Lucy Orr-Ewing

Couple of weeks ago had the pleasure of sharing my story to Alexander Benkendorf about starting CastPrint and later moving on to join Verge HealthTech Fund and the learning along the way. Some topics we discussed: 💡What does it take to bring innvation in healthcare 💡How did my startup background help me better prepare for VC work 💡How founders can better engage with VCs and what are the tips and tricks from the "other side" Thanks Alexander for having me!

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Someone broke down the estimated costs of a $15 Sweetgreen salad. We need these cost graphics for digital health to help future founders. Especially for tech enabled cos, the greatest cost is labor. Much of the "value created" is in curation and matching, which means the gross margins are reliant on labor arbitrage. Pay someone $X, but get paid $X+Y% per visit. The challenge with healthcare is that you often have to pick one of two business models: 1. specialized, low volume, high cost, low gross margin % 2. generalized, high volume, low cost, high gross margin % I'd argue founders should focus on gross dollars over the lifetime of the customer (like Jeff Bezos said) instead of gross margin %'s, but we'll leave that for another time. The challenge is that many tech enabled digital health cos have high cost of goods sold (labor) and moderately high product, design, and engineering budgets. We must build differentiated solutions for patients, clinicians, and clients to be out incumbents, however, we're realizing that companies are ultimately valued on the discounted value of future cash flows. And the high SG&A costs at most organizations might be inbalanced to the unit economics of the business. I'm not sure the math pencils out for everyone unfortunately. But I'm just a guy on the internet, would love to hear the thoughts from those smarter than I (you!). Comment below. --- p.s. I have no idea the accuracy of the graphic and not an investor in Sweetgreen. Cheers. Credit: David Crowther

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In our latest premium research, the team delved into the importance of Big Tech in Digital Health innovation. Our analysis revealed that while Big Tech’s role in Digital Health innovation is complementary, their substantial resources and technological prowess are crucial in forging impactful partnerships. Big Tech leverages its tech capabilities to enhance healthcare delivery, albeit with careful consideration of patient-centric values and regulatory requirements. Startups, academic institutions, and healthcare organizations remain at the forefront, driving the unique advancements needed in this specialized field. However, there have been significant trends and developments over the past five years. Partnerships between tech companies and Digital Health ventures have grown at an impressive CAGR of 32%, surpassing the 29% growth rate of non-tech corporate collaborations. As of May 2024, Tech has overtaken Biopharma, claiming a 10% share of partnerships with Digital Health initiatives. Follow Galen Growth | Insights You Can Trust and subscribe to HealthTech Alpha #DigitalHealth #HealthTech #BigTech #Innovation #Healthcare #TechPartnerships #HealthTechResearch #HealthcareInnovation #HealthTechTrends https://lnkd.in/gPM5G9d6

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Hot off the pre-print server – an important publication authored by the Atropos Health team exploring the performance of LLMs in answering real-world clinical questions. LLMs excel at summarizing and contextualizing existing literature, but cannot generate de novo medical evidence today. The results of the study highlight performance gains attributable to injecting novel, relevant, and up-to-date medical evidence into LLM-powered clinical decision support systems. Brigham Hyde Nigam Shah Saurabh Gombar Read the study here: https://lnkd.in/ecuU25Pq

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I’m a lucky man - I get to talk about stuff I care about with people that feel the same way, but know how to approach it in fresh ways. This chat with Josh Au Yeung goes into another area I think needs much more attention - leadership. NHS providers recently published data showing only around a third of NHS CEOs have a clinical background: https://lnkd.in/givrbU_p . When evidence suggests that expert leadership is strongly associated with better outcomes, happier staff, and greater productivity, we need to work harder to identify, train, and support current and future clinical leaders. The burning question is this: when it comes to #HealthTech , who is the expert leader? A technologist? A clinician? A hybrid? Would love to hear your thoughts on this (and the podcast, naturally)

