July 28, 2022 • 25 mins
From her days at athenahealth to her current role as co-founder and chief product officer at Zus Health, Ada Glover has been at the forefront of digital health product management. As patients have more specialized digital choices for their care, it’s important for providers to have access to data, derive meaning from it, and act on it. Join Ada and host Shiva Mirhosseini as they discuss product management’s role in connecting the healthcare experience, what inspires them, and where Zus Health is headed in the next 6-12 months.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:09):
Hi. Welcome to Paving the Path. I'm your host, Shiva Meter. Say.
People know me as a customer experience champion and a
digital executive at Fortune 50 companies. I plan on paving
the path in my show with women game changers, thought
leaders and executives touching the entire spectrum of digital transformation
in healthcare. Join me in exploring the digital renaissance that's
(00:33):
shaping healthcare today and forever changing the future of wellness,
care and health. Hello, everybody. Super excited today. My guest
today is a dog lover. She is the chief product
officer and co-founder of Zoos Health, a shared health data
(00:55):
platform designed to accelerate health care inventors by giving them
access to immediately usable patient data and enriched workflows. Prior
to zoos, ADA was a product management leader and a
senior health driving initiatives in value based care and launching
a new revenue cycle service. There was also a co-founder
(01:19):
and product leader at CERN, an award winning digital curriculum
for kids to learn and love math. She started her
career as a consultant with Bain and Company and holds
degrees from M.I.T.. Welcome. It's absolutely terrific to have you
on the show. Why don't you tell us a little
bit about yourself and how you've arrived at Zuse and
(01:43):
in this role and broadly, what has attracted you to healthcare?
S2 (01:47):
Yeah. Sheeba, thank you so much for having me on
the podcast. I really enjoyed meeting you so recently and
it's really an honor. As you said, I mean, Glover
and I lead product for, for Zs Health a little
bit about my background and sort of how I think
about myself and my role. I'm really someone that loves
solving problems. I've always been drawn to technology and design,
(02:08):
and so product management was sort of the right functional
role for me. It took a little while to get there,
but eventually found it. And one thing that's always been
really important is being able to have an impact on
sort of systemic, challenging issues that really matter to us
as a society. And so health care is one of
these pockets where there are a lot of workflow and
(02:29):
data challenges that really sort of draw me in from
a from an engineering sort of puzzle perspective. And it's
really meaningful. It's something that all of us experience. We
can see all of the opportunities for technology to play
a meaningful role in improving our collective health care experience.
Like you said, I spent a number of years at
(02:50):
athena health, which is one of the leading cloud based h.r.
Companies and had an opportunity to work on a number
of things across the organization and really get my legs
and health care through that experience. And then when i
was ready for something new, i was really drawn to
this new era of digital health innovators that were really
trying to bring technology to the forefront the same way
(03:12):
that we've seen many other industries transform. And I really
wanted to be a part of that movement. And when
I reconnected with Jonathan Bush, who's the former founder, CEO
of Athena and then the CEO of Zoom, it just
seemed like the right opportunity and also the right time,
because we were at a moment from a technology perspective,
from a regulatory perspective, from a market perspective, where we
(03:36):
felt like the industry was ready for a digital transformation.
S1 (03:40):
That's wonderful. And just for our audience, Jonathan Bush is
another magnificent leader really in health care and breaking down
a lot of the status quo kind of ways of
operating really the old healthcare. And he's a serial entrepreneur, very,
very successful. It's just amazing to see the chain of
(04:00):
change really coming from, you know, someone with your background
and his background, starting with Athena Halls. You mentioned something
really interesting. I mean, the way you worded it out,
I think it was perfect. You said systemic challenges that
healthcare is really facing. Can you give us any person's
kind of explanation of what this House does and your
(04:23):
role and why it's different?
S2 (04:25):
Yeah, absolutely. So this is building a lot of the
technology infrastructure that health care needs for a lot of
the common workflows and actions to be much more data informed.
So like in the rest of our lives, you know,
we're fed our optimized Netflix feeds and we have every
song we could ever imagine at our fingertips. We can
collaborate with anyone that has access to basically any device.
(04:48):
But when we go to the doctor, you know, we're
given that blank clipboard as if we've never been to it.
We've never had health care before. And while we're seeing
a lot of experience transformation in the digital world, data
is not really following us. Instead of the clipboard, we're
getting sort of a 150 question form that we we
get to fill out on our phones. And so this
(05:10):
is really trying to solve that problem by making it
easier for health care innovators to have access to data,
but also derive meaning from it and create workflows that
really improve the patient experience and care team efficiency and outcomes.
