State of HLTH Care, 2022
3 Takeaways
Last week, 10,000 people in the digital health and health transformation world spent time convening in Las Vegas. We attended to continue our work identifying promising early stage companies as part of our work to bring the best innovations to our system. A few takeaways for what this means for the next year(s) in health care.
Though venture is slowing for health-tech companies, it did not appear as such on the convention show floor. There were hundreds companies represented, likely from the last 18 months of heavy venture investing. Several accelerators had space for their multiple portfolio companies. I couldn’t help but wonder what the trade floor would look like in another year. With the capability of computing and advanced analytics, the promise of transformation seems around the corner. But it’s also noisy, with several overlapping companies within problem areas. Coupled with financial headwinds hitting health care organizations, there will likely be a consolidation effect across the industry. For providers, it may be more challenging to pick winning partners that we can be sure will be around in a few years.
Secondly, health systems felt like minority participants at HLTH. Organizations on the stages providing care were not the brand names from health care. They were the brand names from other aspects of Americans’ lives. Walmart Health. Amazon. Best Buy. There were several organizations providing direct care services, and others facilitating services including payors, like Optum/United. The common theme seemed to be that national scale organizations are starting to pull away from local and regional providers.
We are looking to improve the quality without increasing the cost (to our patients or to our country as a whole), and hence improve value.
Thirdly, we need to keep the focus on the patient and the quality and value of their experiences. There were several companies that we met with that were ‘neat’ and certainly added some benefits, though it was less likely that better value would be delivered to patients in the form of either higher quality care or lower costs. An ask that I have of companies is that they find way to make the costs of delivering health care lower. We are not looking into solutions that will help us ‘earn more money’ such that we would pay a vendor an expensive rate. We are looking to make health care more affordable. We are looking to improve the quality without increasing the cost (to our patients or to our country as a whole), and hence improve value. We are looking for technology that is inexpensive to use such that we can radically change the way we deliver care.
These are just a few thoughts. We welcome feedback and alternate perspectives.
For More:
- https://digitalhealth.modernhealthcare.com/finance/5-takeaways-hlth-economic-troubles-loom-large?utm_source=digital-health-alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20221117&utm_content=hero-headline
- https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/hlth-takes-shot-redefining-healthcare
- https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/how-to-see-your-last-patient-of-the-day-on-time
