Innovation Rising, Presented by Healthbox

In this week’s special bonus episode, we had the honor of speaking with Professor Craig Garthwaite, Associate Professor of Strategy and the Director of Healthcare at Kellogg. Professor Garthwaite is an applied microeconomist whose research examines the effects of government policies and social phenomena with a focus on the health and biopharmaceutical sectors. His recent work has focused on the private sector effects of the Affordable Care Act, including the labor supply effects of large insurance expansions, the changes in uncompensated hospital care resulting from public insurance expansions, and the responses of non-profit hospitals to financial shocks. In prior work, he has examined the impact of government cash assistance programs on health and the effect of changes in expected mortality from the emergence of crack-cocaine markets on educational attainment. Professor Garthwaite has testified before the United States House of Representatives and several state legislatures on matters related to the minimum wage and health care reforms.

Professor Garthwaite also studies questions of pricing and innovation in the biopharmaceutical sector. In this area, he has examined the effect of expanded patent protection on pricing in the Indian pharmaceutical market, the innovation response of United States pharmaceutical firms to increases in demand, and the relationship between health insurance expansions and high drug prices.

His research has appeared in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics and Health Affairs, and you have likely seen his work and interviews in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Vox. He has also appeared as a guest on various television and radio shows such as Nightly Business Report and NPR Marketplace. In 2015, Professor Garthwaite was named one of Poet and Quants 40 Best under 40 Business School Professors.   

A few of the topics that Chuck and Professor Garthwaite cover in the episode include:

• Professor Garthwaite’s background and how he arrived at his position at Kellogg
• The causes behind why we are seeing a recent trend in vertical integration among players in the healthcare space
• The incentive alignments between mergers such as CVS and Aetna and what the lay consumer might not understand about the benefits of such a merger
• Professor Garthwaite’s thoughts around what can be done about the high drug prices in the US
• Professor Garthwaite’s perspective on the Amazon- Berkshire-JPMorgan health venture and ideas around what these 3 companies aiming to achieve together
• Many point to misaligned physician incentives or the increase in diabetes or people not leading healthy lifestyles, that lead to the high healthcare costs in the US but Professor Garthwaite shares other factors to consider in this debate as well
• The tradeoff between innovation and access to care and how Professor Garthwaite defines innovation
• The type of “disruption in healthcare” Professor Garthwaite thinks truly has merit and will have impact
• Professor Garthwaite’s current research on Hospitals as Insurers of Last Resort and how hospitals may not be passing along all uncompensated-care costs to other parties such as hospital employees or privately insured patients

Connect with Professor Garthwaite:

• Kellogg Profile
• Professor Garthwaite on Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Healthcare at Kellogg

Connect with Healthbox

• Follow us on Twitter and @ChuckFeerick
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]
• Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or Libsyn

This week’s bonus interview welcomes Lee Shapiro of 7Wire Ventures to the podcast. Lee is Managing Partner at 7wire Ventures, an investment firm he co-founded over a decade ago. The fund’s focus is on building companies that empower connected informed health consumers to improved outcomes, facilitating the change from sick-care to wellcare.  He is active with the 7wire portfolio and the boards of Livongo Health, Ayogo Health, Carebox, Zest Health, ConsejoSano, Modern Teacher and Education Funding Partners. He also serves on the boards of Medidata Solutions [NASDAQ:MDSO], Tivity Health [NASDAQ:TVTY], and Aptus Health (a Merck subsidiary [NYSE:MRK]).

 As President of Allscripts [NASDAQ:MDRX] from 2001 through 2012, his leadership was central to over $4B in mergers, acquisitions and financings. He oversaw the company's strategy, international operations, business development and partnerships, health plan initiatives and entrepreneurial business investments.

He is a member of The World Innovation Network Board (TWIN, formerly known as Northwestern Kellogg KIN), the University of Chicago Innovation Fund Advisory Committee, The Samsung Strategic Advisory Board, The Qualcomm Life Advisory Council and the advisory board for the Center of Digital Innovation in Digital Health in Beer-Sheva, Israel.

Lee is a member of the National Board of Directors of The American Heart Association and has served as an officer and director of the Gastro-Intestinal Research.

Also joining this episode was special guest, and Healthbox President, Neil Patel.