So that's what we're up to. And I think it's
a little bit different than what's going on elsewhere for
a couple of reasons. So first of all, this this
(05:30):
focus on bringing meaning to data in workflows. So we've
seen a lot of sort of analytics oriented efforts out
there that are really bringing meaning to sort of population. Analytics.
And there's a lot of incentives in the industry that
make that attractive. But when it comes to the point
of care, it's really hard to get data that's not
generated in your own system. And often it's very overwhelming
(05:55):
for clinicians and their teams to just sift through that data.
And so we're really hoping to bridge that gap. And
then I think the other piece is we're working with
a lot of these cutting edge digital health innovators that
we believe are really paving the way for for the
future of health care, often focused on longitudinal sort of
more always on relationships with their patients, using lots of
(06:17):
different modalities and a bend towards kind of preventative care.
And that's different than potentially partnering with with some of
the existing players in the industry, although we hope to
get there eventually. Yeah, and in my role as chief
product officer. So, you know, at a high level, I'm
responsible for figuring out what problems we solve or what
customers and making sure our solutions sort of have that
(06:39):
desired impact, right? What do we build for whom? Practically speaking,
I manage our product design teams and they work hand
in hand with the engineering and commercial side to really
figure out what the highest priority problems are for our
customers and prospects. Build their solutions, test them to make
sure they work and make sure that they're brought to
market in a way that has the necessary impact. So
(07:01):
really thinking about that product development process holistically. I really
love it because I get to think about the business
and sort of leverage a lot of my sort of
strategic thinking skills, but still roll up my sleeves and
get pretty close to the engineering side, which is really
near and dear to my heart.
S1 (07:17):
Absolutely. It's amazing how just listening to you. A lot
of the skill sets that has been available to other
industries be retail or travel or now creeping into what
have already creeping into healthcare, product management, digital mobile experience,
(07:39):
human centered design type of roles and skill sets that
really didn't quite exist in the healthcare, you know, ten,
15 years ago. It's quite a leap going with that
narrative and the fact that consumers expectations are evolving all
the time. And really those expectations are set, as you mentioned,
(07:59):
not by health care organizations but the likes of Netflix,
Amazon and the likes. How do you see this kind
of eventually the health care model evolving to what does
the future look like for health care?
S2 (08:13):
Ideally, it's a great question. We're starting to see a
lot of the transformation sort of at the edges, things
that are more consumer driven, things that are sort of
more opt in or preventative in nature. I think bringing
some of those trends to sort of the highest acuity
care is probably something that will take quite some time.
(08:33):
But I think eventually there are a couple of things.
I think one sort of access and putting consumer patients
and consumers more in the driver's seat the same way
that we used to have to speak to a bank
teller or talk to a travel agent to book, travel
or transact on our accounts. But today we can do
that all ourselves. How can we empower the patient to
really interact with our data, communicate with the care team,
(08:56):
sort of navigate the system I think is really important.
The other piece that's interesting and we'll have to see
how it plays out is sort of the role of
both regionalization but also choice in health care today. You've
got your local health system, maybe a few smaller practices,
but that's sort of the ecosystem that you live in
With digital experiences. You can get much more specific in
(09:19):
terms of who you are as a person and the
personalization of care as well as sort of what kind
of care you need. And you can see a lot of,
you know, early stage companies that are popping up or
more mature ones that are treating a specific condition or
focused on a specific population, whether it's care for, you know,
(09:40):
a specific Asian-American population or, you know, women with PCOS.
There are so many sort of niches and you can
get care that really fits what you need. The flip
side of that is how do you allow all of
those sort of thin slices to collaborate and provide continuity
the same way that I can use Venmo to pay
my friends and still, you know, have direct pay for
(10:02):
my credit card. How do you provide that that shared
infrastructure that will allow collaboration? And I'm hopeful that that's
the direction that we're moving towards, where you can really
find care that's easy to access in the hands of consumers.
And then also much more nation within fits the needs
of a specific population.
