Let me take you on a whirlwind tour of the past week, which was overflowing with social interactions that included some of Australian and global fame.
ANDHealth Summit: The Awakening Giant
I sat next to Karin Verspoor and Annette Schmiede (CEO of Digital Health CRC) at the ANDHealth Summit, which had a star studded cast. The panels on venture capital funding mostly went over my head, but the one on lessons from the pandemic was full of insight. My notes are long, so I pasted them at the bottom of this post, but my favorite quote was "A good idea does not equal a good investment."
External Presentations
The Centre was highlighted in two talks on Thursday. At Victorian Healthcare Week (MC'd by Peter Birch of Talking Healthtech), I gave a 10-minute talk that felt very satisfying, because the entire talk was on what we are doing to support the digital transformation of health rather than on what we are going to do in the future. I highlighted LHS Academy fellow projects (wish I could have described all of them) and the Validitron. Other featured speakers came from Northern Health and Melbourne Health (Robyn Gillies and Tim Fazio).
Kit and I tag teamed in a research webinar to the Aged Care Industry IT Council (ACIITC) about the role of the Validitron in informatics powered learning health systems. George Margelis, the chair of ACIITC, asked how they can leverage the Validitron in thinking about the 400 different IT systems being used in aged care, and we will be following up with him on this discussion.
Research Australia Awards Banquet
Research Australia presented their annual Health and Medical Research Awards for 2022. You will see some familiar faces on the Finalist list, including Adam Elshaug. Johanna Westbrook from Macquarie's Australian Institute for Health Innovation (AIHI) won the Health Services Award sponsored by the Victorian Government Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions. Shlomo Berkovsky from Enrico's Centre in AIHI received an honorable mention for the Data Innovation Award, which ultimately went to The AusVaxSafety Team, National Centre for Immunisation Research & Surveillance. Bronwyn Le Grice, CEO and founder of ANDHealth received an honorable mention in the Advocacy Award. BTW, Annettee Schmiede is the board chair for Research Australia.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Advisory Committee to the Director
I serve on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the NIH, and last week was my last meeting of a 3-year term. The bad part is that I attended the Washington, DC-based meeting virtually, which meant I was on zoom from Friday 1 am - 9 am, then Saturday 1 am - 8 am. The good part is receiving reports from people like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates. After hearing from several patients before the meeting, I made a critical comment about the gap between the strategy and implementation of the patient engagement strategy for the $1.3B RECOVER program for studying Long COVID. I recommended a learning system for more transparent tracking of patient involvement and feedback that results in refinements to the operationalization of their strategy. I'll be talking offline with the leadership over the next few weeks.
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Regional Linguistic Quirks (RLQ): In addition to consistently saying "gas" rather than "petrol", I use the word "store" rather than "shop". I learned this usage is a peculiarly North American.
Notes from ANDHealth Summit
Nuggets of wisdom
“My patients don’t want this” is a red herring
Health reform will be driven by patient experience
Huge demand means no need for health services to be competitive, but we must monetize the solutions
We need to educate consumers about the need for connecting information across settings
We need an integration layer for startups to succeed in the healthcare environment
Advice for clinician CEOs: “stop thinking like an evidence-based clinician and start hustling”
Five yeses needed for innovation in healthcare setting: director, administrator, financial, IT/security, legal
Louise Schaper: Because of NSW’s Epic purchase, there will be fewer innovation opportunities (sucked oxygen out of the system with $1B investment), and their data will be locked up only for Epic customers
There are few business drivers for change – we must advocate for change
Brownyn Le Grice: Pharmaceutical companies are worldwide the largest investors in digital health, but they are decreasing the size of their innovation teams
What do you look for in a pitch?
Dynamic and authentic leader, solid team
You must grab attention in the first minute
What pisses you off in a pitch?
Saying there is no competition
Overstating your potential capture of marketshare
Overestimating the amount of revenue you will capture in the near future
Saying you will have global impact
Claiming this is the last capital you will need
Arrogance and dishonesty
Being boring
Looking to team for answers
Lack of diversity in team or lack of plan for increasing diversity
Claiming you will change the system or the way doctors behave
What is needed during the due diligence period?
Be truthful to yourself and understand the gaps you have
Understand that the average VC investment lasts longer than the average Australian marriage – why should they make this long-term commitment to you
Brett Sutton – what COVID changed that will stay around
Virtual ED
COVID+ Pathways method of triaging and cascading care
Interoperability with pathology and radiology
As care becomes more dispersed through these mechanisms, there will be increased need for data sharing
Need a universal patient identifier – there are structural impediments
Need more health economists measuring ROI, including invisible work and opportunity costs
Elizabeth Koff (Telstra) Response: ROI is too long of a timeline for politicians – we need courage to make long-term choices
How do we move beyond achieving interoperability only for bespoke applications?
Brett Sutton: need a long view with top-down and bottom approaches
Sue McCarthy, AWS: need security, legal, and financial aspects worked out, with FHIR underlying it all
Gerald Marion, BUPA: as personal health data is increasing, we need ways to integrate them with healthcare system
Elizabeth Koff (Telstra): quit worrying about sunk costs – we are in it for the long haul
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