In this Episode, Chuck, Neil, and Lee discuss:

• Lee’s early career, how he became President of AllScripts and some of the biggest lessons he learned at Allscripts
• How Lee realized and arrived at the investment thesis for 7Wire Ventures?
• Lee’s vision in creating, essentially, a 2-sided market, with startups on one side and 7wire’s strategic LPs on the other, which includes such names as  Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, Memorial Hermann, and Rush University Medical Center, to name a few.
• With such a diverse set of strategic LPs, Lee’s philosophy on how to engage them in the investment process and in portfolio support
• Lee’s thoughts around innovation in Chronic care management and if, due to the recent emergence of advanced IOT and AI, we are on the cusp of seeing some major changes in this area
• What gave Lee the conviction early on to invest in a crowded disease management space, having participated in many of Livongo’s early funding rounds
• Lee’s approach to looking for and identifying new innovative healthcare business models and how the firm proactively looks to foster these types of models
• What Lee thinks is special about having his firm based here in the Midwest

Connect with Healthbox

• Follow us on Twitter and @ChuckFeerick
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]
• Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or Libsyn

Connect with Lee:

• 7Wire Ventures
• 7Wire Twitter
• LinkedIn

This week’s episode welcomes Erik Pupo, managing director in the Accenture Health Client Service Group, for the final part in our series around Blockchain Innovation in Healthcare. Erik is Accenture’s Healthcare Blockchain lead for North America, where he leads sales and implementation efforts with Accenture’s payer, provider, and life science customers on how to use blockchain technology to improve efficiencies within their businesses.

Erik has worked for over 20 years in healthcare, including senior positions in federal, state, and commercial healthcare programs and initiatives, and served in key leadership roles within the healthcare community. A speaker and thought-leader on trends influencing the healthcare industry, Eric holds leadership advisory positions within the American Health Information Management Association, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, where he also became a fellow in 2012, and the Healthcare Financial Management Association. Previously, he worked at Deloitte where he led several health IT initiatives for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA).

In this Episode, Chuck and Erik cover:

• Erik’s background and how he became interested in the blockchain
• Erik’s team and his role inside Accenture and the types of projects and thought leadership they produce
• How one “builds a blockchain”
• Who can actually touch or use the blockchain in a practical sense
• If different blockchains are interoperable with one another or can they be adjusted to be
• Blockchain innovation in the pharmaceutical industry
• How the blockchain can be used to help underserved populations and rural communities
• Erik’s advice to entrepreneurs building  technology in the Blockchain space and to healthcare organizations who want to implement Blockchain technology

Connect with Erik:

• Accenture
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Healthbox

• Follow us on Twitter and @ChuckFeerick
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or Libsyn

Our guest today, John Bass, joins the podcast to talk about the use of the blockchain in healthcare and how it will drive innovation, now, and in the future. John is CEO of Hashed Health, a healthcare blockchain innovation firm focused on building the new digital infrastructure for healthcare. John has over 20 years of experience in healthcare technology with expertise in shared operating systems that build trust, transparency, and incentives across health networks.

Prior to Hashed Health, John was CEO at InVivoLink, a care management start-up which sold to HCA in 2015. Since then, John has been a leading voice in the development of the global healthcare blockchain market and is focused on community development, enterprise services, and blockchain solutions development.

Topics we cover in this episode:

• John’s background and focus on improving patient outcomes
• When the blockchain actually came to be and when and why it piqued John’s interest
• What the blockchain is
• The types of problems using the blockchain in healthcare aims to solve and how Hashed Health aims to accelerate this process
• How the blockchain will truly be disruptive in healthcare

Connect with John:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Connect with Hashed Health:

• Website
• Twitter
• Resources
• • https://chat.hashedhealth.com
  • https://hashedhealth.com/blockchain-healthcare-resources/

Connect with Healthbox

• Follow us on Twitter and @ChuckFeerick
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or Libsyn

Our guest today, Adrian James, joins the podcast to talk about innovation in the chronic care management space for the second episode in our series on this topic. Adrian is Co-Founder and President of Omada Health, a digital behavioral medicine company using behavior science to help people change their habits, improve their health, and reduce their risk of chronic disease.

