Health 2.0 Chicago, Opportunity, Innovation and Entrepreneurs
Friday and Saturday I made the trek down to the city for the local Health 2.0 event billed as “Catalyzing Health Technology Innovation: Opportunities to Breakthroughs.” It’s a catchy tag line, but the event didn’t disappoint. Here’s what I found the most striking. Docs, yes that’s right, healthcare providers were there in spades. That is super encouraging for me. Others have written about the disconnect in Silicon Valley between what technology can do and what healthcare realistically needs. That’s why I really enjoyed speaking with a number of providers who really wanted to be a part of the health 2.0 revolution. That domain expertise, the living the pain, is crucial to solving big problems. And the problems really are big creating what Dr. Gautam Gulati referred to as the “perfect storm for healthcare innovation.”
I also saw a nice mix of established industry players who see the benefit of opening their ecosystem up to let entrepreneurs solve problems. Kudos to Walgreens and Allscripts for their efforts to open their platforms up for innovation! Healthfinchhas done a nice job of building on top of an open API to provide workflow solutions for prescription refill requests. It’s a nice example of a niche innovation that solves a pain point where everyone wins. You have a vendor that provides a better solution for their EMR community, a startup that gets a great distribution channel, a provider that gets a streamlined solution that increases their bandwidth to handle higher order tasks that bring in more dollars and a patient that gets their refill more predictably with less hassle. All of this because of an open platform and a startup that got the opportunity to bring their innovation to market at a scale that would be difficult for a “scrappy entrepreneur.”
Talking about scrappy entrepreneurs brings me to another part of the conference I really enjoyed. Fibroblast a scheduling startup was back with Scott Vold, CEO and Andrew Albert, CMO to talk about how they’ve used a passion for a problem in closed loop referrals to build and grow a solution for providers. I’ll also give a huge plug to Asif Khan, CEO and Fahad Aziz, CTO of caremerge. They’re a couple of guys who jumped off the cliff to leave the corporate world and pursue their passion for making a difference in the aging market by tackling care coordination for senior living communities. Fibroblast and caremergeboth provided a mix of lessons learned and you can do it too inspiration for aspiring Chicago health startups.
There were also two other presentation by companies doing very innovative work to help healthcare startups get traction. The first was by Unity Stoakes President and Co-founder of Startup Health Academy, a company that offers a very unique 36 month program that goes far beyond an incubator/accelerator approach to helping startups bring their ideas to market. They understand healthcare regulatory approval and sales cycles and they also get the donut hole between friends and family funding/accelerator and follow on rounds. Navigating healthcare can be daunting and Startup Health Academy’s approach is fantastic!
The second presentation was by Alicia Heazlitt, Director of Strategy at Innovate LTC. This company is easy to get excited about. They’re helping bring disruptive innovation to the aging population. This is a huge personal interest of mine and I can’t mention it at any social gathering without hearing similar stories. Everyone we know is personally touched by the aging demographics in the US and in the world. If healthcare as a whole has been slow to adopt technology, the aging marketplace has been glacial. The aging marketplace is highly fragmented and reaching buyers can be daunting. Innovate LTC is not only making investments in startups, they’re helping solve the distribution challenge with their pipeline and connections. Bryan Yoffe, VP of Finance and Operations also spent some time talking with startups about business models and routes to the market. What’s absolutely clear from talking with Alicia and Bryan is that they both have an authentic passion for making a difference in the space. I’m extremely bullish on the potential for technology in aging and companies like Innovate LTC are helping knock down the barriers to that market.
All in all I remain extremely encouraged to see this growing innovation and entrepreneurship in healthcare in Chicago. I believe healthcare needs radical change and in many cases this disruptive change will come from new players with new ideas and new perspectives that have the hair on fire passion to see things brought to life. Isn’t that just what the digital startup community can bring?
I'll also give a huge shout out and kudos to Jasmin Phua @jasphuaand Subbu Arumugam @subbu4 for putting together this local Chicago Health 2.0 conference! Kudos to the locals @1871Chicago and @ChiHealthTech along with others like @Rock_Health for pulling this opportunity together!
I’m an eternal optimist and want to be a part of changing healthcare. I've cross posted this at my blog Healthcare Change Agitator.
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