By Karen Katz, Esq. Director of Business Development, Health, Medtech and e-Health at Mintz Levin

The MIT Bio-Innovations Conference on Saturday, set the stage for a dynamic, engaging conversation centered on delivering quality healthcare, swiftly and efficiently with its panel discussion entitled "Choice & Change: Innovations in Consumer Centric Healthcare". Moderated by Daria Niewenhous, a healthcare attorney with Mintz Levin, the panel tackled questions ranging from measuring quality to providing a profitable return to investors.

Better Doctor/Patient Engagement

"Being a patient sucks. And being a doctor sucks, too," said Nat Findlay, CEO of Hello Health/Myca. Findlay's company has set out to create an entirely novel treatment paradigm that is more service oriented. The result is the Myca platform. The Myca platform works somewhat like Facebook. Doctors "friend" their patients and for a subscription fee, patients have unlimited text, email and video chat access with their doctors. Face to face visits may be at the patient's home or in the clinic and are paid by the patient directly on a per visit basis. Findlay noted that it's not just about throwing technology at doctors. His company strives to provide a new business model, complete with "elegant organization" that permits doctors to organize their patients, treatments and, ultimately, lifestyle more effectively.

Chaim Indig, CEO of Phreesia, agreed with Findlay's comments about the need for a more efficient, easy to use healthcare system. Phreesia provides Phreesia Pads to doctors. The Pads are like laptops and they replace the old school check-in clip boards. "Everyone checks in and everyone could check in better," noted Indig. Doctors who have patients check in with the Phreesia Pad get better updated, readable data from patients. And patients don't have to repeatedly provide doctors the same information with each check in. The information from the laptop then can sync to an electronic health record or can be printed - what ever the preference is of the doctor.

Like Hello Health, Phreesia has worked hard to make its application very easy to use and to integrate it into the work-flow of the doctors' practices. Phreesia makes its revenues from sponsors who advertise on the Phreesia Pads.

Taking a global look at obtaining healthcare services, Patients Without Borders is a medical travel company. CEO Jeff Carter seeks to 1) provide really good care globally competitive pricing by building a network of domestics and international providers and 2) provide patients with concierge services in the form of a qualified patient advocate who will walk users of the network through all aspects of the process of traveling to obtain medical care. "Businesses benefit because employees can travel to receive quality care at a lower cost," says Carter. And by offering this benefit, some employers have been able to negotiate successfully with local providers to reduce the costs. Carter mentioned that a large New England employer was able to leverage globally competitive pricing for his company offices to achieve an incredible discount on local healthcare costs.

And engagement doesn't stop there. Karen Mastrianni of BCBS noted that one of their key objectives is to better educate and engage members about benefits and costs. "Smaller employers are moving towards higher deductible plans," noted Mastrianni. Employees are interested in health reimbursement and spending accounts. The result is that both employers and employees are more engaged around their healthcare choices.

Quality

Karen Mastrianni from Blue Cross/Blue Shield emphasized that affordability and quality are key themes. BCBS is concerned about the overuse, misuse and under-use of healthcare resources and to that end is working on rolling out new methods of working with doctors that focus on quality and results. By measuring outcomes, the plan will be able to change behaviors and be more effective.

"Fifty percent of what is discussed in a doctor's office is typically forgotten," said Findlay. By archiving all text, video and e-visits, patients and doctors using the Myca Platform can simply look up instructions. And with a few key-strokes, a doctor can quickly obtain feedback about how a prescription or course of treatment is working. And with the increased use of technology before and after a face to face visit, doctors using the Myca Platform find they can spend as much time as they need with patients - often 45 minutes per meeting - or more.

Indig always wondered whether anyone was ever reading the hand-written check in papers everyone fills out. With the Phreesia Pad, handwriting errors and paper storage issues are eliminated. Answers to basic questions about how the patient is feeling or the medications he or she is on are immediately available to the doctor during the visit - as opposed to the old method of having to dig through inches of paper in an attempt to find relevant data.

Users of Patients Without Borders services have access to all the qualification and certification data that hospitals obtain. Many of the overseas hospitals are newer and specialize in certain procedures. As a result, these hospitals become super experts in the care they provide and have the documentation to show it. As patients become more educated they will learn that it may very well be safer to travel abroad for certain procedures, rather than using a local community hospital.

Conclusion

Each of these businesses is growing. Phreesia adds hundreds of doctors using its Phreesia Pad check-in process a month and just closed a round of financing from the newly formed BCBS venture fund. Patients without Borders provides a win-win solution to employers with its revenue model of sharing savings. Hello Health is in New York City and is being used by on-site clinics run by employers - like Qualcomm.

And with the demand for better, convenient and affordable healthcare there will be more businesses like these to come.

Information on conference:

Bio Innovations 2009
Revolutions in Healthcare
March 7, 2009
MIT Sloan

Choice & Change: Innovations in Consumer Centric Healthcare
Moderator Daria Niewenhous, Esq. Mintz Levin, www.mintz.com

Panel Participants
Jeff Carter, CEO Patients without Borders www.patientswithoutborders.us
Chaim Indig, CEO Phreesia www.phreesia.com
Nat Findlay, CEO Hello Health/Myca www.myca.com
Karen Mastrianni, Director Sales, Marketing & Service, IT Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

Karen Katz, Esq. is the Director of Business Development, Health, Medtech and e-Health at Mintz Levin. If you'd like to respond to this article by contacting Karen directly, send an email to KKatz@mintz.com.