Manav Sevak is the (young and very smart) CEO of Memora Health. I must admit to thinking that their service was just a patient chatbot, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s digitizing care workflows that touch both patients and of course the clinical care teams that support them–especially outside the walls of the hospital. They also collect a lot of patient data, and then guide their patients through their complex journey. Manav dives deep into the product and shows us a tad of the secret sauce behind the relatively simple front end of the product. Memora raised $40m earlier this year ($50m total) with Transformation, A16z, Frist Cressey & more in the cap table. If you want to understand how technology is changing clinical workflows in health care, this is a fascinating session–Matthew Holt
The Next Health Economy
There’s a growing view in U.S. healthcare circles that the industry is on the cusp of remarkable – perhaps even revolutionary – transformation. At a recent summit sponsored by the Altarum Institute’s Center for Sustainable Health Spending, speaker after speaker returned to the theme that we are slowly but surely moving from a volume-based system (paying for stuff) to a value-based model (paying for results).
The health sector is moving toward the traditional economic principles of other industries. Revenues flow to businesses that are high quality, efficient and knowledgeable about customer desires. In other words, high performers reap the financial rewards, not those that are simply doing more. We at PwC describe this future state as the New Health Economy.
Several stars have aligned to make this shift possible. Cost pressures have turned attention to getting our money’s worth in healthcare. Technological advances such as cloud storage, mobile devices and data analytics provide the tools to deliver the right care to the right patient at the right time. And consumers today have both the freedom and responsibility that come with making more decisions and spending their own money.
What was striking at the Altarum summit was the widespread agreement on where American healthcare is headed. Speakers referenced the rise of myriad alternative payment programs, including overall spending growth limits in Massachusetts, site agnostic payments for specialty care such as oncology and provider bonuses tied to patient satisfaction.