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Bag is packed, and I'm heading off to HLTH Europe 🎉 HLTH Vegas was my first taste of the HLTH experience, so expectations are high for what Henry Stoneley and the team have crafted over in Amsterdam. The official agenda is appetising (https://lnkd.in/e3Y87Z8Z), with multiple stages themed around the senses. What am I looking forward to? 🪩 MAIN STAGE 18th: Ali Parsa talking about Babylon and his latest venture. Essential stuff 19th: "Transforming Perspectives on Psychedelics: A Journey Beyond the Trip" fits the tolerant and broad-minded nature of our host city well. 👁 SIGHT 19th: We have "Ghosts in the machine: Empowering healthcare to capitalise on GenAI", "Blinded by AI: The Turing Test live" and "Safekeeping: Is trust AI’s biggest hurdle?" all on the 19th * I'll be appearing on the live Health Tech Talk Show with Lisa B. and Kat McDavitt 👂🏼 SOUND STAGE 18th: Listening to the latest on Mental Health at "Navigating depression: New pathways in mental health"- supporting Erin Sivyer Lee and Team Flow Neuroscience 19th: Having wrapped my head around longevity tech in ArabHealth earlier this year, I'll be checking out "Beyond the Fountain of Youth: Unlocking the secrets of longevity" 20th: The Middle East summit takes over the stage * I'll also be catching up with Christophe Jauquet Mo Zouina and Aline Noizet to record some special Healthusiasm content 👃🏼 AROMA STAGE 18th: ChatGPT and Hospitals? IM IN 19th: Debate time! "This house believes there’s no role for government in healthcare" - I smell smoke... 20th: Data might be the new oil, but not all oils are the same "Goldmine or fool’s gold? Extracting value from health data" 👇🏻 TOUCH STAGE 18th: "Eighths and pains: The ongoing trials and tribulations of cannabis in healthcare" wins for the pun alone - 18th 19th: As a GP, I'll be cheering along to this one: "Undervalued, underinvested: Why keeping primary care as an afterthought costs lives" 20th: My mind was opened by recent talks from ☀️Maneesh Juneja. "Greener, leaner, cleaner: Healthcare's role in global warming" gets my vote 👅 TASTE HLTH do food really well: Survivors BBQ is locked in. 🌍 EVERYTHING ELSE There's the Startup Stage, HealthXL Global Gathering on Monday, AlbionVC mixer, Philips welcome reception, HLTH Networking party, and goodness knows what else. This is Amsterdam after all. 🌶️ For all of my neurospicy sisters and brothers, I'm bringing a wee gift for you. Let's stay hydrated and pace ourselves folks, we have a big week ahead of us! Anushka Patchava MD, MBA Darshak Sanghavi Adel B. Hassan Chaudhury Michael Watts Dr Cos Fantis Rochelle Morris Dr Dom Pimenta M.D. Dr Rizwan Malik Sam Shah Haris Shuaib Dr Harpreet Sood plus many, many more

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Day Zero dispatchs from HLTH Europe For an event that hadn't officially opened yet, there was a huge amount going on yesterday. Adequately fueled and hydrated, your intrepid avatar launched into the festivities. What were some of the highlights? HealthXL hosted an event looking at AI in Lifesciences and Pharma. They always draw a huge crowd on leaders from industry, and today was no different. Chandana Fitzgerald started with the news that they have merged with HLTH, becoming HLTH Community! Robert Garber led with a VC summary of the state of AI, and how to avoid the infamous Trough of Disillusionment. With 82% of companies looking to implement AI governance, it's a good time for those looking to make AI safe and effective. Unsurprisingly, hes also seeing greatest focus on the less complex, administrative side of healthcare. Cristina Ortega Duran gave a lively presentation on their successes with Evinova, which integrates trail data into a single platform. Stephen R. called on the audience to follow 3 rules: focus on the customer problem first, learn quickly, and follow the evidence. Yes, he's turning everyone into Product Managers. During the panel we had great questions about bias and representation from Aahuti Rai, which underlined the role that synthetic data and telehealth have to play in filling gaps and reducing the burden of trial participation. The final workshop focussed on priority use cases for AI in Drug R&D and Clinical Development. Some suggestions included Ambient Documentation for researchers, summarisation of content translation to ease recruitment, and the identification of novel outcome metrics. Shout out to whoever arranged the "AI in the NHS" session, because it was packed to overflowing. If anyone was lucky enough to find a seat, let me know how it went because I couldn't get in! After hours we had the customary networking events, including a brilliant get together from AlbionVC (thank you Molly Gilmartin!) where I finally got my chance to meet with Hello Self's Charles Wells, reconnect with AI legend and founder of Newton's Tree Haris Shuaib, Kelly Klifa & Alexandra (Sasha) T. from Ally Health, Samantha Fay from SiSU Health UK, and welcome back Dr. James Somauroo & Jessica Somauroo after their 5 week honeymoon. Given how hard they work, the absolutely deserved it. For all the clenched teeth and hair pulling that our industry can cause, today showed that the determination and drive to fix the problems we face are still there. HLTH really does know how to bring all the boys (and girls) to the yard! ALSO: Shout out to my former Babylon colleagues Nirvana Luckraj Darshak Sanghavi and Tom Breeze. The network remains *strong* #hltheurope #healthcare #innovation #digitalhealth #healthtech

