways to get closer to where health starts — outside of the hospital — where you are more likely to have an actual impact on health.

I enjoyed the panelist discussion, hearing fresh perspectives, learning innovative insights, and engaging with the audience. Giving a glimpse into the conversations, below are some of the questions I asked the panel:

Introduction

• Can you share a little more about your backgrounds, your path into health, and where you are today?
• How would you describe the current state of your sector?

Business Model

• What is your business model?
• Who do you serve, how do you capture value / make money, and how are you capitalized?
• Are you currently raising capital?
• What is your typical lifecycle to close a deal?
• Who is the market for out-of-pocket health services?
• Why aren’t the payers covering it?
• Is there a subscription model that, maybe, you should think about, because there are a lot of insurance companies that are not covering the solutions?

Consumers

• What is the problem you are solving for the consumer?
• Are there best practices for acquiring customers?
• What is the cost of acquisition?
• With innovations in the market, has consumer purchasing behavior changed? Has it become more predictable?
• How did you determine your traction channel, and when did you know to scale up to reach a broader mass adoption?

Partnerships

• Have you found an optimal way to navigate the healthcare ecosystem? (Large health systems, pharma, etc…)
• Are partnerships vital for your success?
• Ashish, what is the health system perspective?

Tech Innovation

• What technology are you utilizing?
• With regards to wearables and people tracking their stuff, how are you connecting it to the doctor? What are some of the challenges that the health system will face?
• Do consumers fear taking control of their health?
• How are you making sure that people don’t come back to the hospital?
• Are you reducing the gap between bench to bedside by providing care in the house?
• Are creating tools and solutions to get people to not go to the hospital?
• Is innovation able to influence and change human behavior for the better? If so, how?

Diversity

• As hospitals close and the physician shortage gets worse, access to healthcare is an increasing problem for patients in the rural U.S. How are you combatting this issue. By providing high-quality, remote care?
• How can we best promote equitable wellbeing inclusive of all groups?
• Where does innovation play a role in this?
• What are the pros and cons of accelerating the adoption of technology in communities outside of the hospital?
• Anish, can you share more about the Babyscripts parity pledge and improving the pathway for women in leadership roles?
• Will cities becoming more connected promote change in people and create an active learning system?
• Privacy and protection of data?

Future

• Concerning the consumerization of health, what is keeping you up at night?
• Which areas are you keeping a close eye on or find particularly interesting as it relates to your business?
• What else should we be expecting in 2020 and beyond?

Closing

• For anyone in the audience that’s trying to launch a health consumer startup, what piece of advice would you offer them?
• Where can people best contact you?

For more information about upcoming programming, or if you’d like to partner with us, contact start@humble.vc.