Tag Archives: innovation

Innovative Ideas For A Weight Loss Company

May 15, 2014 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

As I’m enjoying my time thinking about what’s next, one of the things that I’ve thought a lot about key problem areas in our healthcare system.  Obviously obesity is one of them.  And, you have lots of companies trying to figure out what to do here.  

So, I was thinking about what I would do if I were at a Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or Vree Health…

  1. Build an assessment tool (like Milliman or InterQual) which could be used for assessing patients and creating an evidence-based care plan.
  2. Work with KitchenAid or others to create a branded line of smart devices which used the Internet of Things to do things like re-order healthy foods and suggest menus.
  3. Work with Jiff’s assessment tool or with Newtopia to study the ability to take data and create personalized diet plans.
  4. Work with FitBit or other device company and a gamification company to create a kid’s device linked to a game where the key player got fat tied to their activity level and where they opened up new levels tied to their behavior (e.g., eating healthy).
  5. Create online communities for people to share stories and experiences (like PatientsLikeMe but moderated).
  6. Move from physical locations to a virtual site using American Well technology blended with Withings scales.
  7. Incorporate stress management and sleep management into the overall program.
  8. Work with Healthways and the Blue Zones effort to create a family centric option tied into the schools and focused on getting everyone healthy across generations.
  9. Create a mobile coach using embodied conversational agents (similar to avatars) to drive behavior change and create a location-based prompts (i.e., as I pull into McDonalds).
  10. Work with manufacturers to create a “beyond the pill” approach to obesity drugs that incorporates coaching and behavior change with the pill being the final mile which should drive greater formulary coverage.
  11. Create a detailed patient journey map based on ethnographic research for weight loss with different triggers and create a “Coach certification” that can be used with coaches to certify that they are following best practices.
  12. Work with biometrics companies (e.g., LabCorp, Quest) or clinics (e.g., MinuteClinic) to create an early identification process for obesity and/or metabolic syndrome with a process for them to “prescribe” a specific program.
  13. Research and design ethnic specific obesity related programs for sub-populations within the US.  For example, partner with the large Hispanic groups to create a Spanish (language, experience, culturally relevant) programs.
  14. Partner with the ADA and NKF to jointly address metabolic syndrome together.
  15. Work with the AMA and medical schools to teach MDs how to treat and talk with obese patients (something they don’t do well today).
  16. Work with a grocery store or food company to create an augmented reality process for smart phones or Google Glass that would highlight healthy foods on the shelf and help people shop better.
  17. Work with Medicaid to create a process by which people earned cell phone minutes or lower copays based on activity and participation.  

Just some ideas that I thought I’d share.  

Healthcare
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#mHealth and Innovation – 2 Recent Reports

April 8, 2014 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

We all know that healthcare is clearly one of the darlings in the market right now.  One doesn’t have to look any further than these stories:

You can see companies building innovation teams and innovation labs within healthcare.  You see lots of new entrants trying to figure out how contribute in this space (e.g., Qualcomm Life).  But, some of these just become ivory towers where they pontificate and put out cool ideas.  Others disappear because they can never be commercialized.  Others fall into the “fast fail” bucket of companies, and only a portion of those actually innovate well.

Of course, it begs the question of “What is innovation?”  Is it:

  • Something completely new
  • Something re-engineered
  • The same thing delivered differently
  • Combining of multiple things (i.e., product with services)
  • Solving old problems with new technology

With that in mind, I was reading two reports which I thought I’d share with some initial reactions.

The Boston Consulting Group report “Fulfilling the Promise of mHealth Through Business Model Innovation”.

This is a nice report, but it’s a little too high level for me.  It has some great frameworks about what to do and some nice graphics, but it’s not operationally practical (although that may not have been the purpose).  Here’s a few things I highlighted:

  • “Mobile Health – The use of mobile applications and devices to deliver medical information, access or record data, or provide clinical services – has the potential to revolutionize patient care.”  [good definition]
  • “The gap between the current market size and five-year projections is significant.”  [so is it a warranted gap or will it get closed…I think it will be a challenge to meet expectations.]
  • Their big example of success is Welldoc’s BlueStar “mobile prescription therapy”.  [it’s an interesting product with some interesting studies, but I’m not sold yet…will the Rx process work for a device?  Can they justify their price?  Will buyers do more than pilot?]
  • They hold out 3 barriers – entrenched behaviors, reluctance to pay, and fragmented infrastructure.  [I would agree but how do I work through these…they provide some thoughts.]
  • They talk about creating a “must-have app” that would consolidate multiple offerings into a single solution.  [I don’t even think this silver bullet approach should be considered…It won’t happen.]
  • They seem to fall into the traditional trap that people other than the payers and employers will fund these programs (telcos, pharma, device companies).  [Everyone wants that, but I think that’s the wrong framework.]
  • They talk about an option of creating and charging a premium for mHealth offerings because some of them “deliver objectively better outcomes or lower costs compared with traditional health-care offerings”.  [Really?  That’s great news, but I wouldn’t consider that a fact.  I’d say we’re seeing some promising studies.]
  • They talk about “an orchestrated ecosystem” and integration of data.  [This would have been a perfect time to highlight what Vladic is doing or what Dossia is doing.]

