Being one of the first major healthcare conferences in Los Angeles in a while, we spent the better part of last week at ViVE, February 25-28, an event where “digital health executives go to do business.” After a break from the Rebel Yell of Billy Idol during ViVE’s Industry Night, here are some of our observations:
- Conversations were either serious about the here and now – what is the ROI next month? – or future orientated, mostly about what to do with AI.
- There is budget again – but money isn’t just sloshing around. From investors to health systems, the wallets are starting to gently, ease open, but with a highly cautious approach. Maybe this hesitancy is because some got burned after the go-go years of digital health, or maybe because it’s an election year, but no one was in a hurry to make big decisions. Provider financials are improving, albeit slowly.
- More tangible conversations about value-based care were noticeable. While fee for service still dominates, there were many more conversations about population health and reaching underserved groups. These collaborations are appearing stronger, especially among Medicare Advantage and direct to employer risk-sharing relationships.
For Xealth, we were thrilled to be the official WiFi sponsor again this year — connecting people to the internet, just like we connect health systems with patients. We were also proud of many of our Friends of Xealth who took the stage, including Dr. Bradley Crotty, Chief Digital Officer for The Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin health system, and Eve Cunningham, Chief of Virtual Care and Digital Health for Providence, for the “Freaky Friday: Swapping Hospital-Based Care with Virtual Modalities.” This session explored digital-first care delivery using such tools as remote monitoring devices and wearable technology to foster a more proactive and personalized approach to healthcare outside traditional hospital settings.
Other sessions that caught our attention were Mary Beth Navarra-Sirio, Vice President, Market Development, UPMC Enterprises, discussing “Diversified Dollars,” Sara Vaezy, EVP, Chief Strategy & Digital Officer, Providence, discussing “Health Systems’ Big Bet on Innovation,” and Dr. Rasu Shrestha’s, Chief Innovation and Commercialization Officer, EVP, Advocate Health, two sessions “Fast-Tracking the Future: A 50% Decline in Cancer Death by 2047” and “High Quality that isn’t an Act.”
During these discussions, valid points were made that innovation needs to involve physicians in the process. Look at clinician concerns and then how tech can help address friction. Further, the tolerance for point solutions is low. There’s value in integrating several solutions in a platform tech so only one integration goes into the hospital system. These are all great points to consider as we build the next generation of healthcare innovation.
As buyers (Provider, Payer, Employer) look for ‘platforms’ vs point solutions, more efforts are underway at industry aggregation strategies. Collective Health promoting their Employer-focused “Partner Collective.”, Amazon’s “Health Conditions Programs” and likely expansion of vendors beyond Omada. Evernorth’s “Digital Health Formulary” and CVS doubling down on “Best in Class Point Solutions”. All these payer/employer focused efforts seem to suffer from low employee/member engagement. We’re excited to see more Provider/Payer collaborations where Xealth is helping to significantly expand patient adoption (50-500%) in certain chronic care use cases.
Food truck conversations focused primarily on AI’s role in healthcare, investment, Change Healthcare…and, yes, Billy Idol.
Next up, SXSW, March 8 in Austin, where CEO Mike McSherry is co-presenting with Oracle on “Aligning Healthcare with Consumer Ease”. Also at HIMSS24, March 11-15 in Orlando, with the theme “Creating Tomorrow’s Health.” We look forward to our COO and Co-Founder Aaron Sheedy joining ChristianaCare’s Dr. Timothy Shiuh on stage to discuss “Using Digital to Fill White Space Between Appointments,” on Thursday, March 14, 2:30pm.
During this session, Dr. Shiuh and Aaron will share how digital health presents a substantial opportunity in empowering and engaging patients with their health and care teams in between appointments, and how ChristianaCare chose to implement digital health programs, leveraging a digital health platform to organize, distribute and help measure program success. Using digital to fill the white space that occurs between episodic visits and deliver actionable insights for continuous care, patient retention and treatment adherence stood to benefit. ChristianaCare is currently building out a digital formulary for specific clinical lines. Attendees will learn, how to:
- Evaluate strategies and pathways for digitally engaging patients
- Create an organizational foundation for determining and measuring success
- Discuss utilization by tying into existing clinical workflows
Reach out to marketing@xealth.io to set a meeting up with our team if you’re attending HIMSS and want to learn how to make digital health an asset. Xealth helps strengthen provider relationships with our patients and partners – scaling and automating digital health efforts.
Xealth works with many of the leading health systems to bring digital health tools into clinician workflows, using automation where logical, making them and the data they offer more accessible, accelerating the benefits to patients, providers and the organization.
We hope to see you soon!