May 14, 2012

Did you miss last week’s discount on Health Innovation Summit tickets? We’ve got your back. Through Friday at 5 PM PST, use the code ‘chaching’ for 25% off.
And read below for big headlines, including a monster $435M acquisition of the largest private Medicare exchange.

Headlines

Will Crowdfunding Replace Angel Funding?
Health Tech Capital

The VCs Who Are Investing in Health IT
Forbes

Finding Diseases faster, with a Brand-new Kind of Blood Test
FastCo

Melinda Gates’ New Crusade: Investing Billions in Women’s Health
The Daily Beast

Strategic Healthcare Investors’ Investment Thesis
TechCrunch

A Video Game Where Players Help Real Doctors Diagnose Malaria
The Atlantic

Trend: Wearable Health Devices on the Rise
mobihealthnews

Health Care spending in California: Who Pays?
California HealthCare Foundation

A doctor’s eye view of Silicon Valley
Xconomy

Docphin’s dashboard for doctors expands nation

TechCrunch

Funding & acquisitions

EveryMove raised $2.6M for their health rewards system. GeekWire

Extend Health will be acquired by Towers Watson & Co for $435M Reuters

 
 
Personalized medicine frequently refers to the incorporation of genomic and molecular profiling data into pharmaceutical treatment of diseases such as cancer. But personalization is a market trend that is applicable beyond medical treatment of disease: it is a model that can be applied to a broad range of consumer health products and services, and companies–from Fortune 500s to startups–are taking notice.  Rock Health looks at this trend more closely in its most recent Rock Report, Taking Health Personally: Personalization as a Consumer Health Trend.

We synthesized qualitative information, like interviews with leaders and entrepreneurs in the space, as well as quantitative data from industry research, to get a better sense of what personalized health actually means to consumers and how it manifests in the marketplace.

May 7, 2012

We’re stoked to announce our next Health Innovation Summit, at the fabulous W Hotel in San Francisco on August 28th. And just for you, dear Rock Weekly readers, we’re offering a special discount for early birds. Sign up using the code “getstheworm” for 50% off through the end of the week.

In other news, last week was abuzz with news from the FDA, new insights into memory loss, blood tests and loads of funding. Read on for all the goods.

Headlines

What the FDA Promises to Do About Obesity
The Atlantic

Computer Use & Exercise May Reduce the Odds of Memory Lossy for the Next Five Years
The Atlantic

Finding Diseases Faster with a Brand-New Kind of Blood Test
FastCoExist

Pitting Employees Against Each Other… For Health
Wall Street Journal

Facebook is Urging Members to Add Organ Donor Status
New York Times

Health Insurers are Giving $1.3B Back to Consumers & Employers This Summer
Reuters

Chart: More People Have Access to Mobile Than Electricity
Business Insider

Health Spending is Flattening Out
New York Times

Funding

Watch the full video below, or read on for our recap

There is no question that the current healthcare system has seen a shift to methods that neglect the emotions of patients and their families, pushing aside experience for speed and efficiency.  However, if we truly want to revolutionize healthcare, we need to not only improve the processes, but also address the needs of the patient.

Last Thursday, we were privileged to host a pioneer in the field of patient experience, both in her role as Chief Experience Officer of the Cleveland Clinic and currently as the CEO of Experia Health, Dr. Bridget Duffy. She shared guiding principles designed to help entrepreneurs build businesses and products that are empathetic, memorable and put the patient at the center. Read on for her pearls of wisdom.

Mentors

Bridget believes that in order to be successful, you must find a mentor (or mentors) that will help guide you through your work journey, and always have your back. She explains that the entrepreneurial path can at times be very lonely, and those mentors are important to help you through difficult periods in your career.

Focus on what matters most

Listen to your patient or customer’s voice closely, and understand how they are feeling.  Bridget gave the example of the hospital gown, which patients felt stripped them of their dignity from the moment they stepped into the hospital room.  So, Bridget took this feedback and collaborated with Diane Von Furstenberg with the intention of redesigning the gowns.  What developed was a new hospital gown that restored the patient’s dignity and respect, rehumanizing the healthcare experience.