There were some things missing that I personally would have called out.

  • What about learnings from prior models like electronic prescribing?
  • What about things like EMR integration and the difficulties there?
  • What about the issue of privacy and security?
  • What about the fact that people abandon devices and apps very quickly?
  • What about learnings from gamification or incentive management?
  • What about prescribing apps to patients? (like Happtique or IMS)
  • What about the whole issue of FDA approval of apps and devices?
  • What about what the large companies are doing – Aetna, Cigna, CVS, Walgreens, WalMart?  I think understanding their view of this market is so critical.

Triple Tree report “Connected Health”. 

It starts with a great tag line from IBM – “Does Your Kid Have Better Technology Than Your Business?”  They reference Steve Case’s framework from a presentation he made (see below):

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What I liked about this report is that it’s based on lots of real world examples.  (It’s still not operationally helpful, but these are investors not consultants so it met my expectation.)  They certainly could have gone deeper to explain why certain companies they highlight got acquired such as Diversinet, Epocrates, BodyMedia, CardioCom, Healthagen, Vitality, and ConsultADoc.  But, if I look at their list of companies, I see a lot of the innovative companies that I would have on my list – Proteus Digital Health, Healthrageous, iTriage, TelaDoc, Telcare, Eviti, Change Healthcare, and Asthmapolis.  (I know Healthrageous shut down – see postmortem – but I think they had some great vision.)

I also think they’re list of major inhibitors to growth was very believable:

  • Physician adoption
  • ROI
  • Regulatory hurdles
  • Security and governance
  • Lack of standards

The report shares an interesting stat that 45% of the companies that applied for their rewards were led by MDs in 2009 while it’s only 21% now.  To me that shows the movement of IT and business executives into the healthcare space.

Triple Tree does talk about remote monitoring and CMS which I think is important.  While the Veteran’s Administration was mentioned in the BCG report, I think that the government efforts here and influence was generally overlooked.

Overall, two interesting reports.  Worth a read although I would choose the Triple Tree report over the BCG one if I had time to only read one.

Two other places that I would recommend going if this topic is interesting are:

Healthcare
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The Case For Beyond The Pill Strategies In Pharma

March 24, 2014 by George Van Antwerp 3 Comments

You’ll hear this buzzword – “beyond the pill” – come up every once in a while in a discussion with a pharmaceutical manufacturer.  As the drug pipeline has dried up and generics have become the norm for oral solid medications, the question is how do these behemoth companies “pivot” to leverage their massive global footprints, their feet on the street, their deep disease specific insights, and their medications. 

“In population health, what once drove revenue becomes a source of cost. If products, services, and therapeutics don’t lower costs, meaningfully improve outcomes, and help better patient experience, population health managers simply won’t use them.” Jerry Cacciotti, Partner, Health & Life Sciences, Oliver Wyman (source)

I’m a big believer in this strategy.  Imagine what they could do in terms of services to wrap around obesity drugs.  Imagine how they could support patients with diabetes or with cancer.  While the short-term view is that these actions might help differentiate them from a formulary or specialty pharmacy perspective, I would argue that they might actually come out with new business models like Merck is doing with Vree Health.

Ultimately, it all begins with an understanding of several issues from the outside-in:

  • What is the patient journey?
    • How do they experience the healthcare system? (e.g., clinics, MDs, pharmacists, family)
    • How or what influences their experience? (e.g., Dr. Google)
    • How do their experiences change over time? (e.g., newly diagnosed versus chronically sick)
    • Which experiences do they remember? (or as one of my clients call it – the Golden Moments)
  • What does the patient really want or need?  (think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs)
  • Where is the patient (especially from a digital perspective)?
  • What are the patient’s expectations for you (pharma) or another entity?
    • How do they feel about you?
    • Do they trust you?
  • How do the other constituents in the care team interact with you?  With the patient?
  • How do you create a culture of empowerment, consumer focus, and transparency to really understand the needs of different constituents, react to them internally, and embrace issues dynamically?

