In this latest executive interview, Mike McSherry speaks with Chilmark VP John Moore III about how his past successes in consumer tech and an entrepreneur-in-residence opportunity at Providence prepared him for tackling patient engagement in the healthcare industry.

During our conversation, Mike recounts how he and his team explored 70+ startup ideas with Providence stakeholders – patients, nurses, physicians, executives – before settling on the Xealth concept. As veterans of the industry are aware, the idea of a centralized, vetted app marketplace for providers to activate patients has been attempted a few times since the mass adoption of smartphones.

We have followed this area closely for years, but to date, no startups have actually found a successful business model. The reasons for these failures (for lack of a better word) are many-fold, and each attempt needs to be examined in its own context to truly understand what arrested progress. That said, one consistent fact emerges: this is a complex model that requires buy-in from multiple healthcare stakeholders and adoption from two notoriously difficult to engage populations (patients and physicians). And as the concept of digital therapeutics continues to gain traction, the need for a viable "digital formulary" becomes that much more critical to the industry.

So why do Mike and his team think they'll be successful where others have failed? You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear their rationale for what makes Xealth different from previous solutions – we make sure to press him a bit on the topic, since it's our view here at Chilmark that this type of offering is critically important to integrating these new digital tools into care provision workflows in an effective way. Patients / consumers of health care are increasingly accustomed to the self-service, mobile-enabled options offered in other critical aspects of their lives, and a truly modern digital health ecosystem is incomplete without providing an option to utilize that for positive behavior change.

We'd love to hear your thoughts or feedback on this interview in the comments!

On the latest episode of Chilcast: Healthcare Tech Talks, we are delighted to feature an interview with Dr. Tania Martin-Mercado, an expert in clinical research, biotech and public health. She joins Chilmark Senior Analyst Jody Ranck for a discussion on the issue of bias in AI: how it’s harmful to patients individually and our culture as a whole, how to add diversity to data teams in meaningful and authentic ways, and what organizations can do to tackle this issue as more algorithms are deployed for care delivery.

It takes all types, especially to throw a mammoth conference like HIMSS. Payers, providers, investors and solutions vendors all gather together in their tens of thousands under one roof to discuss the future of technology in healthcare. From all over the world, the experts in the field travel to learn, give presentations, network with their peers, and attempt to divine the future of the market.

But one group is usually underrepresented: educators. Injecting new blood and fresh ideas into healthcare tech will be an important component of revitalizing our battered healthcare system. Yet professors and universities in the sorely needed tech education sector were few and far between at the conference this year.

To be sure, medical and nursing schools occupied a solid place in the conference agenda. Provider systems nationwide are in the midst of a nerve-wracked hand-wringing session when it comes to the looming staffing crisis, which is already bad and getting worse. However, if someone wants to work in healthcare without being a doctor or a nurse, the options are less clear.

We were able to sit down with Dr. Gabriela Wilson, Professor and Co-Director at the Multi-Interprofessional Center for Health Informatics, UT-Arlington, to discuss these issues and more. She brings decades of experience in biochemistry, biotechnology, molecular biology and informatics to the table, along with a wider global perspective on healthcare in America.

The path to implementing value-based care in the U.S. healthcare system has been fraught with challenges and peril. There’s quite a bit of momentum when it comes to maintaining the current model, as well as the financial incentives already in place. As COVID drags on, hospital systems are facing staffing shortages, physician burnout and a slew of financial setbacks. 

It’s no surprise that switching to a VBC model has often taken a backseat as a priority, as providers around the country focus on putting out the immediate fires and making sure they can stay afloat. But as always, there is potential to grow and change. Health IT vendors are developing solutions that can assist providers with data collection and management, patient monitoring, and more, with the goal of enabling a shift away from the volume model. 

Aiming to eliminate “alert fatigue” and aid in physicians being able to care for more patients at once, without spending a disproportionate amount of time fiddling with an EHR or platform, organizations like Lightbeam Health Solutions are setting the stage for a transition to value-based care. 

We sat down with Lightbeam Health’s President, Jerry Shultz, at HIMSS ’21 to discuss this issue, how providers can both save money and better serve their patients, the future of value-based care, and more. 

In recent years we have seen a great deal of speculation about how the big tech players such as Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft would bring their platform business models to healthcare and disrupt business as usual. This has proven to be a more difficult hill to climb than expected, but the platform business model goes well beyond the platform natives in big tech. In a podcast with Vince Kuraitis and Randy Williams, we explored the nature of platform business models, how they differ from traditional business models and how they may impact the future of healthcare.

Traditional business models create products and services through production side integration that are delivered in a linear value creation process. Value capture is through optimization of production and the focus is on owning the supply chain. Gatekeepers are common and consumers experience friction when trying to access services. Rapid Covid tests are a great example in healthcare because they are developed manufactured and distributed by producers while consumers must go through gatekeepers to access.

Platform business models unlock new sources of value both on the creation side of the transaction, but also on the consumption side. Their function is to facilitate matches and consummate exchanges of goods/ services, thereby creating value for all parties. Platforms are usually less constrained by owned inventory. Often by using data and digital tools, platforms improve customer experience by increasing access to products, matching preferences, increasing convenience, and eliminating gatekeepers. 

Recorded on location at HIMSS21 in Las Vegas. Listen in as Andrew Sorenson, Chief Analytics Officer at Castell Health, speaks with John Moore III about lessons learned during the pandemic and the driving philosophy behind his work with the population health services organization spun out of Intermountain Healthcare.

At HLTH21 in October, we sat down with Sheeza Hussain, the Chief Commercial Officer of Biofourmis, to discuss the future of virtual care and her experience with taking hospital-at-home and remote patient monitoring to the next level. Utilizing their FDA-approved  software as a medical device (SaMD) in combination with remote patient monitoring (RPM) data from [practically] any device, their predictive analytics add a layer of reliability and robustness to current virtual and home care models. Throughout this discussion, Sheeza's passion for improving the quality of life for patients through these new tools shines through, and it's easy to see why she was just added to the Becker's list of Women in Health IT to Watch in 2022.

Previously a software engineer, she comes into her role of CCO as someone with a knowledge of both the software and the user sides of the business, working with providers, physicians, and potential partners to maximize Biofourmis’ impact. We spoke with her about her goals for their platform, as well as the specifics of their comprehensive solution, from devices to demographics and from software to support. You can also watch this interview on the Chilmark website here.

Connect with Sheeza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheezahussain/
Biofourmis: https://biofourmis.com/technology/

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Video and podcast content produced by Elizabeth Hughes, Ricardo Celis, and John Moore III
Audio production by Colin Rogers

Several years ago, amidst the surge in interest in blockchain applications in healthcare, Chilmark Research published our own report on trends and companies in this space. We recognized it was still the early days, and there was a tremendous amount of hype but few demonstrable results. Then came the ICO craze, with companies scrambling to find ways to tokenize various healthcare business functions. It did not turn out well and proved a significant setback to the budding industry as a whole.

Recently, Senior Analyst Jody Ranck, DrPH, spoke with Ed Bukstel, an early adopter and developer of blockchain tools, to get an appraisal of the current state of blockchain activities in healthcare. You can read more of Jody's thoughts on this topic in the Chilmark Research post sharing this podcast.