Prior to co-founding Omada Health, Adrian led the medical products division of IDEO’s health practice where he focused on business development and client relationships, ranging from industry startups to Fortune 500 healthcare companies. Adrian also holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

In this episode, Chuck and Adrian discuss:

• Adrian’s background, career at IDEO, and what led him to start Omada Health
• How the Omada Health platform works and how the company approaches taking a process that was typically done in person and delivering it digitally, while ensuring compliance and success
• The types of outcomes Omada has been able to achieve to date
• The importance of users on the Omada platform to be part of the communities within the platform and the importance of interpersonal touchpoints
• How Omada takes a user-centered design approach to make the product “sticky” and to keep people coming back to it
• What it was like raising the first money for the company and what was going on in the early stages of development
• How Omada plans to deploy the $50M recently raised in the company’s Series C round
• Adrian talks about Omada’s recently launched randomized trial of digital diabetes care in partnership with the University of Nebraska Medical Center to further gauge the efficacy of its program, which aims to keep those at risk for diabetes from developing the disease
• • "The PREDICTS trial is the next step in that evolution—it will track a range of healthcare and other outcomes, while establishing the highest level of clinical evidence for the effectiveness of a digitally-delivered intensive behavioral counseling program."
• Adrian’s advice to early entrepreneurs trying to innovate in the digital health space and what he thinks are key things to strive for or be on the lookout for

Connect with Adrian:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Connect with Omada Health:

• Website
• Twitter

Connect with Healthbox

• Follow us on Twitter and @ChuckFeerick
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]
• Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or Libsyn

Our guest today, Anand Parikh, General Counsel and Head of Business Development at Virta Health, joins the podcast for the first part in our series on Innovation in Chronic Disease Management. Anand began his career as Senate Fellow for the California State Senate and a clerk for the United States District Court. He then practiced at Morrison & Foerster LLP before joining Virta in 2015 as the company’s Chief of Staff, and 5th employee, and moving into his current role in 2016.

Virta is a treatment that safely and sustainably reverses type 2 diabetes without medications or surgery. Virta achieves this through innovations in nutritional biochemistry, data science, and digital tools combined with clinical expertise to shift the diabetes treatment paradigm from management to reversal. The company’s mission is to reverse type 2 diabetes in 100 million people by 2025 and they have some exciting clinical evidence and proven patient results to support that goal.

In this episode, we cover:

• Anand's background and his career and what led him to Virta
• The evidence that existed behind what Virta was trying to achieve when he joined the company
• The story of how the company came to be, how it was founded, and where  the original business model came from
• Anand’s main responsibilities as General Counsel and Head of Business Development
• How the Virta Health model works from a diet and coaching perspective
• How Virta's technology platform has evolved over time
• How Virta leverages the data collected to iterate on the platform
• How Virta has taken something like diabetes treatment, which is inherently a high-touch and personal, and added a technology layer while ensuring not only patient buy-in but compliance
• The uses of behavioral economics Virta Health employs to drive patient change
• Anand tells us about the exciting results of Virta Health’s recent 1 Year Clinical trial
• The main goals of Virta’s recent fundraise

Connect with Anand:

• Virta Health
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Virta

• Website
• Twitter
• Effectiveness and Safety of a Novel Care Model for the Management of Type 2 Diabetes at 1 Year

Connect with Healthbox

• Follow us on Twitter
• Subscribe and leave a review in iTunes
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]
• Listen to this episode on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Libsyn

Happy new year from the Healthbox and the Podcast team! We are working hard on some great new series coming up in 2018 but before releasing those, we sat down with Healthbox President Neil Patel to hear about what he’s seeing in the healthcare innovation space and what he is predicting for 2018.

In this episode, Chuck and Neil cover:

• New podcasts series that will be coming early this year, including
• • Non-emergent medical transportation
  • The use of the Blockchain in healthcare
  • Innovation in Chronic care disease management
• A discussion around innovation and regulation from a government standpoint, including the FDA’s 2018 roadmap, which includes:
• • Four strategic policy areas: addiction crises, innovation, consumer empowerment and the FDA workforce
  • • Reduce the burden of addiction crises that are threatening American families
    • Leverage innovation and competition to improve healthcare, broaden access, and advance public health goals
    • Empower consumers to make better and more informed decisions about their diets and health; and expand the opportunities to use nutrition to reduce morbidity and mortality from disease
    • Strengthen FDA’s scientific workforce and its tools for efficient risk management
• What Neil is most excited about for healthcare innovation in 2018

Connect with Healthbox:

• Follow us on Twitter and @ChuckFeerick
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or Libsyn

Today’s guest, Jason Calacanis, joins host Chuck Feerick to talk about his new book “Angel”, what it takes to be a successful angel investor, and a variety of other topics.

