Roundup: Testing Healthcare AI in Space, Increasing Statin Adoption, Epic's move into Scribing, etc

Wellness is entering healthcare, and healthcare is moving into wellness. 

That seems to be the theme of so many of the conversations I’ve been having lately. Peloton hinted in its earnings this week that one of its key plans to grow the business involves expanding its relationship with customers beyond the treadmill and the bike. CEO Peter Stern spoke to the broader “members’ wellness journey,” pointing to “mental wellbeing, sleep, recovery and over time, nutrition and hydration.” Once its users are hooked on getting exercise through Peloton, either through its hardware or software, Stern views wellness as the next logical step. Meanwhile, the Life Time gym chain has added longevity clinics, and Equinox is partnering with Function Health for biomarker collection. 

At the same time, many of the longevity companies are building partnerships with health systems and employers, and there’s massive momentum on both a state and federal level to bolster reimbursement for food as medicine programs to prevent or halt the progress of a chronic disease.

All of this makes perfect sense as a recognition that a health care system shouldn’t only serve to treat sickness, but should also support prevention. Currently, we operate in a sick care system and it’s extremely challenging to build a successful business in the health-tech space in prevention. 

There’s also good business reasons that wellness and medicine are converging. Consumer health and wellness businesses all face the same fundamental challenge: How to acquire users, sell them products or services, and then keep them around from there. That calculus related to a customers’ lifetime value matters deeply. Healthcare offers a potential path to improved unit economics, because consumers tend to convert if some portion of their care is subsidized via insurance. And there might be ways to acquire them outside of super expensive paid marketing campaigns, such as provider referrals, co-marketing with health plans, or programs at the workplace. Likewise, healthcare desperately needs an infusion of consumer DNA, particularly as the systems we have today are failing to reach younger generations. Understanding the consumer better offers a path to vastly increasing utilization of services, and also to lower costs through prevention.

So both sides can benefit from the relationship, but with a few caveats. Treating all things digital or consumer as a “bright, shiny object” without putting real resourcing behind it has rarely been effective for healthcare organisations. Likewise, wellness companies should ensure that they have the right medical expertise are on the team to ensure that they’re not using their platforms to promote procedures and interventions that lack evidence (or worse, do harm).

A quick note from our sponsor of this week’s Roundup, the team at Parsley Health

On a very different “note,” some other huge news that caught my eye this week: Epic’s rumored advancement into the ambient scribing space. This is a playbook we’ve seen before from Epic, the behemoth electronic health record company that is a near-monopoly in the inpatient space. Where it leaves the ambient scribe companies in the category, many of whom have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, is a very big question. Once the Epic scribing tool gets announced, my strong hunch is that there will be a lot of public discourse over which company has the superior product, because Epic’s software won’t be as feature rich when it first hits the market. But that won’t work for more than a year or two, as health systems opt to stay within Epic for reasons of convenience. So in my opinion, the inpatient-focused ambient scribes should move quickly to leverage what they have today: The goodwill from providers frustrated by documentation requirements. From there, it’ll be a race to move into adjacent areas. My view is that it is a very good time to be a startup in the revenue cycle management space, or even better to be one like this that sits in between documentation and billing. I suspect there will be M&A in all directions. The RCM (revenue cycle management) players will like the idea of moving closer to the provider - the “front end” - by scooping up an ambient scribe. And the ambient scribing companies will buy or build their way more deeply into RCM so the service starts to feel more end to end. 

What other companies might do well as this all plays out? I wouldn’t be surprised to see companies that tackle documentation and clinical workflow in other parts of the system, like the outpatient space, also become very attractive acquisition prospects. 

How confident am I that Epic will release its own ambient scribe? Very confident.

So stay tuned. And grab some popcorn because Epic UGM kicks off next week. 

With Annalisa Merelli 

The news: Large non-profit health system Ascension launched a Clinical Innovation Institute (CII), a unit within the company with the stated mission of “improving patient care and clinician experience through technology and innovation.” 

The goal: The primary focus of the new team is to introduce innovation that reduces the administrative burden, freeing up time for providers to focus on patients. Somewhat surprisingly, the announcement does not even mention AI.

What Ascension said: “True clinical innovation goes beyond incremental technology upgrades – it requires a fundamental reimagining of how we deliver holistic, patient-centered care,” said the Chief Clinical Transformation Officer in a statement. 

Our POV: Health systems have had a mixed track record of incorporating technology, particularly anything patient-facing. What I always question when I see these announcements is how much power this new institute will have. Will there be a P&L? Budget? And will startups be able to build relationships with this institute as a fast track to a sale? Some of the initiatives may be internally facing, but I’m curious to see whether there will be programs that are focused on startups.