On February 17, Concord’s Health Care Roundtable hosted a panel on Innovation & Start-ups in Healthcare. The three featured panelists were Michelle Chaffee, founder of alska, Kyle Rolfing, founder of Bright Health, and Kurt Waltenbaugh, founder of Carrot Health. They each provided background on founding their respective companies and gave great insight into problems they solve and trends they perceive going forward.
A couple consistent themes emerged from the discussion:
Consumer Experience
- Focusing on changing and improving the consumer experience is one of the drivers for healthcare innovation.
- Better consumer outcomes result from working with people consumers trust (namely their doctor or caregiver).
- The most powerful relationship in healthcare is the provider and patient working together. Start-ups that understand this can create a positive consumer experience more readily.
Driving Value from Technology
- There are sizable gaps in communication in the care continuum and a central place for data helps solve that issue.
- Payers and providers can leverage existing member data to determine root causes of health issues and mitigate risk.
- Health systems define quality differently from consumers, who primarily want a healthy outcome. Data and technology can bridge this gap.