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I always read Rock Health's digital health reports as they give a nice pulse feel for what is happening in the digital health funding space. Good to see funds raised in H1 2024 suggest funding in the sector seems to have stabilized at 2023 levels. Its no surprise the report emphasis the buzz around AI and healthcare. There have been clear winners in the AI healthcare space in the area of process and cost optimization and the R&D space. The impact of AI in care and treatment delivery is so far much more muted. One area I never though to look at AI was in its ability to bring together multiple healthcare pathways and digital point solutions into a more holistic seamless experience for the patient. There is a clear trend away from using stand alone digital health point solutions, and could AI address this challenge by facilitating the efficient integration of disparate processes and technology into unified care programs. I can see this happening with digital health products but this will be more tricky to do with physical care programs involving clinicians and HCPs. “AI is helping us combine multiple parts of the care journey, across all care experiences. In the future, benefits navigation, clinical guidance, and care delivery won’t be delivered by separate companies or point solutions within the healthcare ecosystem. They’ll be features that work in concert within products, and they’ll happen in under 90 seconds for a seamless patient experience.” – Glen Tullman, CEO, Transcarent and Managing Partner, 7wireVentures

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One key reason why healthcare technologies like AI, telemedicine, and software haven't structurally lowered costs or broadened access for the entire system after decades of experimentation (excluding pure financial engineering of payer contracts) is the limited reimagining of care delivery itself, with asynchronous telemedicine as a notable exception. In the same way that digitizing physical paper failed to exploit the capabilities of a new computing medium for word processing, hosting physician-patient conversations over video does not transform the actual delivery of care. In telemedicine, many of the inputs (e.g., clinician time) and therefore cost structures of in-person care persist, which is why we often see fee-for-service telemedicine companies struggle to achieve economies of scale (i.e., growing revenues non-linearly while growing costs linearly). Until we deconstruct the components of a medical appointment – from intake and triage, to chart review, history gathering, physical examination, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up – we will continue to be underwhelmed by the disconnect between the transformative potential of these technologies and real-world patient/system impact. I’m optimistic that the emergence of reliable and performant medical AI agents will urge us to perform this deconstruction and redesign the fundamental building blocks of a “medical appointment.”

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🚀 𝐔𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐔𝐫𝐢 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬! 🚀 Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze and Moovit, shares invaluable lessons in his book “𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮, 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.” Key takeaways include the importance of passionately embracing the problem you’re solving, the necessity of customer retention as a marker of product-market fit, and the strategic use of pitch deck slides. He also emphasises the significance of hiring and firing correctly and observing user behaviour to refine your product. These principles can transform your startup journey, ensuring resilience and growth. 🌟 #StartupSuccess #Entrepreneurship #ProductMarketFit #Innovation

