When innovation doesn’t mean technology

Healthcare tech entrepreneur launches a brick-and-mortar business focused on high-quality patient experience

How many times have you seen this headline? "Tech entrepreneur has vision for fixing healthcare." If you're a healthcare provider, you've probably seen a dozen or so technology geeks who've barreled into healthcare—with zero actual healthcare experience—convinced they have what it takes to "fix" the industry.

I was one of those guys. Whether through hubris, opportunism or genuine altruism, I concluded that technology was the solution to all that ails healthcare.

I was wrong.

Not wrong to be passionate about making a difference in our nation's largest and most important industry. But mistaken in my belief that technology is a panacea for healthcare's ills.

Don't misunderstand me. Technology can help. I've founded or been CEO of five technology companies; one that was bought by Samsung and two in healthcare. Each of those companies produced important solutions that ended up helping a small slice of the healthcare universe. But after several years of watching in frustration as healthcare continued to become more complex, more expensive and less satisfying for the patient, I decided to ignore all my advisors and do what many said was impossible – abandon the technology market and launch a brick-and-mortar healthcare business.

Trying to fix healthcare from the inside out may seem an unlikely decision for a technology entrepreneur. But it has proven to be the best business decision I've ever made.

Before I tell you why, a little about my background. I started in technology in 1990, when I began developing smart workstations as the CEO of DeskStation Technology. After DeskStation's acquisition by Samsung in 1999 I moved on to Framecast Communications, which I led for two years. As CEO of Blue River Operation, I led the development of a solution for outsourcing IT services.

In 2007 I made the leap to healthcare technology. At a large imaging company, we fixed major credentialing issues with Medicare IDTF enrollment and reengineered the revenue model to overcome compliance issues. Then as founder and CEO of BigIris, we developed an imaging repository that moved beyond a static storage solution to provide actionable insights and decision support to clinicians.

While all of the companies I had led were worthy pursuits, something continued to bother me. There was one important word that never appeared in our taglines, never came up in our conversations with investors, and was never mentioned in our press releases.

Patients.

Of course, better diagnosis through imaging intelligence does help patients. It also helps patients if we make it easier for their doctors to be credentialed and paid by Medicare. But too often we rely on a trickle-down impact from the technology to the patient, instead of first considering patients' quality of life and how to make a real difference, right now.

A naysayer might note that there is tremendous focus on "patient engagement" by HIT vendors. True. But patient engagement solutions are often designed with the goal of reducing cost to the healthcare system, not improving patients' quality of life. They say, "Here, if you're a diabetic, use this app to measure your A1c several times a day." "Here, if you have a pacemaker, wear this device to monitor your heart rate."

The reality for many with an incurable chronic disease is that they are sick and tired of engaging with their medical condition. They are sick and tired of being labeled as patients, and they'd like nothing better than to minimize their engagement with the healthcare system.

For these people, whose quality of life has been significantly impacted by chronic disease, we need solutions that restore true agency to them. If we can make it easier for them to think less about their condition, make it less intrusive and disruptive to their lives, then we may see significant progress on one of healthcare's thorniest problems: medication adherence.

Technology has tried to solve this problem, with text message reminders and interactive patient portals and smart pill caps that call a person's doctor if they forget to take a pill. But medication adherence remains a $300 billion-dollar problem that leads to 17 percent more emergency room visits and 10 percent more hospital stays. It also increases worker absenteeism and decreases productivity.

The medication adherence problem is even more daunting for patients who receive drugs intravenously. That's because infusion therapies can take hours to administer and must be administered in tightly controlled frequencies such as every 6-8 weeks, monthly, or even weekly. Patients have few choices. They can go to a hospital, where they can stare across a large, unappealing room at dozens of other patients staring back at them, many suffering from life-threatening cancers. Some physicians will treat their own patients in their office, so long as it is on the physician's schedule. Others may choose to turn their homes into a makeshift hospital, with a nurse monitoring the infusion in your personal space for hours at a stretch.

These few choices don't give people the dignity, privacy, convenience and comfort they deserve. The number of Americans with a chronic disease is growing, and their demands to maintain an active lifestyle despite their condition are growing, too.

After thinking deeply about this problem for some time, I decided to look beyond technology and tackle the problem head on. In 2013 I launched Infusion Express, a Kansas City-based company that puts comfortable, convenient infusion centers in retail and office parks in suburbs around large metro areas. Before years' end we will open five new clinics in Chicago, Philadelphia, and the Bay Area—the start of a national rollout. At Infusion Express, each guest books a private suite with at least two comfortable chairs. They can bring a friend, family member or caregiver, have lunch, watch TV, read a book, or take a nap. Guests can also choose to get some work done in a treatment room made into an office, or they can book the family room, bring their partner and kids and watch a movie. We offer snacks and healthy hydration to make sure they leave us feeling their best, ready to tackle the rest of their day. We also address another important barrier to medication adherence for infusion patients, and that is scheduling. We offer appointments 6 days a week, including evening and Saturday time slots.

It's a radical shift for me, to be sure—instead of worrying about CPU speeds and data integrity, now I worry about onboarding new patients and making them comfortable, happy and safe.

As daunting it may seem, I am confident that we can solve the big problems in healthcare, like medication adherence. But, to accomplish that we need to better understand that patients are people first, and that those people are our customers. We must design care delivery that meets our customers where they live and work and focus on removing any obstacles between them and the treatments they need.

We need innovation to mitigate the isolation, inconvenience and disruption that people with chronic conditions face every day. Some of these innovations may be driven or enabled by technology. But technology leaders need to think outside the box about how to deliver better healthcare. And that may mean that your innovation isn't about technology at all.

Don Peterson, a technology entrepreneur since the 1990s, is the CEO and founder of Infusion Express, a patient-centered alternative to hospital infusion centers that is rapidly expanding nationwide.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.

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