Introducing 'For Startups, By Physicians'

What insights can physicians provide to healthtech startups? Tune in to our pilot episode for an introduction to some of the team at Inflect Health and learn more about our plans to be a catalyst for better healthcare.

Make sure you like and subscribe to "For Startups, By Physicians" wherever you get your podcasts. And keep up with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Medium at @InflectHealth, and on the web at InflectHealth.com.

Transcript

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[00:00:00] Lindsay Kriger: Hey everyone. This is Lindsay Kriger, director at Inflect Health, the innovation hub of Vituity, where we strive to be a catalyst for better care. I'm thrilled to be hosting four startups by physicians where we share insights and guidance to healthcare startups and technologists looking to create the future of health.

[00:00:18] Lindsay Kriger: As a physician-founded firm, we have connections with clinicians and intimate knowledge of what they need and how. We will be interviewing our executives, frontline providers, and industry leaders to help your business be effective and scale. Thanks for joining and let's get going.

[00:00:41] Lindsay Kriger: Hi everyone. We have the CEO and President of Inflect Health. They are both good friends of mine and really excited to join this conversation today. We're gonna be focusing on how we take technology and build it for health. So a little bit about us, and I'll let my friends introduce themselves. None of us are actually from a pure tech or product background.

[00:01:06] Lindsay Kriger: All of us come from health, and we come from deep passions in trying to make healthcare better for people. We all have great personal stories about why this is important to us and why we started. Company. So I'm gonna actually kick it off with Andrew. Maybe you can introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about why you got into health and how you wanted technology to fix it.

[00:01:29] Andrew Smith: I'm Andrew Smith. I'm the president of Inflect and my favorite joke about myself is I was born in a hospital and I never left. My mom was a nurse. My dad passed away when I was young. And healthcare and making sure people had access to quality healthcare no matter where their background was always something I was really passionate.

[00:01:47] Andrew Smith: And all of my jobs have been inside of the hospital and healthcare space, and hopefully each day we can build something innovative that changes the way that care's delivered. Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:57] Lindsay Kriger: Awesome, Rick. Thanks for being [00:02:00] on. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what makes you tick. 

[00:02:04] Rick Newell: My name is Rick Newell. I'm a practicing emergency physician, and I'm c e o. Inflect. Andrew had a reason why he went into healthcare. I have a reason I went into healthcare, though I don't necessarily remember it directly. I was about a year old. I had surgery and the hospital lost me, and so I obviously don't remember that, but my parents were very affected by that because they shared that story over and how they felt when they had no idea where their son was in the hospital.

[00:02:30] Rick Newell: So I think we all realize, even going back then realized that healthcare is clearly broken today, and I think all of us are super passionate about trying to fix healthcare and help move it forward. 

[00:02:42] Lindsay Kriger: You guys are our founding members of Inflect. We'll just go right into it. Tell us a little bit about what is Inflect Health and what's its relationship to making healthcare a better place?

[00:02:54] Lindsay Kriger: Andrew, we'll start with you. 

[00:02:55] Andrew Smith: Inflect is the innovation. Of Vituity and [00:03:00] Vituity is a practicing physician company across 25 states in the country. Sees over 7 million patients a year, and Inflect was created to change the way that the care delivery model is structured using technology, data innovations to really reach patients where they are.

[00:03:16] Andrew Smith: So Inflect is the corporation that is built to go out, invest, prototype, and partner with new companies that are gonna change the way that healthcare is. 

[00:03:27] Rick Newell: I'll just add on how we categorize our work to what Andrew said he categorized it perfectly, but I try to divide the work up into three different categories.

[00:03:35] Rick Newell: It's driving incremental innovation within the way the healthcare system is currently, first of all. Second of all, it's building additional programs and practices alongside the traditional healthcare. We call that adjacent innovations. Examples of that are years ago when we B built telehealth programs.

[00:03:55] Rick Newell: Before telehealth programs were cool. That was alongside the current healthcare system. The more [00:04:00] recent examples are around care coordination or health coaching, trying to fill some of the gaps that exist. In the current healthcare system. And then the third and last category, which is what we call transformational, which are really those breakthrough innovations.

[00:04:13] Rick Newell: We obviously do some of that work internal to inflect, but as Andrew mentioned, really partnerships are key there, right? Whether it's early stage healthcare companies, or whether it's large, mature, highly successful, well-known tech companies that have not traditionally been known for being in the, he.

