David S. Williams III

Transforming Healthcare System: How Supply Chain Innovation Drives Health Equity and Bridges Disparities — Bright Chimezie Irem In the ongoing effort to bridge health disparities, reduce health gaps/inequities while increasing health equity, optimizing health and pharmaceutical supply chains emerges as a crucial strategy. Bright Chimezie Irem looked into how these supply chains, integral to healthcare delivery, can be effectively managed to enhance health equity, particularly in the last-mile population & hard-to-reach regions. In my work on - https://lnkd.in/dT-2A748 - I began by examining the challenges in health and pharmaceutical supply chains and their direct impact on #healthequity . Inefficiencies in these systems often lead to medicine shortages and inaccessible healthcare, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. Highlighting the role of government and policy-making, I explored how governmental interventions, through policy frameworks and regulations, can streamline supply chain processes and foster public-private partnerships. These collaborations are critically essential in leveraging private sector efficiency for public health benefits. A focal point of my presentation is the innovative model of AfriPharm Medicals Group, which exemplifies how private sector strategies can address public healthcare challenges. AfriPharm's approach in tackling supply chain inefficiencies showcases a scalable and sustainable model, emphasizing the importance of collaboration in enhancing health equity for better health outcomes. Furthermore, I discussed the strategies for successful last-mile delivery, ensuring that essential healthcare services and products reach the most remote areas. This is vital for achieving true health equity. Measuring the success and impact of these initiatives is crucial. I looked into various #metrics and methods used to evaluate #supplychain optimizations, highlighting their significance in continuous improvement efforts. Looking ahead, I discussed future directions and innovations in #supplychainmanagement, emphasizing the role of emerging technologies and digital transformation. Optimizing health and pharmaceutical supply chains is a collaborative journey. By integrating innovative strategies, governmental support, and private sector efficiencies, we can significantly advance towards equitable healthcare access for all. #Read my full article on: https://lnkd.in/dT-2A748 Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity #ExchangeAlumni - Alumni Affairs - State Dept.#ExchangeAlumni U.S. Department of State | Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy Mandela Washington Fellowship YALI Network #HealthEquity #SupplyChainOptimization #PublicHealth #Pharmaceuticals #HealthcareInnovation #DigitalTransformation #GlobalHealth #HealthPolicy #SustainableHealthcare #LastMileDelivery

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Healthcare in the U.S. is in crisis but value-based care estimated to add $1 Trillion in value. You nailed it. Irem Rami, Sam Lesser, Suraj Shah, Unmesh Srivastava #healthcare #medicare #healthequity

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Here’s your recap of last week’s health IT news 🗞️ Notable partnerships 🤝 • Kaiser Permanente is partnering with Innovaccer to incorporate their population health and AI platform        • MUSC Health adopted Andor Health’s ThinkAndor in its ED to reduce wait times and “leaving without being seen” rates.      • Upperline Health is partnering with Navina to improve clinical workflows and improve the accuracy of patient histories.      • Intermountain Health deployed Nuance Communications DAX Copilot, an AI ambient scribe solution.      • PA Clinical Network is partnering with Guidehealth  to improve outcomes and care quality while improving physician efficiency. Product updates 👩🏼‍💻 • Klara released a new patient intake product for athenahealth users.    • Baton Health released Universal Primary Source, giving users access to hundreds of primary source databases for credentialing.    • InsightRX released InsightRX Apollo, an analytics platform that provides insights on clinical performance.    • Trovo Health launched with a $15 million seed round, offering specialty-specific AI combined with clinical experts to help practices add to their capabilities.    • Quest Diagnostics acquired PathAI’s diagnostic laboratory business (PathAI Diagnostics) to improve Quest’s oncology services.    • GenHealth.ai launched its Automated Prior Authorization platform.    • Veradigm® is partnering with MedEvolve, Inc. to make its suite of products available to Veradigm users.    • CLEW announced availability of a newly FDA-approved patient surveillance platform. Posts we enjoyed 👏 • Eric Topol, MD shared a compelling piece reviewing the state of research on AI in medicine. In short, we’re seeing our first early evidence that AI can reduce mortality as a research endpoint, but large language models are not yet the panacea we’ve been promised. (https://lnkd.in/e6hK-4mr)    • Nikhil Krishnan of Out-Of-Pocket shared a deep dive on Stedi, which converts X12 EDI into JSON-based APIs for healthcare tech developers. (https://lnkd.in/eqS9V5zW) --- Want to stay in the loop? Sign up for the Elion Briefing to get all of the latest healthcare tech news delivered to your inbox 📬 👉 https://bit.ly/49z6AUW

