Summary: "Healthcare: The Great Unlock"
In this video, Julie Yoo of a16z discusses how healthcare is now experiencing a “mass acceleration of opportunities for company creation” in care delivery.
• Acceleration of Tectonic Shifts
Some major changes in care delivery include products and services putting the consumer or patient directly at the center as a real distribution channel; a push towards greater interoperability of data and transactional systems; and automation of repetitive tasks that historically have been done manually.
The pandemic has accelerated the progress and instead of 10 years, these changes will only take two to three years to play out, which will impact data flows and operations.
• Industry Dislocation
Supply-side dislocation – hospitals and providers are doubling down on core essential services, and
Competition for traditional providers is coming nationwide and through all channels (texts, video, home visits. Labor growth is reversed forcing the need to do more with less.
Demand side – Because of mass unemployment and loss of employer-sponsored health benefits, affordability will be a focus for consumers.
• Rewiring of the Value Chain
Instead of fragmented care, digital-first providers are focusing on best-in-class care to specific patient populations instead of a one-size-fits-all.
• Shifting Center of Gravity of Data
The center of gravity of interoperability efforts needs to shift to being inclusive of digital health and ancillary providers and the data they are creating.
• Regulation as a Catalyst
Top-down regulatory mandates make change happen and have been a powerful catalyst for the creation of major healthcare platforms: “…several critical regulatory tailwinds around telehealth reimbursement, physician state licensure, and interoperability” are increasing new opportunities.
• Opportunities for Startups
To create more cost-effective healthcare delivery, we need to have an engineering-oriented mindset of deploying reusable components and “codified learnings for a 10x level of scale and efficiency” by using technology as an amplification mechanism for learning, automation, and repeatable processes.
• New Operating System for Care Delivery
With these changes, a new infrastructure is needed, one that treats patients as the primary end user and has flexible and scalable data models and is wired for connectivity between providers, payors, patients and devices, and also automate repetitive tasks.
• Patient Data Liquidity
Current methods of collecting patient information are inefficient and costly, but new technology make it possible to move to a system that can assemble a full patient narrative in real-time from a networked set of data suppliers. It would be beneficial not only for care delivery but also in the life sciences and clinical research spaces.
• Supply Demand Matching at National Scale
What wasn’t thought possible pre-pandemic is happening now due to virtual operations, changes in regulation, and economic turmoil among providers and consumers. New regulations have eliminated geographic boundaries and instead of the local level, we can think about it on the national scale.
Listen to Julie Yoo talk more about the great unlock.