I'm Praveen Suthrum. After 16+ years of building and running NextServices, a healthcare technology/management company, the challenges and opportunities in the industry leap out at me. I also get early access to industry trends and changes.
Whether you are seeking to start or grow your healthcare business, my weekly insights will make you spot opportunities and stay on top of your game. It'll help you think differently about healthcare.
Two ways people consistently describe what I write:
"insightful" and "thought-provoking".
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The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed.
It's true.
Science fiction writer William Gibson said that right. We simply have to look around enough - now - to find out what the future holds.
The future may never be evenly distributed. But it's surely becoming the present faster.
Since 2009, US spent $27 billion to digitize medical records. The cornerstone of digitization is to make health records available for patient care when needed.
In other words, the objective is to make electronic health records interoperable. This means, developing systems using common standards so that information can be exchanged without difficulty.
There's always something new to worry about for the healthcare industry.
On Jan 1st, 2017, a new law to track physician performance went into first gear. It's called MACRA - a law that could be as important as the Affordable Care Act, which led to the name Obamacare.
I love what I do. I hate what I have to do.
It's a quote that doctors attribute to their profession behind closed doors. As patients, we are so overwhelmed with our own problems. We fail to notice that our doctor may be battling her own problems with a complicated system.
But what do we care? Our meeting with the doctor is a paid transaction. We are owed our money's due. Empathy can take a backseat.
As I reflect on what I learnt in 2016, I see two somewhat conflicting world-views of health: upgrading and moderating.
One promotes upgrading the human body much like software. In this case, our biological processes can be considered as algorithms that can be improved upon. The other view calls for moderating our dependence on medicine by influencing elements surrounding health, such as food and environment.
Let’s consider both views.
It's easy to get excited about technological advances such as nanobots that swim in blood to deliver drugs or 3D printers that print human tissues or contact lens that detect glucose levels. However, in our enthusiasm to find the next fix, we are failing to notice the ground slipping underneath the healthcare industry.
Whenever I realize I’ve made a mistake, I get a rush of excitement and anxiety. Excitement because I’ve had this aha opportunity to learn something. Anxiety because usually the learning has come with a cost I cannot afford.
During one summer in the southeast of US, I shadowed a doctor who was treating an obese woman in her early 50s. She was out from a colonoscopy that also involved removing a piece of chicken that was stuck in her gut.
There are three types of decisions that you will ever make - good decisions, bad decisions and a third category of the worst kind, no-decisions. In this last category are those ideas that you deliberate on for eons but never take any action on. In it lie those reasons you look for not starting up, such as the right business model or funding. But, make a decision and you will see that the startup ball magically moves forward.
You wish to become an entrepreneur to free yourself from the constraints of your job. However, after getting started you discover that the freedom you desire is elusive. Constraints from your job are now replaced by those from cashflows, investors, employees, clients, vendors and several other sources.
Before the invention of the stethoscope, doctors routinely laid their ears on chests of patients to check how they were doing. Homemade concoctions, essentially placebos, often made people feel better. Doctors visited homes of patients who would later pay them whatever they could afford.
In country after country, I witness the same sad situation: caring, often-brilliant men and women toil in the healthcare industry to care for others, but to do so they must battle the system itself. That system has lost sight of what matters, which is humans caring for other human beings.
There’s this phenomena of flipping that’s increasingly popular in startup culture. It means to buy or sell something to quickly make a profit. Much like fast food, it tastes good for the short term and draws investors and entrepreneurs alike to an imagined gold rush.
I loved Google Labs, an online site where you could stop by and test drive the company's latest projects and innovations. Google discontinued it in 2011. In fact, I found this list of discontinued Google products and counted more than 75.
A few days ago, I climbed Stok Kangri, a mountain 15km south of Leh-Ladakh that marks the beginning of extreme high altitude mountaineering. Our trek spanned over 10 days and 100km via the Markha Valley culminating in a 16-hour ascent and descent.