Jason is a technology entrepreneur, angel investor, and the host of two very popular podcasts, This Week in Startups and Angel. He got his start in the world of startups in New York and his second company, Weblogs inc., was sold to AOL in 2005, after which Jason became a “scout” for top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. Since then, Jason has gone on to launch numerous ventures and is currently the founder of a series of conferences that bring entrepreneurs together with potential investors, frequently appears in the media, and most notably is a successful angel investor in over 100 companies, including both Thumbtack and Uber.

In this episode, Chuck and Jason discuss:

• Jason’s earliest role in New York with Silicon Alley reporter and what he learned about entrepreneurship in that process
• Jason’s first angel investment
• Why Jason decided to write a book, why now, and why he wants to give away all his best practices and secrets
• Where Jason says it is most important to be located geographically to be a great angel investor
• When meeting with a founder, what Jason believes are the most important things an aspiring angel should ask
• What Jason feels is the best way that angel investors can be helpful to their portfolio companies
• If Jason thinks that angel investors should stick to investing in the industries they know (e.g. should a doctor only invest in healthcare)?
• Regarding startup crowdfunding platforms, whether or not Jason feels these platforms are the best place for an angel investor to start and if some are better or safer than others
• What Jason thinks about ICOs
• What book, besides Angel, Jason thinks everyone should read
• Which of Jason’s investments he is most excited about right now

Connect with Jason:

• Twitter
• This Week in Startups
• Angel Podcast
• LAUNCH Festival
• LAUNCH Incubator
• Buy Jason’s book, Angel or on Amazon
• Jason's Private Syndicate

Connect with Healthbox:

• Follow us on Twitter and @ChuckFeerick
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]
• Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or Libsyn

This week’s episode is a special bonus episode recorded live at the 2017 Healthbox Fall Forum with three fantastic guests. The theme of the Fall Forum was Innovating Behavioral Change in Healthcare and each of our guests reflected on their biggest takeaways of the Forum and what they can do at their organizations with the knowledge they gained.

Featured in this episode are:

• Desert Horse-Grant, Senior Director, Research and Innovation at UCLA Health

• Alec Zopf, CTO of Wellth

• David Hochheiser, SVP Provider Networks & Healthcare Value at BCBS Louisiana
  • LinkedIn
  • BCBS Louisiana

Our guest today, Dr. Sam Volchenboum, is the Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Associate Chief Research Informatics Officer, and Director, Center for Research Informatics at University of Chicago Medicine. Dr. Volchenboum is an expert in pediatric cancers and blood disorders. He has a special interest in treating children with neuroblastoma, a tumor of the sympathetic nervous system.

In addition to caring for patients, Dr. Volchenboum studies ways to harness computers to enable research and foster innovation using large data sets. He directs the development of the International Neuroblastoma Risk Group Database project, which connects international patient data with external information such as genomic data and tissue availability. The Center he runs provides computational support for the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, including high-performance computing, applications development, bioinformatics, and access to the clinical research data warehouse. He is also currently collaborating with Google to use machine learning for better health care and has been written about in both Wired.com and the Washington Post. If all that wasn’t enough, Dr. Volchenboum is also co-founder of Litmus Health, a data science platform for early-stage clinical trials.

In this Episode, Chuck, new Healthbox team member and guest host Jessica, and Dr. Volchenboum discuss:

• Why Dr. Volchenboum chose to earn a Master’s in Biomedical Informatics from MIT and Harvard Medical School and how he merged that with his passion for computer science
• What the old way predictive modeling looked like and how data was made actionable, before the use of current applications of artificial intelligence
• What the U Chicago Medicine’s Center for Healthcare Delivery Science and Innovation is focused on and some of the biggest problems Dr. Volchenboum and his team are working to solve
• How Dr. Volchenboum’s collaboration with Google came to be, the big problems being tackled, and which of Google’s tools are being used
• As co-founder of Litmus Health, Dr. Volchenboum talks about the company and what spurred him to make the entrepreneurship leap
• What’s next for both Dr. Volchenboum’s Google collaboration and at Litmus Health

Connect with Dr. Volchenboum and his work:

• LinkedIn
• U Chicago Profile
• UChicago Medicine collaborates with Google to use machine learning for better health care  
• UChicago Medicine and Google — a data-driven duo to watch
• Data Commons to Support Pediatric Cancer Research
• Development and Validation of a Deep Learning Algorithm for Detection of Diabetic Retinopathy in Retinal Fundus Photographs
• • Blog post
• Litmus Health

Connect with Healthbox:

• Follow us on Twitter and @ChuckFeerick
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Have guest suggestions or topic ideas for the podcast? Send them to us at [email protected]

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or Libsyn