In this consumer experience space, I often look to Bruce Temkin’s work and research.  He does a great job at a cross-industry perspective.  In healthcare, I’ve been very motivated by the work of Ingrid Lindbergh who was at Cigna and then moved to Prime Therapeutics.  She’s my role model for what I want to do in a large healthcare company. 

Two things got me thinking about this topic.  First, I was struck this weekend that there was research showing that people who struggle to buy food for their families are non-adherent.  I really hope that anyone in this field wasn’t surprised by that fact.  Of course, the struggle is that everyone working in the field is often constrained by their view of the world which often doesn’t include much experience with poverty. 

Second, I was sent a new research piece by Accenture called “Great Expectations: Why Pharma Companies Can’t Ignore Patient Services”.  It made me think about Dennis Urbaniak’s move from Sanofi where he was leading a lot of innovation to a Managing Director at Accenture.  Perhaps, he will bring some of this type of innovative thinking to more pharma companies. 

Here’s two infographics from the Accenture report which I think help hammer home the point of why beyond the pill is necessary:

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Healthcare
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NantHealth and Other Health Mashups

February 28, 2014 by George Van Antwerp 2 Comments

I’m always thinking about different ways to blend companies through acquisitions or partnerships.  The announcement by NantHealth the other day at HIMSS got me thinking more about it.  They are an interesting company from what I can tell although I don’t know anyone there.  

I’ve talked about Google and all their health assets although they’re not actively trying to integrate them.  I also think that there are some investment firms like Sandbox Industries that have their fingers in lots of interesting healthcare companies.  

So, what would some other interesting opportunities (M&A, partnership, JV) be (ignoring size, valuation, ownership, and likelihood):

Of course, I’ve talked about different PBM plays recently, and I think healthcare has become such a front page issue that companies like McKesson, GE, AT&T, Emdeon, Cisco, Apple, and others are waiting to figure out how and when to buy up some technology plays.  I could easily see McKesson jumping in to buy several of the adherence companies that I highlighted a few weeks ago like Proteus.  And, I’m sure there’s more from this list of fastest growing healthcare companies that will get snapped up or create some interesting partnerships.  

I also believe that health reform will drive some consolidation on the provider and payer side.  A friend on Wall Street predicted we’d get to 6 national health insurers.  I still think that’s possible – United, Aetna/Cigna, Wellpoint/BCBS, Kaiser, Humana, and ??

Healthcare
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#WHCC13 Interview: Content + Community + Competition = Keas

April 9, 2013 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

I had the opportunity to sit down this morning with Josh Stevens who is the CEO of Keas.

“Keas is the most engaging wellness program in the workplace. Keas promotes healthy behavior and teamwork with interactive media that delivers relevant, individualized content to hundreds of thousands of employees. Keas has a proven track record of supporting corporate HR in increasing retention, productivity, teamwork, collaboration, and competitiveness. By rewarding people for achieving simple exercise and nutrition goals, employee health is improved and overall healthcare costs are decreased.”

He is a passionate believer in using fun and social to drive change in healthcare with a focus initially on wellness and then moving upstream to other challenges like disease management.

As CEO of Keas, the market leader in corporate wellness, Stevens is responsible for leading the development and market adoption of the company’s breakthrough wellness platform and applications.

Stevens has over 20 years of experience in product, sales, marketing, and is a recognized leader in driving high-value product experiences that deliver customer delight and investor’s valuation growth.

Prior to Keas, Stevens was Vice President of e-commerce at YouSendIt, Senior Vice President of strategy and business development at TicketsNow, and General Manager of e-commerce at AOL. Prior to his GM role at AOL, Stevens held a variety of leadership positions in business development, product marketing, product management, and corporate strategy.

Some of you may have seen Keas over the years. They were founded by Adam Bosworth who was responsible for Google Health at one point. They’ve gone through a few evolutions, but it seems like they’ve hit on a working model leveraging several principles that we discussed:

  1. Being intellectually nimble
  2. Developing holistic and integrated solutions
  3. Using content, community, and competition to drive engagement
  4. Building social networks around health
  5. Integrating into the consumer’s experience to be seamless (e.g., single sign on)
  6. Recognizing that change is dependent upon corporate culture changing also
  7. BYOD (bring your own device) meaning that they can integrate with anyone with an open API
  8. Realizing that while some people (like me) might want to focus on data in a Quantified Self manner, we’re only 15% of the population

While Josh isn’t a healthcare native, that seems like a good thing. I’ve seen a lot of people try to come into healthcare from the outside. Most of them fail because they get overwhelmed by the regulation or frustrated by the challenges or stick too much to what they personally think should work. In the hour we spent together, I didn’t get that sense.

