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by Mike Supeck, CTO
The rate of healthcare innovation has been accelerating, and there have been so many discoveries and new applications lately, especially in the worlds of artificial intelligence and machine learning. I’m excited to see these deployed in ways that can help providers and institutions focus more on the patient.
Returning the main focus of healthcare to the patient is one of our key missions at Enzee, and I’ve been following lots of other healthcare tech companies working toward the same end goal. Here are five companies that I think are doing things that are especially exciting.
This is a company developing a product that has far-reaching benefits for patients and providers, and is one of those that makes you wonder what we’ve been doing without it. Their technology is AI-based and has use cases that include helping providers with documentation and generating data-based insights for insurance companies and care management organizations to help understand risk and population health trends. But the piece I’m most enthralled with speaks directly to benefitting patients.
Their site says that patients forget up to 80% of the information they receive from doctors. This technology provides documentation of the information shared at visits, as well as detailed follow-up plans and even automated reminders for follow-on appointments and medication. This would be helpful not just for the average patient, but especially for anyone with complex medical situations or chronic issues that require multiple providers, medications, and appointments.
This company just raised a big investment round led by Andreessen Horowitz, which is really exciting, but that’s because their technology is something that is clearly useful, especially in the trend toward democratizing healthcare.
Turquoise Health offers a price comparison service for elective procedures that lets patients see what each facility charges for the same procedure. It’s another example of where healthcare companies are starting to step in and mine the excess of data coming out of hospitals and show it in ways that are actually useful to patients. I foresee several additional moves toward healthcare transparency in the near future, and additional agency for patients advocating for themselves and their loved ones in what has traditionally been a very impenetrable service area.
Qventus is an automation software company that integrates with Epic, Cerner and other EHR Systems to implement artificial intelligence-based solutions to do things like unlock more OR time and then strategically fill the time, which gives more patients access to the surgical care they need - and avoid delays in getting care. Qventus' real-time automation platform uses patient-level EHR data to analyze historical trends and predict specific OR times that are likely to go unused, and which surgeon and case is the best fit for a specific available OR time block. The platform also uses market data to help leaders benchmark performance compared to others in their service area.
The platform works in other areas as well, such as automating discharge planning, and it’s one more great example of how companies are finding ways to utilize the wealth of data available in the healthcare setting to economize documentation, eliminate redundancy, and make workflows more efficient – all in service of the patient.
This company is utilizing individual patient genetic information to predict which medications will be most effective for their specific molecular makeup based on the analysis of huge sets of historical patient data.
I’m fascinated by this idea, because for years, the healthcare industry has gathered enormous amounts of data on individual patients, but it’s taken a while for technology to progress to a point where it can all be mined, analyzed, and effectively utilized to benefit patients moving forward. This company is doing exactly that - utilizing historical information about how certain genetic populations with particular conditions have reacted to various treatments and making predictions about how a specific patient should best be treated as a result.
Healthcare innovation is just scratching the surface in finding patterns and correlations and data within patient outcomes to determine how certain treatments affect those outcomes. I think this is the number one place that AI can be applied in order to improve outcomes and the overall quality of healthcare.
This is a company that’s developed a targeting platform for medical device companies to more effectively sell into healthcare organizations. And while on its face that might not seem hugely beneficial to patients, it is.
Innovative tech companies like Enzee can struggle to get access to the decision makers at huge hospitals – the hospitals that would most benefit from the solutions these companies are selling. Innovative technology is often created at small startup companies that are bootstrapped or minimally financed, and don’t have the resources that bigger companies do. A platform that streamlines the process and helps innovative solutions find the people within these hospitals and clinics who need those solutions, ultimately helps patients.
By making the sales process easier and faster, AcuityMD is making sure that no patient comes out of a complex procedure only to find that there was a better product or device available to simplify the treatment or improve outcomes, but that their hospital just didn’t have it yet.
There are so many incredible companies operating in the startup space and beyond within healthcare, all of whom are striving to bring the benefit of innovative technology to bear on patient outcomes. I can’t help but be excited by companies like these, and am thrilled to be part of one doing similarly incredible things for the healthcare industry.
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