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Investing in companies that fill needs for health systems is a growth opportunity for both delivery organizations and start ups. Some systems are jumping in on their own, while others are partnering with like minded systems or with established VC firms. While this is a relatively new trend for systems, health plans have been making similar bets for many years. The benefits of becoming a health system portfolio company can be significant. Data, access to beta populations and real world coaching can be extremely beneficial. Start ups get mentoring and systems have to ability to leverage outside resources to solve relevant business problems. I predict a booming business!

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Check out our latest podcast episode!

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I’m excited to share what we've been obsessing over for the last six months! Introducing Threshold Health, a unique patient engagement platform that puts healthcare operators in the driver's seat of modern care gap closure campaigns. Shockingly, only 1 in 20 US adults is up to date on their recommended preventive care, such as cancer screenings or blood pressure testing. This statistic is paradoxically low, especially given the increasingly direct financial incentives tied to increasing population-level care quality. When my longtime friend and now cofounder, Dr. Doug Murad, and I started exploring why patient engagement is so low, we quickly discovered a recurring pattern. Time and again, we heard from passionate operators across diverse healthcare organizations who struggled to mount effective patient engagement campaigns, often waiting until the last few months of the contract year to close important care gaps in their patient populations. In almost every case, these operators seemed to be building campaigns from scratch, deploying blunt tools like bulk SMS, physical gift cards, and manual call centers, and relying on lagging indicators of success. Unsurprisingly, these efforts were operationally expensive and often fell short of their targets. Dr. Doug and I aim to empower healthcare operators level up their patient engagement with campaigns that are cheaper, better, and faster than building something themselves. To do this, we’re building a self-serve platform that makes it easy for operators to rapidly launch and iterate on modern campaigns that integrate well with their existing care coordination workflows. If we’re successful in this first step, we will have a vehicle to deliver an increasingly sophisticated library of campaign templates and next-generation patient engagement technology. So far, we’ve developed a prototype that allows operators to go from zero integration to a modern deployed campaign in fewer than 10 clicks. We’re excited to run our first pilot in mid-July and continue developing the product with 2-3 launch partners through the rest of this year. There's a lot left to learn -- I plan to post regular updates and lessons here. Reaching this level of conviction took a lot of time—not just from me and Dr. Doug, but from numerous experts across various fields who have been extremely generous in sharing their expertise and feedback. I especially want to thank our network of advisors: Daniel Croymans, MD, MBA, Benjamin (Benny) Axt, Indira Gowda, Ivo Vlaev, Suruchi Kothari, MD, Melissa G., Christian Spier and many others; our investors Jane Wang and Saumitra Thakur at MedMountain Ventures; and our first full-time employee Joe Bonneau. Also, shout-out to Shirley Mao and rvnway for designing and building our new website: https://threshold.health With all that said, we’re open for business! Let’s chat :)