[00:04:32] Rick Newell: Industry, but are looking to do more and more in health. Those partnerships are really cool. So as Andrew mentioned, innovation hub that's really dedicated to disrupting the status quo. 

[00:04:44] Lindsay Kriger: It's an honor to get to do that every day with you guys. Rick, I know you just came off a three day stretch of working in the emergency department.

[00:04:51] Lindsay Kriger: Tell us a little bit about, how it feels to build technology for someone like you that's working every day and how that might be [00:05:00] different. Than building technology for a consumer or a patient. 

[00:05:04] Rick Newell: The way that doctors interface with a healthcare system or the way that patients interface with the healthcare system is very different, right?

[00:05:14] Rick Newell: The way that they expect to either deliver care or to receive care is different. We all know those of us in healthcare, that workflow is key within the industry. You could have the best product, the best service, but if it doesn't fit within the acceptable work. For patients or for doctors, it's not gonna be adopted and it's not gonna receive any traction.

[00:05:36] Rick Newell: So even though building for patients or building for doctors is different, I actually think that they have the same goals in mind when it comes to healthcare advancement. So both doctors and patients are looking to improve the experience and outcomes of patients. Both doctors and patients are looking to improve the health of popul.

[00:05:59] Rick Newell: They're [00:06:00] looking to reduce costs of care delivery, and they're both really looking to improve the professional satisfaction of healthcare team members. So even though building healthcare advancements may look a little different for doctors or for patients, the goals and why they wanna pursue that, I think are actually very similar.

[00:06:17] Lindsay Kriger: And adoption's probably similar too. It's very difficult to get doctors to adapt new technologies. People might not quite understand the barrier to actually getting doctors to, to use that technology and different barriers, but there are still barriers to getting patients to use this new tech too.

[00:06:33] Lindsay Kriger: Absolutely. So Andrew, I guess I'll turn to you now that we know a little bit about inflect. There's so much money going into health tech startups right now. How do you feel like incubating a startup in the health world is different or similar than incubating a startup in a more traditional tech environment?

[00:06:56] Andrew Smith: Healthcare is really hard to sell and I guess I would [00:07:00] structure my answer in two different ways, if it's b2b, so we're selling something to hospitals, health systems, payers, employers, it's an extremely long sales cycle. There's a lot of noise in that space. It's complex. There's security issues, there are privacy issues, there's all kinds of monetary issues.

[00:07:17] Andrew Smith: It's fraught with risk and there is a lot of protection for our health data. So selling into health systems and hospitals and payers can be extremely tricky. And it's not always exactly what I think a startup thinks it might be. And what I think is a real interesting area is startups going B2B in health need to be committed to their solution and what they're trying to solve.

[00:07:41] Andrew Smith: And I think you can get dragged down into an area where you are serving too many masters. Each hospital wants something a little different. Each payer wants something a little different and you end up diluting your product. And it can be really, When companies stick to what they believe in, what the product they're developing and offer unique [00:08:00] solution, I think they're a lot more successful and roll with some of those punches on the direct to consumer side, that's a whole other interesting opportunity, but very difficult because what does someone actually want or need to engage in their own healthcare?

[00:08:15] Andrew Smith: Like why am I gonna walk through the front door of a direct-to-consumer healthcare clinic or get on a telemedicine visit or use an app to get he. There's gotta be a real Dr. Forward mo momentum for the patient to actually engage in that. And I think it's extremely tricky. So it's not necessarily like the finance industry or marketing or a ton of other stuff we do, health is really core to who we are, but we often only care about it when we're sick.

[00:08:41] Andrew Smith: And so selling in that manner is really interesting. 

[00:08:43] Rick Newell: Piggyback on that a little bit as well. I completely agree with Andrew that driving innovation. Within healthcare is extremely challenging. I think one of the reasons why that's the case is how many stakeholders are in the industry, if you think about it, right?

[00:08:57] Rick Newell: You have patients, you have their families, [00:09:00] you have doctors, you have nurses, you have hospitals, you have those executives, you have pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, medical supply companies and not to mention, you have the government involved and each of them have their own agenda.

[00:09:15] Rick Newell: and oftentimes those agendas significantly conflict with each other. And so it's very hard when you have all these stakeholders with conflicting agendas. And if innovation is hard, yes, absolutely. But also, as I mentioned earlier, healthcare is ripe for innovation and think of the potential to improve another human's life.