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Here’s your recap of last week’s health IT news 🗞️ 👇 🥼AI Clinician Assistant • Suki : The AI scribe announced an SDK and APIs enabling developers to integrate ambient documentation into their applications. • Apricot: The gen AI pre-seed startup focused on reducing documentation overhead for home health nurses launched. • Tampa General Hospital + Palantir Technologies: The health system and the software platform are partnering to develop an AI care coordination and decision support platform. ☎️ AI Contact Center • Mediktor + Sensely: The AI symptom triage solution acquired the conversational member engagement platform. 📋  Patient Administration • Oracle (Cerner) + Loyal: The EHR now offers integration with the patient engagement solution through its Healthcare Marketplace. • HubSpot: The CRM and marketing platform announced it will now offer HIPAA support and sensitive data tools. 🏥 Provider and Practice Administration • LeanTaaS: The AI-enabled facility management solution released updates including: mobile-first live view of OR schedule, predictive staffing automation, and a gen AI solution allowing decision-makers to glean staffing and scheduling insights. ⚕️ Clinical Operations • Keragon: The HIPAA-compliant automation platform launched out of stealth with a $3M funding round. 🧑‍💻 Virtual and At-Home Care • AvaSure + CLEW: The virtual care platform is partnering with the AI-powered remote patient monitoring and analytics company to improve patient outcomes. 🍎 VBC • Evolent + Machinify, Inc.: The VBC org acquired AI Authorization assets from the AI operating system platform.    • ProgenyHealth, LLC + Wildflower Health: The maternity and NICU case management solution is partnering with the women’s health VBC enabler to “help health plans fill gaps, collapse silos and integrate into existing clinical and operational workflows.”    • Health Catalyst + Carevīve: The population health data and analytics company has completed acquisition of the cancer care management solution. 🧠 Food for Thought: • This article provided an interesting look at Nebraska Medicine’s efforts to design a next-generation hospital room, including the four technologies they’ve selected to anchor their work. https://lnkd.in/em-u-a5v    • McKinsey released a survey of 200 global health system executives on their investment priorities. Among the notable findings, 88% listed AI as an area of high potential impact, yet only 40% have implemented any solution thus far and over 20% don’t have plans to invest in the next two years. https://lnkd.in/eK3CeqQ2

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https://tcrn.ch/3xszfxx Interesting piece in TechCrunch about what #generative AI could mean for healthcare. Some key points: ⭐ The article described the potential of using generative AI in #radiology. ⭐ Worth noting that both examples given in the radiology section aren't actually #generativeAI though (both examples are machine learning). ⭐ Despite enthusiasm from the investor community, patients and clinicians are less sure about its value ⭐ Only 53% of surveyed consumers thought it could add value in healthcare ⭐ A paper in JAMA Pediatrics found ChatGPT made errors diagnosing pediatric diseases 83% of the time Despite reservations, I think there's no doubt that generative AI could be game-changer, especially for routine, mundane tasks. Be interesting to hear what others think ! #radiology #AI

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Bank holiday fun: This is a nice post from Graham Walker, MD describing a heuristic that can be used to expand the range of diagnoses a clinician might consider when reviewing a patient, and how it could be used as an LLM use case. Given the incredible flexibility of LLMs and the ease with which this can be tested, I've created a GPT (ChatGPT plus sub required) that allows you to try it out. https://lnkd.in/eBAWsfn5 If you do not have access to GPTs, you can find the prompt itself on github: https://lnkd.in/erdVqcFs DISCLAIMER: Do NOT use this in a clinical setting! It's just a fun demonstration of how role-based instruction prompting can deliver helpful results. I'd love to hear your feedback. #ArtificialIntelligence #DigitalHealth #GenerativeAI #GENAI #LLM #Prompting #PromptEngineering #ClinicalPromptEngineering #GPT #GPTs #ChatGPT

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🔥Tune In to the Latest Fireside Chat with a VC in Healthech🔥 What percentage of VCs are former founders? 30% maybe more? I'd think a fair amount, yet how *exactly* does that transition happen and what perspectives change *radically* afterwards? Sigvards Krongorns shared exactly that - his journey from PwC consultant to Healtech founder, to a VC shaping the future of Healthtech startups. What we talked about: ✨ Sigvards' transition from a PwC consultant to founder to a VC ✨ What steps are necessary to bring innovative medical devices from concept to market ✨ How being a founder can prepare you for a role in venture capital ✨ What strategies help navigate the regulatory landscape in healthtech startups ✨ The right way to engage with VCs for startup funding ✨ What future trends in venture capital and Healthtech look like #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation #StartupJourney #HealthcareInnovation #Entrepreneurship #FiresideChat #VentureCapitalInsights Full conversation can be found here:

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I am very excited to share the pre-print study on Atropos Health ChatRWD beta results(link to paper below). ChatRWD beta outperformed ChatGPT 3.5, Google Gemini 1.5 Pro. and Anthropic Claude 3 on answers to clinical questions when reviewed by independent physicians. OpenEvidence also outperformed the Big Tech LLMs by a wide margin. Most important to us, ChatRWD performed highest on Physician trust and Best Answer and was able to answer questions asked 94% of the time. As the Gen AI cycle continues to move at a rapid pace we firmly believe that "Trust" and "Accuracy" are going to be critical, and that publishing your performance on both is table stakes. It is also clear to me that in the quest to be able to answer 100% of questions with Clinical grade accuracy training LLMs solely on the literature will not be enough. We need to produce new evidence in the form of high-quality transparent studies using appropriate methodology. We are adding beta users post this announcement, so please sign up to try it, and we will have more to come on full launch this summer. Exciting times and hope everyone has a great July 4th. https://lnkd.in/es5gWK84 #generativeAI #LLM #Realworldevidence

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The power of three! There are three YC companies that have absolute dream teams consisting of three founders each who happened to announce their existence to the world on the same day. They are working on some of the biggest issues impacting humanity: the creation and education of healthcare providers, agtech/climate, and women’s health. I honestly could not have dreamed up better teams to tackle these massive problems. Synaptiq (YC 23) was started by three friends who have known one another since elementary school: a UCSF-trained physician, an engineer from Square, and an all-star designer. The physician dropped out of Stanford neurosurgery, the hardest residency program to get into in the country, after scoring in the 100th percentile on the board exam and realizing he could use AI to bring his studying methods to other physicians and healthcare workers. Now they have growing revenue and are on track to launch at almost every medical school in the country. Feanix Biotech (YC 23) was initially started by two geneticists who grew up on dairy farms. They came up with new genetic tests for cows and had skyrocketing revenue but realized that the farmers they were working with could make even better breeding decisions. That’s when they met their third co-founder, an MIT/Google ML engineer who was already working on agtech software of her own. Together, they’re now developing the world’s first software + diagnostic platform for agriculture. Simbie Health (YC 23) was started by a Fulbright fellow physician out of uChicago, an operations leader from Carrot Fertility, and a software engineer from Princeton. They’re working on women’s health, creating software that enables women’s health practitioners to start their own, virtual-first practices. Yes, more women’s health, please! Congratulations on your launch! Ryan Phelps, MD, Jacob Caccamo, Kevin Bastoul; Mitchell Angove, Tom Bishop, Meia Alsup;  Natalia Neha Khosla, MD, Rachel O'Driscoll, and Natalia Perina.

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The Future is NonBinary... 🗣 I am STOKED to be joining Brian Robinson, Oodaye Shukla, and Cedric "Jamie" Rutland MD FCCP on this panel at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next month. 🇫🇷 "The population continues to become more heterogenous – cultures mixing, cultural norms shifting – changing the way people view and define their own identities. At the same time health technology innovation marches forward at an incredible pace. The bitter reality is that while science is rapidly improving, the culture of health and wellness is not advancing at a pace nearly adequate to support society. Technology can absolutely help, but it requires a larger more intentional cultural movement that embraces the new reality, our world is non-binary. This panel will discuss the challenges presenting the way cultures approach individual health and wellness, the friction with where scientific innovation is going, and the health systems that attempt to support communities. The panel’s belief on the important role culture and technology can play in evolving the way companies and societies approach health and wellness. Our focus is how technology and culture can make health more human." NonBinary Solutions Havas Health & You Infillion #ItsNotBinary™️🪩 #CannesLions2024 #HavasCannes #HavasHealth #NonBinary #OneHavas #startup #tech #socialimpact #autism #neurodiversity #bcba #appliedbehavioranalysis #abatherapy #decisionmaking #decisionsupport #TechForGood #queerfounders #womenfounders #lgbtq #neurodivergent #SaaS #HealthTech #EdTech #cdss #tedtalk #publicspeaker #invitedspeaker #speaker #thoughtleadership #nonbinary #thinking #mememarketing #creative

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🚀 𝐓𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐚𝐲, surging 15% and signalling strong investor interest in health tech with 𝐀𝐈 𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥! 🚀 The remarkable debut of Tempus, a health tech company utilising AI for personalised medicine, resulted in a 15% stock increase on its initial trading day. 🌟 #HealthTech #AI #Innovation #InvestorAppetite #HealthcareRevolution #TechTrends

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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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