Doximity Dialer
April 15, 2017 Leave a comment
April 15, 2017 Leave a comment
Filed under Digital Health, Personal stories Tagged with apple, Apps, innovation, mobile, productivity, smartphone, Technology
November 12, 2014 Leave a comment
Filed under Clinical Informatics, Personal stories, Policy/Systems, Software Tagged with decision support, EHR, informatics
December 11, 2013 1 Comment
I recently had the fortunate opportunity to be part of the inaugural UCSF Lean Launchpad course, formed by Erik Lium and Stephanie Marrus at UCSF, founded by Steve Blank, and taught by Steve and our digital health cohort instructor, Abhas Gupta. This was a very intense and demanding ten week class that was not about reading and memorizing and taking tests, but about going out and talking to people; “getting out of the building,” as Steve famously says. The fundamental insight that led to the offering of this course was that scientific and clinical innovation in healthcare does not happen in a vacuum. While everyone knows how important it is to test and validate scientific hypotheses, it turns out that it is just as important to test and validate your business hypotheses. Moreover, these should happen in parallel. This business model hypothesis testing cannot be outsourced after your scientific validation is completed. This business hypothesis testing cannot be done by sitting in your office and bouncing ideas off colleagues. Just as we demand data to prove scientific hypotheses, we need data to prove business hypotheses. Otherwise we’re just guessing.
The Business Model Canvas and Lean Launchpad provide the framework for innovators to literally get out of the building and talk to dozens of customers, partners, and others to help validate, or more often, invalidate, their hypotheses. Without doing this, talented people will often waste literally years of effort pursuing a product that nobody really wants to use and that nobody will pay for.
This is not news to the world of entrepreneurs at large, who have heard these ideas from Steve, Eric Ries, and others for years. However, I think this is still a novel concept in the life sciences and healthcare. Without validating product-market fit, revenue strategy, channels, and the other parts of the business model canvas, healthcare innovators are hurting their chances at disseminating their products to reach broad audiences. To fully realize the efficiencies of translational medicine, healthcare has to buck the belief that science and commercialization happen sequentially rather than in parallel. One caveat: There’s obviously something still to be said for early basic science, where one can explore basic mechanisms without having the constraints of having to worry about commercialization. But for anybody who is working on the more translational end of the innovation spectrum (i.e. the entire digital health industry), doing this is mandatory.
It was amazing to see the changes in strategy among the teams in our class as the weeks went by. Making Friends started out planning to build a game to help socialize children with autism, but realized along the way that parents and special needs schools were much more interested in having a dashboard to communicate and track the childrens’ progress. Tidepool, for whom I’m a medical advisor, started out thinking that our early customers would be tech-savvy 20-somethings with type 1 diabetes, but quickly learned that the most interested customers would be parents of children with type 1 diabetes (see the video about our process here). The Lean Launchpad class was filled with similar stories — we all found that most of our initial guesses were flat out wrong once we went out and talked to people. As Steve always notes, one smart person is not as smart as the collective wisdom of hundreds of customers.
Following these lessons will be crucial to future successful innovations in healthcare and I sincerely hope that this curriculum spreads throughout the healthcare community. We in healthcare have to have the courage to get out of the building and test our assumptions early instead of blindly plowing forward. We should apply the same rigor to our business plans and dissemination strategy as we do to our science. We should shed the attitude that, “if we build it, they will come.”
A hearty thank you goes out to all of those who designed this curriculum and ran this class.
Filed under Digital Health, Favorite Posts, Personal stories, Policy/Systems Tagged with Business model canvas, digital health, innovation, Lean Startup
April 29, 2013 1 Comment
I went in to the dermatologist last week for an annual skin check and, instead of a humiliating, cold, and uncomfortable paper gown, this cotton spa robe was instead waiting for me to change into. My experience of whether I was working with an empathetic and caring physician was shaped before she even set foot in the exam room. Small touches like this robe can make a dramatic difference in the patient experience. This does not mean that “luxury” can or should replace high-level medical care. However, thoughtful touches like this robe can enhance and augment high quality medical care to make it even better, and we should not ignore these opportunities to make our patients feel more comfortable.
Filed under Favorite Posts, Personal stories Tagged with Health care, healthcare
April 19, 2013 Leave a comment
I am just finishing up a packed few days at TEDMED 2013 as a FrontLine Scholar. There were over 1,800 people there, from a broad spectrum of occupational backgrounds, countries, skills, and areas of interest within healthcare. This made for an unending cascade of “unexpected connections,” the theme of the conference. Indeed, though there were many engaging speakers who told stories about turning personal tragedies into discoveries and new passions, to me, the real action at TEDMED was away from the conference stage at “The Hive” (set up with booths showcasing innovators as well as comfortable and open meeting spaces). I met dozens of amazing people, with whom I had dozens of thought-provoking conversations. I will follow with another blog post about some of the specific companies that I met and spoke with at The Hive. There is more to write about from 3 1/2 days at TEDMED than can fit in a “short” blog post.
Here are some of the overall themes that emerged at TEDMED this year:
The popular themes among the startup companies at the Hive (or discussed in speeches):
I would love to hear from others who were at TEDMED or following via Twitter or TEDMEDLive to hear your thoughts and opinions. I’ll be blogging more later about other aspects of TEDMED…
Filed under Digital Health, Personal stories Tagged with digital health, healthcare, mhealth, TEDMED
March 21, 2013 2 Comments
I’m very excited to be attending TEDMED 2013 in Washington DC next month. I was fortunate to be chosen to go as part of the Front Line Scholarship program. The speaker line-up looks to be full of interesting talks on secondary uses of health data, patient engagement and activation, precision medicine, and a number of talks that blend the humanities with the health sciences. There will be around 1,800 attendees, so in addition to the talks themselves, there should be great opportunities to meet people and share ideas among a passionate and engaged group. Should be fun, and should provide some great fodder for future blog posts from the event and in its aftermath!
Filed under Personal stories Tagged with TED, TEDMED
March 15, 2013 3 Comments
I gave a talk yesterday to a great crowd at the annual UCSF CME conference, Diabetes Update. The slides from my presentation, “The Future of Diabetes Management: Social Networking and New Technologies,” can be viewed on Slideshare.
Filed under Diabetes Technology, Digital Health, Glucometers, Insulin pumps, Medical literature reviews, Personal stories, Policy/Systems, Software Tagged with Diabetes mellitus, digital health, mhealth, social networking
Board-certified in Endocrinology, Clinical Informatics, and Internal Medicine, I maintain an active clinical practice in Endocrinology and lead the design, development, and implementation of innovative digital health solutions. I am Assistant Professor of Medicine and Director of Clinical Informatics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Please note: This blog represents my personal opinion and does not reflect the views of my employer.
Disclosures:
- I am a Medical Advisor for Tidepool, but have received no financial benefit.
- In my role at the UCSF Center for Digital Health Innovation, I am leading co-development of the Connected Health Interoperability Platform with Cisco.
- I am paid as a columnist for Medscape.com.