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Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

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Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#61

Post by jQueryIsAwesome »

guylhem wrote: post #60
jQueryIsAwesome wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and encouraging more competition to go for those treatments because they can make it profitable at a lower cost. They can make it more profitable but only helps a smaller subset of people because is better to sell 1000 $10 needless than 10000 $1 needles (transportation, packaging, liability, etc); plus is a strong incentive to use any procedure that makes the patient believe that he is getting better even if he act…

To make it short, where !=> mean "does not imply": satisfaction != efficient satisfaction !=> result results !=> efficient profit = efficiency => results => satisfaction

To keep it short too.

assert patients.satisfaction.relevance > efficiency.relevance

investment.efficiency => profit

investment.efficiency !=> patients.efficiency

investment.efficiency !=> patients.health

Long version:

I am living the consequences of this in my country itself; they make you wait months for one date, even if they suspect cancer; you know why they make you wait so much time? Because they want to make sure you health insurance payments are the ones pre-paying for the specialist service (or at least a good part of it) before you stop paying or before you die. There is people with cancer standing long hours in queues just because some guys through it was really smart to overprice common medical resources and lobby in the congress for laws that help them abuse their clients (aka patients) and government subsidies.

Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#63

Post by ams6110 »

I would add that "agile" development is a hard sell to institutional customers. They want one or two releases a year, tops. Certainly not monthly and absolutely not continuous. "Change management" committees will become your own little hell.

Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#64

Post by intractable »

In my experience, one of the most significant hindrances has been access to and communication with medical personnel:

- Medics, especially specialists / surgeons, have extremely busy schedules, often holding down both public & private patient responsibilities as well as performing duties for their specific colleges etc.

- The level of IT-savvy amongst healthcare pros is generally low.

- They seem to have a different logic to us IT folk, answers are nebulous for non-medics and hard rules are very difficult to pin down. Ask the same question n times and you will get n different answers, from the same respondent.

When you find a medic who is willing / able to help and towards the positive on all the above axes, you must hold onto them with a death grip.

Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#65

Post by sgarg26 »

In the current environment, health care IT solutions will go further if they help professionals and patients do 'more with less' instead of 'more with more'. The dynamics in the article are real, but there are tons of way around the challenges posed. The article to me says that the market has yet to be cracked, but the opportunity is still pretty huge.

Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#66

Post by sgarg26 »

guylhem wrote: post #56
flixic wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much disagree with this moral view. Just because something is legal doesn't make it moral. See, when I'm being up-sold almost anywhere, in a store, eating place, etc., I can make good judgement on whether it makes sense to agree to a sale. However, when it comes to medical procedures, I can't make the same good judgment, because I lack the knowledge. So I trust the doctors to make good decisions, firstly medic…

You would be shocked to know how some physicians would like to speed it up and quickly give you a diagnosis and have you out of the hospital, or just plain don't know stuff. Like you, I do believe most people can not make a good judgement, because they lack the medical knowledge, so they expect a professional to make the decision for them. Yet medical science is evolving - very quickly, with an ever reducing half-lif…

Here are additional takeaways from your statement: things that sell in healthcare include 'time savings' and 'empathy extension factor' in addition to financial factors.

Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#67

Post by sgarg26 »

rficcaglia wrote: post #7
tel wrote: post #2

I'm in the 7th month of starting a Health IT company and would be happy to answer (some) questions if anyone has any.

I'm in the 41st month of a Health IT startup and I'd be happy to give you a preview of the questions you havent even thought of :) Honestly if you can't fund full speed (dev, QA, support, sales, mktg, ops, clinical studies) for a minimum three years before the first hospital sale , assuming you are selling to hospitals, then get out now. Happy to shar war stories over a pint!

I have been in the health care industry for a long while. Also, working on a health care startup. If people have questions, I would love to assist.

Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#68

Post by logjam »

guylhem wrote: post #41
trhtrsh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My job is to make patients pay as much as we can legally make them pay, using any mean necessary as long as it is legal. > I did not explore that much, but there seemed to be a demand for a service to selectively reduce profits, to maximize government subsidies in some units - something utterly disgusting for a libertarian. So your morality teaches that it's OK to scam patients, but not OK to scam the government?

If it is legal it is no scam. Making patients pay as much as legally possible is legal. For ex, on preexisting conditions, the burden of proof is almost reversed. I'm simplifying, but more or less in an audit the opposite party has to prove the charge could not have been caused by the preexisting condition. It is almost impossible (good luck if you are trying to prove say that the chest x-ray had absolutely nothing t…

> If it is legal it is no scam. Making patients pay as much as legally possible is legal.

Really.

M.D. in U.S. here. Your profile page says you're an M.D., too.

Please reassure me that you are not a licensed physician and that you have no patient care responsibilities.

However, if you do see patients (or ever have), please comment on your medical licensing board's "belief system" on unethical (but legal) practices (even "business practices") as they pertain to the practice of medicine.

Maybe we're just having a little language breakdown here. Your parent comment sounds like you advocate for the use of "unqualified personnel" if it improves the profit margin. You comment below about "massaging the bill". Just above you seem to be winking and nudging your way to the idea that it's ok "legally" exposing your patients to the risks of certain tests like chest x-rays even if they're driven more by your own pocketbook or client's pocketbook (or your own paternalism) than by what's best for the patient, or perhaps what the patient chooses.

Unless there's some misunderstanding here, your actions are taking place in the wrong field. Medicine isn't a business.

Trying to turn it into a shady profit center is driving your actions toward grave difficulties with ethics, if not "legality".

Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#69

Post by yen223 »

ryanteo wrote: post #58

Hi everyone, happy to chime in from an Asian perspective. I'm Ryan, based in Singapore and tried to co-found an online platform for procurement of medical supplies for private clinics. Faced many of the industry's frustrations as expressed in this discussion too. Would be happy to share my experience too.

Hi,

I'm curious, how big, do you think, is the medical IT market in Singapore?

Re: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

#70

Post by lucidrains »

logjam wrote: post #68
guylhem wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is legal it is no scam. Making patients pay as much as legally possible is legal. For ex, on preexisting conditions, the burden of proof is almost reversed. I'm simplifying, but more or less in an audit the opposite party has to prove the charge could not have been caused by the preexisting condition. It is almost impossible (good luck if you are trying to prove say that the chest x-ray had absolutely nothing t…

> If it is legal it is no scam. Making patients pay as much as legally possible is legal. Really. M.D. in U.S. here. Your profile page says you're an M.D., too. Please reassure me that you are not a licensed physician and that you have no patient care responsibilities. However, if you do see patients (or ever have), please comment on your medical licensing board's "belief system" on unethical (but legal) practices (e…

> Medicine isn't a business.

but the reality is that it's a very big business, otherwise these discussions about how to 'game the system' for profit wouldn't exist.

not trying to disrespect either one of you, just making an observation.

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