[00:09:35] Rick Newell: That's super inspiring. So even though it's hard, it's definitely work that's worth. 

[00:09:40] Lindsay Kriger: Now that Inflect is entering into its third formal year of making investments in early stage companies, and we all see a lot of these early stage companies that have that passion. They're like, we wanna make a difference in the world, and we have this great idea.

[00:09:54] Lindsay Kriger: And then you're like, Bombarded with the realities of healthcare. Andrew, maybe I'll start with you. Tell me a little bit [00:10:00] about what you look for in some of the pitches that you get, these startup companies, these aspirational young entrepreneurs. What do you really look for and what do you think is that it factor that makes people drive into this industry?

[00:10:13] Andrew Smith: Number one, I think the idea has to be really interesting and unique. If it's just a slight variation of something someone else is already trying, I don't think it's that interesting. But when someone. Figures out how to engage a patient or a provider in healthcare in an interesting way. Those are the most attractive companies in my opinion.

[00:10:34] Andrew Smith: So if someone develops a technology and all of a sudden 500. 2,005,000 users are automatically getting in it to get engaged in their healthcare. Or 5,000 doctors are like, Hey, this is amazing. I want to use this. It automatically resonates with me, but I think often we're shoving technology and solutions on doctors, advanced providers, nurses, and on patients.

[00:10:57] Andrew Smith: And it's really when it's more organic [00:11:00] and people go in and get, they're like, wow, that offers a lot of value. I want to use that solution or tool. That's what I'm really interested. I think there's also the like moonshot companies that are gonna change the world with something absolutely wild, but there's a little bit of everything when it comes to healthcare and that makes it a lot of fun to invest it.

[00:11:16] Lindsay Kriger: Do you feel like founders are better if they're coming from health or when they're coming from a completely outside industry. Do you have a preference or what? Do you ask questions differently when founders are coming from one than the other? 

[00:11:28] Andrew Smith: That's an interesting question, and I don't know if I know the exact answer.

[00:11:32] Andrew Smith: I think in one form, not knowing healthcare is a very big limitation in regards to sales and operations. Like you have to understand the hospital culture, the payer culture, the employer culture for healthcare to be success. , but if you wanna have a really crazy idea, that might blow up everything. Maybe it's best if you're not in healthcare.

[00:11:53] Andrew Smith: So I think we see some of those ideas come through. But typically someone on the team has some [00:12:00] pretty significant health experience that's gonna work on the disruption of whatever they're focused on. 

[00:12:04] Rick Newell: I think the most important thing for founder. is some sort of personal reason a why they want to solve that problem they're going after.

[00:12:13] Rick Newell: And if they have that sort of deep burning passion, they're gonna get there. Whether they're coming from the health side or the tech side, they're coming from the health side. They're gonna go get help with the tech. , if they're coming from the tech side, they're gonna come to someone like inflect Health and get the expertise on the healthcare.

[00:12:28] Lindsay Kriger: My next question was gonna be, what do we offer startups and what have been our best examples when we foster and mentor startups coming from the health perspective?

[00:12:40] Andrew Smith: Number one is access to clinicians in many different clinical settings, locations, geographies, communities, everything. The reason I came to work at Vituity and then inflect was really to access.

[00:12:54] Andrew Smith: Real providers in real hospitals on the frontline because there's so many [00:13:00] opportunities to solve problems there that when we have the opportunity to partner a young healthcare startup technology company with providers that are serving in multiple communities, it's really special. And the challenge can be also something that works in San Francisco, might not work in Chicago, might not work in Nashville, might not work in Texas.

[00:13:20] Andrew Smith: But when you really connect with those providers, it can really do something special for the product. A team that is. Highly in tune with the people that are taking care of patients every day is super, super important. And to Rick's point, following the mission that they really care about and the personal story they have, but connecting it with the people that do the work every day, the nurses, the techs, the psych, everyone in the front line, that's when something really special can be created.

[00:13:45] Lindsay Kriger: Rick, what is your guiding advice when you feel like you've got a good company in front of you, but they just aren't quite there yet with the healthcare understanding? Like how do you mentor someone or how do you go about [00:14:00] coaching them into that space? 

[00:14:01] Rick Newell: It really comes down to them having a very clear understanding about what problem they wanna solve.

