Digital Health Forward

In our latest episode, I had a chance to chat with Sari Kaganoff, General Manager of Consulting at Rock Health. As GM of Consulting, Sari advises healthcare and life sciences companies on digital health strategy. Founded in 2010 by HBS alumni Halle Tecco and Nate Gross, Rock Health is an early stage venture fund that supports startups working in digital health and has an advisory services business that supports enterprise companies. Rock Health keeps a pulse on the digital health industry, publishing annual reports on digital health funding, consumer adoption, equity in digital health and many other topics and also convenes leaders at industry events, including Rock Health Summit and Digital Health Top 50.

Sari shares insights on the growth and evolution of the digital health industry: from modernization/digitization to fundamentally re-thinking how care is delivered. We chat about how to distinguish between noise vs. signal in an increasingly crowded space, the most promising areas for innovation, and her advice to digital health entrepreneurs.

Prior to Rock Health, Sari worked at McKinsey & Company for seven years where she co-led McKinsey’s Health Tech Network and Patient Experience Domain. Prior to McKinsey she received an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Before her MBA she worked at a healthcare startup, was an equities trader at a fintech startup, and earned an undergraduate degree in Technology and Communications from Michlalah Jerusalem College.

Today, I had a chance to chat with Dr. Jeff De Flavio, Founder of Groups Recover Together. Groups Recover Together is the leading provider of value-based opiate addiction treatment, and was founded on the mission of making treatment for opioid addiction respectful, accessible, and affordable. Groups has over 60 locations and has over 6000+ patients per week in treatment. 

In this episode, Jeff shares his founder story: why and how he built Groups to treat opiate addiction. We discuss the origins of the opioid crisis in the United States, why group therapy is a core tenet of treatment addiction, and what is required of other stakeholders (e.g., health systems, government) to fix one of the most troubling systemic healthcare issues facing our country today.

In this episode, Tushar Mehrotra, SVP of Analytics at Optum, shares his perspectives on the power of data and analytics in healthcare delivery. Tushar chats about his journey from McKinsey to Optum, Optum's approach to health system partnerships, and the most promising advancements in digital health. 

Optum, a part of UnitedHealthGroup, is powering modern health care by connecting and serving the whole health system across 150 countries. Optum combines cutting-edge technology, the world’s largest health care database and vast expertise to improve health care delivery, quality and efficiency. Optum currently serves more than 100,000 physicians, practices and other health care facilities, as well as 127 million individual consumers.

In this episode, Dan Kennedy, who leads Strategy and Corporate Development at Kyruus, shares his perspective on how technology can improve patient access in healthcare. Kyruus, an industry leader in the patient access space, provides search, scheduling and data management solutions to over 300,000 providers across 65+ health systems.

In this episode, Carolyn Witte, co-founder and CEO of Tia, shares her story as a founder, leader and healthcare innovator in building a next-generation women's health platform. Carolyn chats about inequities and challenges we face in women's healthcare, her lightbulb moments as a founder and Tia's approach to whole-woman care.