Take a walk in your customer’s shoes

Don’t just listen; really understand the nuances of your patient’s experience.  She explained how one hospital CEO spent days walking in the shoes of her employees, to truly understand the hospital workflows.  She learned that the employees were so bogged down with processes and technology that they had little time to spend on patient experience.  By physically placing herself in the environment, she learned that in order to optimize the patient experience, she first had to optimize the employee experience.  What she needed was process improvement to ease the burden of the employee’s job, and get them back to the bedside.

Efficiency + empathy = healing process

Bridget’s third pearl of wisdom is encompassed by the above equation. She believes that the healthcare industry often only looks at how to save time and money.  In addition, the industry should also focus on infusing empathy within the spectrum of care.  If we can do both, then we can greatly improve the human experience.

The sacred moment

An example of this equation in practice is what Bridget calls the “sacred moment”.  In a typical hospital, when a patient is admitted they are bombarded with forms, questions about their living will and medication instruction.  In response to this, Bridget and her team implemented a program, where upon admission, the patient was asked questions relating to their emotional and psychological needs, like what is your biggest concern, how do you like your room, do you have a family member you would like to serve as your health navigator, and how is the best way to reach them?  This way, the patient felt more comfortable and calm, while still efficiently admitted into the ward, collectively improving the overall experience.

Take leaps of faith

Bridget invited our entrepreneurs to have the courage to go out a take risks. And to trust their intuition when it comes to the pieces they think are missing in the current health industry, because more often than not, these are the ideas that will make transformative change. She implored them to not fear the unknown and squash ideas in the spirit of being safe.

Dare to be different

The dreams of yesterday are the realities of today, and if it weren’t for those people who dared to tackle those different challenges, then we wouldn’t be where we are today.  On that note, Bridget asks that we protect the mavericks.  She explains that people will try to undercut the mavericks because they are on the cutting edge of innovation.  Change is sometimes hard for the medical world to accept, so having the back of other innovators is vital for the progress of this industry.

On Friday April 20^th, Rock Health joined forces with Sage Bionetworks and Ashoka to host a special evening following the Sage Bionetworks Commons Congress.  The party started after the two-day conference, which covered the progress of data sharing platforms and how they are improving the healthcare experience.  Five minute pitches were given by a variety of speakers, inspiring our audience to think of innovative new ways to approach the data collaboration in health care.  Each speaker told a single story, posing unique questions for the attendees to ponder.  Watch the ignite-style speeches below, check out the topics for yourself and enjoy!

Our Favorites: 

Research 2.0  Bas Bloem, Parkinson Net

Is it bad that I get all of my medical advice from reddit? John Schrom, Rock Health

Telehealth Legislation and Internet Scale Geoffrey Clapp, Rock Health

Power to the Patient: the Convergence of Genomics, Technology and Social Networking Kathy Giusti, Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation

We are all patients Susan Love, Susan Love Research Foundation

Who needs experts: Less talk more thinking Francois Grey, CERN

The Story of Meredith Phil Bourne, PloS ONE, SDSC

Can we be One-minded to cure brain disorders? Magali Haas, One Mind

People in Petri dishes Krishanu Saha, MIT

Call for Collaboration and Establishment of Oncology Preclinical Translation Medicine Experimental Platform Markus Warmuth, H3 Biomedicine

Reading rots the mind Aled Edwards, Structural Genetics Consortium

Analytics Without Endpoints: Predicting Disease Trajectories Larry Hunter, University of Colorado, Denver

Set the Default to Open Heather Joseph, SPARC

Accelerating Translational Science Tom Insel, NIH

Genomes for Me and Not for Thee Misha Angrist, Duke University

Beyond My Genome to Better Health Iya Khalil, GNS Healthcare

Science in the Cloud Joseph Hellerstein, Google

Reinventing learning through research Francois Taddei, INSERM Paris

#1 fans

The American Telemedicine Association conference, the world’s largest telemedicine and mHealth conference, took place on April 29th through May 1st in San Jose. Sponsored by Qualcomm Life, Rock Health hosted a happy hour to celebrate the launch of 2net and the ATA meeting.

