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Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

rockhealth.com

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Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#11

Post by markolschesky »

fitandfunction wrote: post #8
malay wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are some good points. On the EHR question, I think what we would like to see is a company that starts using the work coming out of Standards & Interoperability (S&I)[1]. One can reasonably expect that much of this work will surface in Meaningful Use requirements (since one of the primary objectives of MU is interoperability) and thus would force vendors, including Epic, to comply. The platform here would do the…

Why do you think past efforts haven't "panned out" yet? Is it: a) they're working on it, but just not there yet b) the major EHR do everything in their power to delay progress by providing token access c) it's actually very hard to sync medical records across so many different standards / systems d) not enough patient / doctor demand / use-cases, i.e. people don't transfer as much as we think they do, diluting the va…

None of the above, IMHO.

In San Francisco, Kaiser could electronically share patient data with every other system running Epic with very little technical work and price. We're talking hours of work here. That would let them share data with UCSF, PCMH and every other Epic site.

They don't. Why not? It's because sharing patient data makes it easy to poach patients, and that's bad for business. There are similar situations in other cities too.

I don't blame them because the government hasn't made data exchange required yet. It's coming, with some of the requirements for Meaningful Use Stage 2 & 3 and the work done by the S&I framework. APIs will help too, because HL7 is confusing to newcomers and costs money. Vendors could make this easier too, but it's not like Epic or Cerner could compel anyone to share patient data.

I have a more in depth answer about this topic here: http://www.quora.com/Electronic-Health-and-Medical-Records/W...

Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#12

Post by markolschesky »

guylhem wrote: post #7

One of their ideas is quite close to something I'm working on. However, I wasn't exactly thinking about using an accelerator, and I haven't head about them. A quick search on HN doesn't give a lot of results. Does anyone here has had some personal experience with them? Feel free to contact me by email if you do not want to post a reply. [I'm not interested on the PR I can find with google, but by personal experiences…

This is helpful:

http://www.quora.com/Rock-Health/Whats-it-like-at-Rock-Healt...

We moved from Wisconsin to be a part of the V4 class, and it was amazing. To be surrounded by great business and technical minds who all give a damn about trying to make healthcare a bit better sustainably is really cool. I'd recommend it.

Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#13

Post by modulusprime »

dr_ wrote: post #5

1) A mega platform on top of existing EHR's won't be an easy thing. It would require them to play ball and large players, like Epic, probably won't. 2) Chronic disease management is important, but really challenging. People don't really spend their days thinking about their illness. They don't look forward to having their blood sugar assessed. Any kind of disease management program is going to require that the patien…

1) A mega platform on top of existing EHR's won't be an easy thing. It would require them to play ball and large players, like Epic, probably won't.

They definitely won't play ball with a platform attempting to integrate all of them. That's just a risk; there's no upside. It's possible that none of them would welcome a "platform" at all.

But survey the landscape of EHR vendors. There are a few unique positions of strength out there. Each aspect of uniqueness defines a hypothetical market. The mere existence of some of those markets would develop an asymmetry that simultaneously penalizes competitors and solves a big problem for the partner. Build the spark of the market and you have a significant ally with a strong incentive to nurture your business.

Idea quality indicator: you want the existing player aligned with you, not buying your company (then killing it). They should need you externally.

I'm building a business on one of these hypothetical markets. I made my choice based on my personal capability and fit with the details of the problem. But there are a huge number of different ways to improve both the quality and efficiency of healthcare. (You don't get to solve big problems if there are no big problems.)

Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#14

Post by siculars »

"...make everyone of us a doctor..."

That's a very, very bad idea. Should we educate people about their medical problems in a simple and smart way? Yes. Should we delude people into thinking they are doctors? Absolutely not.

"IANAL" is one thing but there aren't enough asterisks in your keyboard to save you from that bottomless pit of liability.

Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#15

Post by samstave »

dr_ wrote: post #5

1) A mega platform on top of existing EHR's won't be an easy thing. It would require them to play ball and large players, like Epic, probably won't. 2) Chronic disease management is important, but really challenging. People don't really spend their days thinking about their illness. They don't look forward to having their blood sugar assessed. Any kind of disease management program is going to require that the patien…

>* A mega platform on top of existing EHR's won't be an easy thing*

I built something like this in 2009 and got pretty much noplace with it. Our app, Contineo, was an HL7 compliant, back-end agnostic, mobile front end that would work with any HL7 compliant backend.

We were stonewalled by Epic, lead along by Siemens (who had begun talks with us on licensing our technology), we embarrassed Eclipsys as they didnt have a fully HL7 compliant system....

It was really difficult. So we opensourced the tech and gave it to Medsphere to integrate into OpenVista.

I still think there is a significant opportunity in disrupting healthcare in the large hospital, but I don't believe its via the EHR at this time, but through the patient room and patient experience.

If there are any folks out there that want to collaborate on something - I'd love to meet up.

(I applied to Rockhealth's second class and got too interview - but we didn't get selected.)

Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#16

Post by SilasX »

siculars wrote: post #14

"...make everyone of us a doctor..." That's a very, very bad idea. Should we educate people about their medical problems in a simple and smart way? Yes. Should we delude people into thinking they are doctors? Absolutely not. "IANAL" is one thing but there aren't enough asterisks in your keyboard to save you from that bottomless pit of liability.

I tend to agree in general. And expecting advice over an internet forum is ridiculous in the best of all worlds.

But frankly, you don't need a high school diploma + a Bachelor's + med school + residency in order capture a huge fraction of a Real Doctor's value as a classifier. Machine-learning-derived classifiers can do even better. This is where there are huge gains to be made.

Every time where cutting out the BS actually matters (pun intended), TPTB "discover" that you can churn out functionally-equivalent doctors with significantly less training. See: military training of doctors, WWII. If you suggested turning away people from doctor training back then because they didn't have a 4-year degree already, they'd laugh or have you committed.

Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#17

Post by pc86 »

frio wrote: post #10

As someone both with a chronic disease, and who works in Health IT -- personal health tracking is something I'd very much like to see (and am working on in my spare time). Part of the problem with chronic illness is that our (well, my!) dumb monkey-brains don't cope with it too well. I degraded, slowly, over the course of two years -- ending up in hospital very recently. On a day-to-day basis, over that course of tim…

How would something track (to use your example) cramping? Short of having a device where you press an "I have cramps" button then press it again when they go away, I'm not sure how any type of software could support your specific example.

That being said, personal health tracking is definitely a area of interest, and Fitbit and others have proven that there's money to be had and good to be done.

Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#18

Post by p2w »

wait. they want to invest in one of the most heavily regulated and friction filled business domains out there and the seed is 100k!?!?!?

this is a joke right, as in this is really the onion under the covers...

Re: Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund

#20

Post by Mz »

markolschesky wrote: post #11
fitandfunction wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think past efforts haven't "panned out" yet? Is it: a) they're working on it, but just not there yet b) the major EHR do everything in their power to delay progress by providing token access c) it's actually very hard to sync medical records across so many different standards / systems d) not enough patient / doctor demand / use-cases, i.e. people don't transfer as much as we think they do, diluting the va…

None of the above, IMHO. In San Francisco, Kaiser could electronically share patient data with every other system running Epic with very little technical work and price. We're talking hours of work here. That would let them share data with UCSF, PCMH and every other Epic site. They don't. Why not? It's because sharing patient data makes it easy to poach patients, and that's bad for business. There are similar situati…

I would think HIPPA is one of the issues here. Federal law says it is a big no no to freely share health info without a raft of signed paperwork, basically.
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