Michael Phillips MD, MBA, Managing Partner and Director Intermountain Ventures, directs business development and venture investment for the Intermountain Venture Fund. The fund seeks to bring new technology and businesses to Intermountain Healthcare from both internal and external sources to improve the lives and health of our caregivers and patients. Previously, Dr. Phillips served as the Chief of Outreach and Clinical Services at Intermountain Healthcare supporting outreach, Telehealth, and clinical shared service design and deployment. 

Prior to joining Intermountain, Dr. Phillips practiced as a clinical neuro-radiologist at Cleveland Clinic since 2002. He was director of business development in the Cleveland Clinic Imaging Institute and served on the Cleveland Clinic Board of Directors and as the co-chair of the Care Affordability Task Force, identifying and developing ways to improve efficiency and lower the cost of care. 

Dr. Phillips earned his medical degree from Columbia University and his undergraduate degree from Amherst College. He completed a radiology residency at John Hopkins Hospital and a neuroradiology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned an MBA from the University of Michigan.

Episode transcription:

Mike Phillips: [00:00:25] Yeah. Hi Mike Phillips. I am one of the partners of the venture fund and intermountain healthcare, and glad to be here today.

[00:00:34] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:00:34] Great, Mike, thanks so much for finding time. Join us on the Ivy Podcast today. Starting 2021 on the right note, my talking to you is super exciting. Tell us a little bit more about your backgrounds and maybe some context around your current organization.

[00:00:51] Mike Phillips: [00:00:51] Yeah. So, I’m working in venture through a pretty secure, I am a neuro radius biologist by training and was a neuroscience researcher for probably about 20 years with grants from the NIH and DOD, I did functional brain imaging over that time period, but always had an interest in companies, health care businesses, and I actually entered into the whole business arena after a patent of mine was sold by the Cleveland clinic. And I took that money and went to business school and have kind of done business related work since then both with the Cleveland clinic. And now here at Intermountain. And about a year or so ago, we started out a venture funded Intermountain and that is the sort of brief history of my background.

[00:01:50] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:01:50] Oh, that's super exciting. And you guys are based out of Salt Lake City.

[00:01:53] Mike Phillips: [00:01:53] Yes. Intermountain has 24 hospitals that spread over the primarily Utah, but also we have practices inside Nevada and inside Southern Idaho as well. So, as an organization, which is really focused on promoting health, we have more than 50% of our patients at full risk. So we really are, and that's growing every day. So we're a value oriented healthcare system, which makes us a little bit, not necessarily unique, but certainly towards the end of value=based health systems.

[00:02:39] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:02:39] Wow, that's super exciting. And I definitely want to dive a little bit deeper into that with you. From a standpoint of just the overall organizational culture of your company, I'm pretty sure innovation is at the forefront with your guys's need to continuously innovate, to look for innovative solutions, whether for investment purposes or working with any of your clients, share with us any strategies or initiatives that really help you foster and build that culture of innovation within your company.

[00:03:10] Mike Phillips: [00:03:10] So we have a couple of things that we do on that. First of all, our venture fund is completely directed into things that improve the performance of our healthcare system and improve the health of people. That we care for. So we only invest from our venture fund in products that we use in Malton and we a