Jae Chung of @GoBalto, Rick Valencia (@bootstrapped) and Jack Young of Qualcomm Life

Musical interlude:

Rick Valencia works the crowd

The 2net Platform is a cloud-based system designed to be universally-interoperable with different medical devices and applications, enabling end-to-end wireless connectivity and allowing medical device users and their physicians or caregivers to easily access biometric data.

Watch the full workshop below, or read on for a full recap.

As an entrepreneur, you pour your time and energy into your company, and couldn’t possibly imagine any other way to design your product, right? But what if your customer doesn’t agree?  They are the ones paying the bills, so maybe you should listen to what they want.  While gathering customer input is extremely tedious and sometimes difficult to do, Pete Koomen of Optimize.ly argues it is the most important part of entrepreneurship.  So, we invited Pete to discuss the process of gathering user feedback.

According to Pete, the manner in which you approach listening to your users varies tremendously depending upon what stage your company is in.  So, lets start by looking at a very early stage company.  At this point, your product is barely there and your user-base is few and far between; but you truly believe you have the next BIG idea.  Quite bluntly, Pete demonstrates that while your idea may seem great, it’s probably not.  First and foremost, you must find 10 potential users, and put viable mocks in front of them.  And by mocks, Pete means mocks, not fully realized products!  He talked about how one of his greatest mistakes was working for months perfecting one of his early stage companies only to find that his users were using it completely differently than he believed they would.  So stick to simple mocks orwireframes.

Once you have developed a couple of good mocks, put them in front of your 10 users, and talk to them.  Make sure you understand what problem you are going to solve in their life.  Ask them when and how they would use your product.  And finally determine how they would find out about it.  By performing this exercise you can save yourself valuable time and effort by understanding what your potential customers actually want/need, and actually build on a good idea.

So you’ve taken your 10 initial customers’ feedback and gone back to the drawing board.  You are in the beta stage of your company, with a very basic product and a handful of users.  At this point, analytics are not important; you don’t have enough users to follow statistics.  Instead, talk to your customers and ask them questions.  You do not need to worry about scaling at this stage, and instead can keep it personal and build a really loyal fan base.  A great example of this comes from Survey Monkey, who actually wrote hand written notes to their initial users.

During this stage, don’t be afraid to sell early and sell often.  Pete believes that entrepreneurs are so concerned with building a large customer base quickly that they forget that they are building a revenue-based product.  Instead, Pete believes you should start selling from day one.  And sell it yourself!  You should be the one who is asking the customer to pay for it so that you can tell if your prices are too high, too low, or right on the money.  Also, paying customers will be a lot more discerning as to how they feel about your product.

Finally, make sure to talk to your users when they stop using your product. During this time you should attempt to understand what was it about the experience that caused them to leave, and what you can do to fix that.

If you are truly listening to user feedback, and refining your product, you will eventually start to see great growth in your company.  During this growth stage, your product should be polished and your users will be growing.  Now is the time when analytics matter.  You have many users, making talking to them individually impossible and a poor use of your time.  Instead, Pete recommends utilizing analytics programs to understand the needs and desires of your users. He suggests Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Flurry or Kontagent as resources.

Ultimately, Pete emphasizes the importance of continued testing.  Your customer’s wants are constantly changing, and in order to continue to put your best product forward, you need to regularly receive user feedback.  A great way to do this is A/B testing on your website.  A cool tool for this is Pete’s Optimizely, which easily gives you the ability to test different websites against each other.

If you follow all the steps outlined by Pete above, and truly listen to your users, then your product will be great and you will have lots of users.  You will have reached success!