Health:Further

Bob Gold is CEO of Gold Group Enterprises. As a behavioral technologist, he uses his understanding of human behavior, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to help healthcare organizations implment programs designed to drive behavior change. His work has significant implications for patient engagement, cost containment, improved outcomes and clinician satisfaction across the entire healthcare system. In this conversation, we talk specifically about how healthcare organizations can pursue innovation.

Patient Engagement is one of the biggest themes, and highest goals, of today’s healthcare industry. The problem is that patient engagement is a complex process that includes getting them to take action and likely make a sustained change in behavior. Bob Gold, though, loves the problem of behavior change. Gold, CEO of Gold Group Enterprises, is a behavioral technologist who focuses on applying his work to the healthcare industry to improve outcomes and reduce costs.

This special episode is produced in partnership with The Business of Healthcare. Find out more at bohseries.com. David Young, Chairman of Raiven Health, envisions a world where machine learning and automated patient self-reporting lead to better outcomes.  In his work, he has articulated a seamless and automated patient experience from reporting history and concerns through diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.  He believes the challenges of provider shortages, access, and clinical workflow can be overcome with these innovations. Raiven Health uses the behavioral health diagnostic and treatment archives of a large behavioral health provider, Centerstone of America, to develop machine learning capabilities. Young recognizes the need to address patient privacy risks, to establish ethical policies for reporting back to the patient, and the need reward providers for value rather than volume in order for his vision to be realized.

Is the healthcare industry really taking full advantage of all academia has to offer? Is academia really positioning itself appropriately to help drive healthcare innovation? For people like Dr. John Langell, Executive Director of the Center for Medical Innovation at the University of Utah and Chief of General Surgery at the George E. Wahlen VA Medical Center, the implied answer to those questions is “no.” Which is cool, because it gives them a lot of room to work from. The logical conclusion to answering “no” to the above questions is that it could be time to rethink the academic model of healthcare innovation. Maybe the old system of taking a faculty discovery, applying for a patent and then adding it to a tech transfer portfolio for potential licensing and commercialization isn’t enough. Langell isn’t just in the middle of this discussion, he’s trying to lead it. At the University of Utah Medical Innovation Program, the goal isn’t just to protect interesting ideas (i.e. rack up the patent count). It’s to fill real gaps in science, medicine and healthcare with real products. In other words, something that a good business will do but that academia hasn’t always had a reputation for.

Is it too late to do a 2017 recap for healthcare innovation and a look-ahead to 2018? Everyone does it, we’re just doing it a week later. To think about what happened in 2017 - and what it could mean - and what might happen in 2018, I spoke with Health:Further CEO Marcus Whitney. The main themes were change in the health landscape and the healthcare industry, uncertainty due to healthcare policy, and great opportunity for health innovators and entrepreneurs.

Building an ideal future of health will take a lot of different components, but perhaps the most important piece of that future is people. Today we talk about people - connecting the right people with the right opportunities so both individuals and healthcare companies can thrive, which ultimately means that the entire healthcare system improves. Daniel Oppong is co-founder of Ohana Health, a company that sources interns and full-time hires for healthcare companies. Daniel talks about the idea behind Ohana, how he and Co-founder Sabrina Kahn think about finding the right people for clients, and how valuable a well-vetted intern can be for a company. Spoiler alert - the answer is very valuable. In the conversation you’ll hear us talking about Brio. Brio is short for Briovation, our parent company. So Health:Further, Ohana, and a couple of other business units operate under that umbrella and Daniel, in addition to running Ohana, is also in charge of talent across the Brio business units. One thing that stood out in what Daniel said was the mix of just paying attention to people and using data to make good matches. So those personality tests and various assessments combined with an ability to read the other person. We talk a lot about that in other contexts on this podcast - the combination of technology or data and the human touch as a way to get the best possible outcome. If you’re interested in working with Ohana to source interns or full time hires, or if you’re just interested in learning more about what Daniel and Sabrina are building, check out ohanahealth.co.

We are talking about pet obesity! Something different but very relevant. Tricia Montgomery is founder of K9 fit club, which offers organized fitness for people with their dogs. It’s different for obvious reasons. It’s relevant because there are significant health benefits for us when we are active with our pets. And there’s a lot of science to back those benefits up. For example, obesity and loneliness and better mental health are all positively impacted when we exercise with our pets. Think of it as science-based fun. This conversation includes a lot of promotion for the company, which we normally don’t do. It's in this conversation because Tricia has a story of renewing and then sustaining health, which is what we’re all about here. It’s also a story of someone who saw a problem in her own life and created a solution to better health for herself and others. So a great example of healthcare entrepreneurship. We spend a lot of time talking about technology and healthcare innovation, making the healthcare system better. But it’s this bigger picture of health and unique ways of getting us to a healthier society that really drives us.

Matt Hanis is a former healthcare executive and founder of Business of Healthcare. The idea for Business of Healthcare came when Matt was in his former life as an executive. He had people constantly contacting him to, as he puts it, “sell me their wares.” That was their job. Being inundated, though, made it hard for him, hard for healthcare executives in general, to sort through everything and find the right answer for that company. So he started Business of Healthcare to help find and amplify interesting, useful ideas that solve real problems with a focus on mission and margin - two words you’ll hear a lot from Matt. We get into the genesis of BoH in more detail, and Matt also offers brief thoughts on healthcare media, as well as how he approaches evaluating ideas - thoughts that are useful for anyone trying to find the valuable nuggets in a flood of options. What Matt is doing is intriguing, using video as a vehicle for innovation but not trying to be a traditional healthcare media company. It’s a simple, but creative and effective idea. Be sure to check out the great work from Matt and his team at bohseries.com.

Lisa Suennen is Managing Director at GE Ventures and Managing Partner at Venture Valkyrie. She spends a lot of time evaluating young healthcare companies, as well as tracking trends and evaluating the healthcare industry as a whole. Because of that, Lisa has developed a keen eye for what’s real, what’s working, and what...might not be living up to the hype. Two of the things that she’s poking some holes in are population health and consumer health. Be prepared for the quote, “short term savings and long-term nothing.”

Jason Moore and his team at healthcare intelligence company Stratasan spend a lot of time looking at gaps in care and helping clients figure out how - and where - to fill those gaps. As a result, Stratasan is a very data-driven company. At the same time, they are focused on using data to make intelligent healthcare decisions. It’s not just big data for its own sake. It’s what you do with that information to fill gaps, create opportunities, and deliver better care to patients. So you’ll hear a lot about those themes throughout this conversation.