I’m looking forward to learning more about Keas and trying out the tools myself. One of the most fascinating points was that they get people to engage 15 times per month. I told him that that was a ridiculous number in healthcare. We went on to talk about his hiring a team from the gaming industry and that they were used to being tied to repeat visits not simply getting people to download the tool.

IMHO – if you could get 50% of people to engage twice a month with a tool (and sustain that engagement rate), you would be a hero.

As I’ve talked about in my posts about CVS and as I tweeted earlier today from the conference, companies need to engage the worker at the workplace to transform healthcare. Josh gets that key point.

“Today’s employees spend most of their daily lives at work and companies can have a huge impact on improving overall health by creating a culture of wellness at work. That culture starts with Keas’ fun, engaging platform, which helps employees become healthier, more productive and more engaged at work, and in life.” (press release)

Healthcare, Innovation, mHealth, Press, Social Media, Technology, Value Propositions
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PHM Is The New Black Post At CCA Blog With Diabetes Examples

January 25, 2013 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

This is a partial copy (teaser) of a guest blog I did on the Care Continuum Alliance blog earlier this week.

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With all the talk about Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and Patient Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs), the adoption curve for the Care Continuum Alliance (CCA) model for Population Health Management (PHM) should move beyond the innovators in 2013 and begin to “Cross the Chasm.” I believe there are several preconditions that would set the stage for this to occur, for instance:

  1. Technology advances leading to the “Big Data” focus;
  2. The changing paradigm from fee-for-service to outcomes-based care;
  3. The realization of the role of the consumer led by the e-Patient movement, the idea of the Quantified Self, and the focus of large healthcare enterprises on being consumer centric; and
  4. The budget crisis that is driving employers and other payers to embrace PHM, wellness, and other initiatives that impact cost and productivity.

Of course, most companies are still in the infancy of designing systems to address this coordinated care model, which does not view the patient as a claim, but longitudinally aggregates demographical, psychosocial and claims data.  Additionally, training staff using Motivational Interviewing and integrating external staff into the virtual care team in partnership with the provider will continue to evolve as do our care delivery models.

To read more especially the diabetes examples that I shared, please click over to their blog.  Thanks.

 

Books / Articles, Care Management, Guest Post, Healthcare, Innovation, Leadership, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, Methodology, mHealth, Research, Value Propositions, Weblogs
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Infographic: Improving Primary Care With Pharmacists

December 29, 2012 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

This is an infographic on an interesting program out of USC which received money from the CMS innovation fund.

Infographic Expanded Role Of Pharmacists

Healthcare, Infographic, Leadership, PBM / Pharmacy, Research, Value Propositions
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Diabetes Innovation – mHealth; Quantified Self; Business Model

December 13, 2012 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

I’m not a diabetic, but I’ve been researching the topic to understand the space and what innovation is occurring around diabetes. This is a space where there are lots of applications, tools, devices, communities, and research. The ADA estimates the total US cost at $218B with very high prevalence. If you expand that on a global scale, the costs and impact is staggering.

  • Total: 25.8 million children and adults in the United States—8.3% of the population—have diabetes.
  • Diagnosed: 18.8 million people
  • Undiagnosed: 7.0 million people
  • Prediabetes: 79 million people*
  • New Cases: 1.9 million new cases of diabetes are diagnosed in people aged 20 years and older in 2010.

So, what’s being done about it? And, what opportunities exist? I think you’ve certainly seen a lot of innovation events being sponsored by pharma and others.

You’ve seen a shift from drug to engagement for a few years as evidenced in this old post about Roche – http://www.diabetesmine.com/2009/10/a-visit-to-the-roche-new-concept-incubator.html

You’ve seen a proliferation of diabetes apps. (A prime opportunity for Happtique.)

From my traditional PBM/Pharmacy focus, you’ve seen several efforts there:

Obviously, Medco (pre-Express Scripts acquisition) thought enough of this space to buy Liberty Medical.

I pulled some screen shots and examples into a deck that I posted on SlideShare. I’d welcome people’s thoughts on what’s missing or what are the key pain points from a diabetes perspective (e.g., not integrated devices).

While I was doing my research, I found a few interesting things worth sharing.

Several interesting studies:

Some good slide decks:

Additionally a few videos:

I also posted some diabetes infographics on my blog – https://georgevanantwerp.com/2012/12/13/more-diabetes-infographics/

And, while I started to pull together a list of diabetes twitter accounts below, you can follow @AskManny’s list with 360 people already tagged in it. https://twitter.com/askmanny/diabetes

My starting twitter List:

Books / Articles, Care Management, Consumerism, Healthcare, Infographic, Innovation, PBM / Pharmacy, Research, Social Media, Technology, Value Propositions
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