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✅Our healthcare report and market map are finally live✅ Over the past several months, I have shared with anyone who would listen that Michael Cardamone and I were in conversation with innovation executives across four of the top healthcare systems in the U.S. including Mayo Clinic Ventures, Hackensack Meridian Health, Cone Health Ventures, and University Hospitals Ventures to understand current strategies and priorities in order to hone in on our investment thesis. The goal was to arm healthtech founders with the inside perspective on the critical investment areas for US hospitals to help establish product-market fit and solve the industry's most pressing challenges. Links to download the report, check out the market map, and submit your company are all in the comments. Thank you to our contributing experts Shai Ran Sapir, Technology Development Manager at Mayo Clinic Ventures, Sandra Powell-Elliott, Chief Innovation and Commercialization Officer at Hackensack Meridian Health, David Heenan, Managing Director at Cone Health Ventures, and Matthew Zenker, Director of Deal Flow and Investments at University Hospitals Ventures. #healthcare #innovation #healthtech #earlystage #healthtechfounders #healthcarestartups

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Will advanced AI technologies help or hinder the movement toward health equity? It's a thorny question and one I'm excited to discuss with healthcare leaders at the 2024 Weitzman Institute Virtual Symposium on May 15. Join Irene Dankwa-Mullan MD MPH of Marti Health, Binoy Bhansali of Diverge Health, Sahee Abdelmomin of Tulsa Innovation Labs, André B. of True Search, and I by registering here: https://lnkd.in/g6yaQy9P This year, the symposium will focus on how and why representation matters in healthcare, touching on its role in innovation and technology. On one hand, we can't let AI inflict any more pain and suffering. Biased data and algorithms have worsened inequities and harmed underserved communities. On the other hand, we can't ignore the technology's transformative potential. AI opens the door to powerful new methods of personalized engagement — tools the industry desperately needs to better connect with underserved communities. So where does that leave us? Here's my take. Healthcare should use AI to support underserved communities, but solutions must be intentionally designed from the outset to ensure they break down inequities. Too often, destructive AI is born from organizations that ignore the experiences of diverse people. Teams that lack broad representation are vulnerable to intentional and unintentional biases, which creep into the code and hurt communities. Other routes exist. At SameSky Health, we built AI on a foundation of diversity, training our solution on a data set of conversations with low-income, multicultural communities collected over a decade. Our data set isn't the only way to build equitable AI, but a commitment to including outside perspectives throughout development is. I'm excited to hear the panel's thoughts on achieving these goals, which is all the more important in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to end race-based affirmative action — another topic we'll discuss on the panel. See you there. #WeitzmanSymposium #AI #HealthTechnology #HealthEquity

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Join me this Friday morning for Founders Friday Fireside Chat 06/28 I'm excited to share my journey of building a health tech company, and I look forward to sharing insights and learnings with you all. It's going to be a great conversation! 💬 Hope to see you there! 🌟Ciba Health #FoundersFriday #FiresideChat #HealthTech #StartupLife #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #HealthcareTechnology #DigitalHealth #FoundersStory #Leadership #GrowthMindset

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💛 this! The Wonder Woman Collective is a stellar example of how collaboration should revolutionize an industry—specifically women’s healthcare. This powerhouse alliance, formed by five innovative companies—Paloma Health, Neura Health, LEVY Health, Seven Starling, and Origin—is making waves by targeting the significant and often overlooked gaps in women's health. Their approach is multifaceted and strategic, focusing on improving healthcare outcomes, advancing health equity, reducing healthcare costs, and boosting productivity for women. What’s super cool about this collective is how they exemplify the four key principles needed for impactful change: 1.  Working in Tandem: These companies aren’t just sharing goals; they're integrating their expertise to provide comprehensive care, which includes clinical decision support and integrating electronic health records. Their joint efforts are a testament to the power of partnership in driving forward healthcare innovation. 2.  Mutual Accountability: By collaborating, these companies hold each other accountable to prioritize evidence-based, compliance focused, women-centric healthcare solutions, ensuring that they keep the focus on what truly benefits women’s health. 3.  Speed and Efficiency: They understand that in healthcare, time is often of the essence. Through their collaboration, they've accelerated the process of innovation and implementation of healthcare solutions, avoiding the redundancy of working in silos. 4.  Elevating Women’s Health as Healthcare. Period: This collective boldly declares that women's health issues deserve the spotlight and are integral to the broader healthcare narrative. Their actions and outcomes are making it clear that women's health is essential healthcare. It’s not just about better health outcomes—it’s about setting a new standard where women's health is given the priority, innovation, and respect it deserves. Let’s hear it for The Wonder Woman Collective. Rock on, ladies! Femtech Insider https://lnkd.in/eJBr7dB2 #womenshealth #femtech #collaboration

