The Power of Real Time Tracking in Healthcare

Medibeat: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Ben: I’ve been in the healthcare industry for nearly 20 years, serving in a variety of roles. I started out in the world of cancer research, converting paper-based systems into digital systems. I’d build one-stop-shop web portals for research trials, everything from the front end to the underlying database. From there I got interested in operational improvement – how do you make these really complex systems to create clinical research protocols more efficient?

At that point, I started investigating strategy and overarching organizational goals – why were were designing these more efficient systems? What were we trying to achieve? And I realized that I needed to learn a lot more about how business was supposed to work. After getting my MBA, I focused on using data to inform strategic decisions. I consulted with a number of hospitals and health systems around the country, crafting compelling stories based on a variety of national, local and organizational data. Around the same time, I also started getting more involved in Chicago’s startup community and have worked with a few startups. Currently, my partner and I are building a solution to track patients and portable medical equipment in real-time.

Sounds interesting – why?

A big trend in healthcare is increasing transparency around costs and outcomes. As payment shifts to patients paying directly for care out of their own pockets, patients want to see what they’re getting for their money, just like anything else they buy. So hospitals and providers are now very focused on controlling costs, improving quality and managing their image. We’re offering hospitals a way to increase their operational efficiency and improve their quality by better utilizing their existing resources, whether people, equipment or finances.

How does your solution help care providers?

Many hospitals don’t have an easy way to track things in real-time. Hospital staff waste time searching for items ranging from wheelchairs to infusion pumps to surgical tools. Device recalls trigger a rush to search every room in the hospital to find each device – a completely preventable situation. Planners have no way of knowing whether the equipment they purchase is fully utilized, or if they are buying too many units of a given piece of equipment.

If we can free up staff time, nurses can spend more time caring for their patients and patients can spend less time waiting around. Patients will feel like they’ve gotten more attention and better care. Clinical engineering teams can more accurately monitor the usage of their devices and the hospital can make a more informed decision about how many devices are really needed. We can even start to predict which equipment is most likely to be needed based on a patient’s admission criteria, or when that equipment is likely to be ready for cleaning and reuse based on the patient’s progression and targeted discharge date.

What’s your role in all of that?

My partner is the technology expert. He and I work really well together since we both understand the importance of strategy, but we bring different perspectives to the table. I’m focused on building connections with care providers and, internally, making those clinical experiences tangible for our team. I like to understand a provider’s specific situation, his or her unique challenges and ultimate goals. From there we can have a conversation about whether our solution makes sense or if there’s a different way to achieve those goals. Many organizations have these massive operational and organizational structures that have accreted over decades and they struggle with all of that complexity, not wanting to change anything for fear of breaking something. Understandably, most healthcare providers are very cautious about making any changes that might harm their patients, yet sometimes just making one or two well-planned changes can have enormous benefits. If I can help organizations make those changes in a structured, intelligent way, I feel like I’ve helped them be able to deliver better care to their patients.

What changes do you see in the healthcare industry in the next 5-10 years?

We’ll see more personalized and more predictive care. The costs of genomic testing, biomic testing and remote monitoring continue to decrease, the power and speed of computing continues to increase while corresponding costs go down, and the quality of artificial intelligence continues to increase. We’ll see fewer visits to a provider’s office as more care is delivered remotely. Unfortunately, information security will continue to be a challenge as connected devices and cloud-based solutions grow more prevalent. We already have somewhat divergent health systems – Medicaid vs. private payer, high-quality hospitals vs. those with poorer outcomes, all compounded by challenges to access to care in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised if this split became more prominent with some kind of single-payer government care for most people and concierge care for those who can afford it.