Announcing the 2018 Buyer’s Guide to Social Innovation Tech for Health
A Note to the Reader
The following is an introductory excerpt from a new market research report by Patchwise Labs. It offers a deep dive analysis on the emerging market for health innovations that address the social determinants of health for the underserved.
Social determinants of health (SDOH) has turned into the feel-good buzzword of the year. If you’re reading this, you probably know that SDOH refers to the upstream factors that influence a patient’s clinical health, such as where we live, work, and play, how we eat, and who we spend time with. These are deep, multi-faceted issues: Where a parent can afford to live, for example, determines myriad aspects of their children’s health, from microscopic asthma triggers caused by moisture, humidity, or heat, to neighborhood-level factors of crime, violence, education, and mobility.
These issues have remained far out of reach of our country’s clinical health systems, which have historically had little financial incentive to address social needs. But more recently, after nearly a decade of adopting value-based contracts and new IT systems to keep discharged patients at home, health systems are starting to think further upstream:
What are the factors causing people to wind up in the hospital in the first place, and how might we address them?
For those health systems, looking outward to capture and incorporate SDOH data into their operations represents the next phase of clinical and business strategy. For governments and public health departments, technology to sync the public safety net with community services is key to creating “smarter” cities and counties that are more efficient and responsive in allocating resources.
Over the last few years, startups have developed technology to modernize the social services sector that provides the bulk of this care. These tools help screen patients for unmet needs, map out local resources for support, and create high-fidelity, closed-loop referrals — all in a scalable, accountable way. Unsurprisingly, these platforms are finding homes in many health systems around the country.
We developed this report to provide health system executives and public officials with two things: A bird’s eye view of the emerging innovation landscape around SDOH, and a strategic buyer’s guide to assess a curated list of vendors who have shown the market-tested capability to address a community’s health through a social needs referral technology platform.
The companies herein are all approaching this work slightly differently; this guide is not meant as an apples-to-apples selection rubric, but rather as an educational tool to assist in the due diligence process. We hope you use it to compare and contrast the offerings from these vendors, and ultimately to better understand the key considerations in selecting a technology partner to embark on this important work.
As an added note to the readers of this post on Medium: If y’all get as jazzed up about all this stuff as we do, stay tuned for more. This summer we’ll be launching The Dispatch, a non-newsy newsletter dedicated to exploring key topics in social innovation for health, and tracking the emerging opportunities that are enabling better equity and access to health for all those who may need it. We always look forward to hearing from you with questions, feedback, stories, and most importantly, ideas.
Warm Regards,
Naveen Rao
Managing Partner
Patchwise Labs
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