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At Spring Street Exchange, we've been talking about alternative revenue paths for regional and community-based healthcare organizations for some time now. The 'Middle Path' model outlined in this Harvard Business Review article by Regina Herzlinger, Duke Rohlen, Ben Creo, and Will Kynes is intriguing and adds a framework and structure to some of the ideas we've been exploring. This model would look different for a community-based health plan or provider, but could be valuable to expand thinking. "We’ve shown how the growth driver model can kickstart growth in a stable industry. But it can also be a survival strategy for incumbents facing a disruptive challenge." Interested in your thoughts! #innovation #strategy #secretsauce #differentiation #innovation #communitybasedhealthcare #wholepersonhealth https://lnkd.in/ewu2svCh

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Our latest edition of The Surgeon's Record from Benjamin Schwartz, MD, MBA is leading to the biggest growth yet. Tackling Part 3 ("Implementation of Technology") of our Pillars of Innovation, it also includes takes on the most recent Rock Health digital health funding report and a tweet on the latest CMS news from the always sharp Dhruv Vasishtha! Read + subscribe in the comments.

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Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to a podcast featuring the CEO's of Prime Therapeutics and Cap Rx. Investing time to learn what I can has always been crucial to my growth, and this podcast hit the mark for me. I was able to uncover some nuggets of wisdom that I can use to educate myself further. It's always exciting to learn from industry leaders and gain insights that can help me excel in my field. https://lnkd.in/eZTMUmiu

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What does the health tech landscape look like at present? We were delighted to answer that question and share our views with HTN - Health Tech News on the critical issues currently shaping the industry. Along with the other contributors, we discussed various challenges and offered practical solutions for overcoming them. This is an insightful exchange that highlights the importance of collaboration and innovation in addressing these pressing concerns. 📈 Key Themes Were: - AI & Workforce Management: How AI can alleviate burnout and improve scheduling. - The role of AI: How AI plays a part in optimizing healthcare operations. - Market Consolidation: Understanding opportunities and challenges in a competitive market. - Data Security: The importance of securing patient data and improving interoperability. - Patient Engagement: Leveraging digital tools to enhance patient care. And a recurring theme is the need for collaboration and innovation, which is certainly close to our hearts. When we work together and share knowledge, we drive progress in the industry. This also includes working with healthcare providers, patients, and other stakeholders to develop solutions that meet their specific needs, not through guessing but through checking, collaborating, and using real-time data. Have a read to understand how these trends impact healthcare efficiency and patient outcomes... 👉 Read the full article here: https://bit.ly/3xBpF7m #HealthTech #HealthcareInnovation #PatientCare #AIinHealthcare #DigitalHealth

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Walmart is exiting healthcare. This doesn’t surprise me. Walmart was never designed for healthcare, it was designed for retail. Everyone wants a piece of the $4T pie, but it’s a pie full of indigestible ingredients that would make the biggest companies choke. Especially companies that were never built for healthcare. - fee-for-service doesn’t work, especially with very low fees - relying on legacy payors doesn’t work - using insurance for primary care doesn’t work - not paying providers enough doesn’t work - having a clinic next to gardening supplies doesn’t work Throwing millions at healthcare doesn’t automatically work with a large base that comes to you for something else. I believe a properly built and well-executed healthcare startup that “thinks differently”, will eventually move the needle on improving the American healthcare experience. It’s coming, and will surprise everyone.

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