[00:14:09] Rick Newell: What are the barriers to solving that problem? Who's tried to solve it before? Where did they fail? And to Andrew's point is it's really important to rapidly iterate on what their idea is because you may have a great idea that's out there and say, I'm gonna revolutionize healthcare. But when it comes to the real world setting, it doesn't work the same way as it does in your mind.

[00:14:30] Rick Newell: So getting access to patients and physicians to really implement a. Get real world feedback rapidly iterate on that and ensure that you have tight product market fit. That's really critical to do very early on. 

[00:14:47] Lindsay Kriger: You definitely answered some of this. Andrew, anything else to add on what criteria Inflect looks for when they are starting to invest in a company? Obviously to Rick's point, knowing what problem they're trying to solve is critical. Having [00:15:00] passion and a vision. Anything else you wanna add just for our listeners that you might be looking for? 

[00:15:04] Andrew Smith: Keeping a very simple, straightforward financial structure and growth plan for the first couple years is really important There.

[00:15:12] Andrew Smith: Standard documents and legal structure for every startup type there is in the world. And the simpler and cleaner, you keep it early on, the easier it is to invest partner and develop products. And I think that's almost like a deal breaker for me personally, is if everything is really complex. Not common in the investment world, it's really not a great opportunity cuz there's so much complexity, so many questions, but keeping it simple, keeping your roadmap clean, keeping the product clean.

[00:15:40] Andrew Smith: Not serving too many masters is really the type of company we wanna work with in the early stages. 

[00:15:47] Lindsay Kriger: I love it and shout out to all of our portfolio companies. They've obviously overcome a big hurdle to, to press the two of you. I'll just end with one last question. Rick, I'll start with you. What excites you the most about where health [00:16:00] technology is going?

[00:16:02] Rick Newell: What excites me the most, and I can't say that it necessarily has anything to do with our name, inflect Health, but I really believe that we're at an inflection point in healthcare. We've come through covid horrible time in the entire. But what it really did was show us that we could deliver care in a different manner, and people embraced innovation and doing things differently in an industry that is traditionally very adverse to changing the way that things have been done for decades and decades.

[00:16:34] Rick Newell: We're at that point, while we're also at a point with technological advancements that I think that you can marry those two. , and I really do think we're at an inflection point in over the next few years to a decade, we're gonna see significant advancements in healthcare that we haven't seen for hundreds of years.

[00:16:52] Andrew Smith: And I'll just add on, I completely agree with Rick and the interesting opportunity is that maybe people could get [00:17:00] healthy in ways that they don't think they're actually getting healthy. And I think that technology offers so many different opportunities through gaming, virtual reality, all this. Tech is really exciting and offers us the opportunity to meet the patient wherever they are in their head space, and that has never been the case before you get to the hospital, doctors, you get labs, you get workups, but maybe it's just on our phone or on a camera or our laptop or our bed listens to the way we're sleeping and calls out a problem.

[00:17:30] Andrew Smith: There's just so much cool technology coming. and I don't think we understand the data whatsoever, but it has a huge opportunity to change our lives on the daily. 

[00:17:39] Rick Newell: Yeah, I think you that, that's so good, Andrew. We go from this healthcare system that has been one location. Many patients, traditionally you have the clinic, you have the hospital, and all the patients come to receive their healthcare.

[00:17:54] Rick Newell: To where we are now, which is really one patient, many locations, whether [00:18:00] that's in the hospital, it's in the clinic, it's in retail, it's in the home, and all the different ways that technology can connect that entire continuum of care We've never been here before in healthcare, and I think the future's really bright.

[00:18:15] Lindsay Kriger: I love that. I love working with our team. Shout out to everyone who is behind making all this happen. You guys are awesome. Thank you for being on today. 

[00:18:23] Andrew Smith: Thank you, Lindsay. 

[00:18:24] Rick Newell: Thanks for having us, and thanks everyone for listening. 

[00:18:26] Lindsay Kriger: Thanks for joining us. And again, I'm Lindsay Krieger, director at Inflect Health here at inflect.

[00:18:31] Lindsay Kriger: The future of medicine care and health delivery is not just right for disruption. It's increasingly personalized, accessible, and. Make sure you like and subscribe to four Startups by Physicians wherever you get your podcasts. And keep up with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Medium at Inflect Health, and on the web@inflecthealth.com.