S1 (10:23):
That is so deep and truly groundbreaking. I mean, when
I joined and now a few years back, the social
determinants of health was the topic that everyone was covering
and still is. By the way, the fact that health
care is so local and that your zip code really
is more definitive of your. Your health and anything else,
(10:43):
but you brought up something else that is addictive and
probably even more transformational. Is that the regionalization? Because your
DNA is your DNA essentially, right, irrespective of where you
live and what your zip code is. So that regionalization
and that personalization of health care is a whole other
(11:03):
theme that technology is helping kind of transform and disrupt
in a positive way, hopefully. The question that comes to me, though,
is one of the challenges to health care that unless
you're in it, you probably wouldn't realize is all the
incentives that payers have payers, providers, you know, your doctor, office, pharmacy, pharmaceutical,
(11:26):
they are not necessarily aligned. There are all these different silos.
And you mentioned actually that that continuity of health, not
just from a consumer perspective or the patient perspective, but
also in the ecosystem, we have to somehow get there.
It's a loaded question, I know, but just curious to
get your thoughts. What have you seen that gives you
(11:48):
hope in terms of connecting and kind of aligning these
different incentives and what is is still missing and you
you hope to see in the future?
S2 (11:59):
It's a great question. I think what's giving me hope
is seeing sort of the growth of value based care.
And the way that contracted appropriately, you do start to
see incentives align sort of across that stack from the
payer to the providers that are taking on risk and
freeing folks from trying to cram as many appointments in
(12:22):
as as possible and instead have the freedom to really
spend time with the patients that need it most and
provide treatment asynchronously and not worry about whether they're being
compensated and really sort of practice within a broader set
of flexibility. I think the other thing that's interesting is,
you know, looking at all of the different paths to
(12:44):
market that a lot of these digital solutions are exploring.
So there are definitely payers that are bringing, you know,
whether it's care management or specific digital programs into their
benefit because they see the value and outcomes that are
coming out of those employers are also starting to sort
of play in that space and piece together some of
(13:05):
these benefits, some of which are sort of regarded as
a traditional health care benefit under a plan. And some
things are just an add on whether it's a one
medical membership or fertility benefits, really looking at the continuum.
So I think what gives me hope is that there's
a lot of experimentation going on to try to figure
out who is going to bring the network together, who
(13:27):
is going to offer that care navigation across it so
that patients can find the care that they need. The
incentives are starting to lock into place. Of course, with anything,
there's sort of two sides to the coin, right? There's
a lot of data required for value based care to
work because you're trying to measure on the basis of quality.
You're trying to risk adjust in some cases. And so
(13:50):
I think that's really the other challenge as well as
how do you slice that payer equally, right? If the
patient is seeing ten different providers or, you know, a
specialist for a discrete period of time to treat a
more acute or, you know, episodic element, how do you
make in their care, how do you make sure that
that is appropriately sort of dosed up? And that creates
(14:14):
a whole number of of new incentive challenges.
S1 (14:17):
Absolutely. Creating that one glass view of the consumer. I mean,
back in the days, right, in the retail, in trouble
in banking, same challenges, especially in highly regulated, highly complex ecosystems.
We have faced similar issues. I think with health care,
it's even more complex. But what gives me hope is
(14:38):
that a lot of smart people are looking at it,
and we have overcome a lot of complexities in other
industries and a lot of those entrepreneurs and a lot
of those investors are coming to health care, if not already.
And so it's all about your very special skill set,
problem solving at the core of it. That gives me hope.
Truly more of a partner in the industry.
S2 (15:00):
Well, I think what was interesting, having been in the
education world as well, you almost have a somewhat similar
set of challenges, very regional, a lot of disparities, and
then also a lot of sort of distance between the
sort of end user and the recipient of services and
the decision makers. Right? You've got superintendents and parents and
(15:22):
teachers all sort of trying to navigate what the best
curriculum is, very regulated, just several steps away from the
children actually trying to learn. And I think there are
some parallels to health care. I think those two spaces are.
So important for our society, but also both in some
(15:43):
ways suffer from getting those incentives aligned and providing both
consistency and innovation. So I don't have all the answers,
but they're definitely interesting based on my background, to draw
some some parallels there.
S1 (15:56):
Absolutely. It's a fabulous time to be in health care,
in health tech, irrespective of where you are in that ecosystem.
I think it's the renaissance of health care, truly. With
that said, coming back to zoos House, what's in the
work for the next 6 to 12 months? What are
you looking forward to and what should we pay attention to?
S2 (16:17):
We're still sort of in the early days of building
our platform, and I'm focused on a very user centric approach,
really making sure that we're crafting one use case at
a time and in the process, building a lot of
tools that in the long run will be used in
so many ways that we can't even imagine. So today
we're really focused on the early phases of a patient journey,
(16:39):
sort of their onboarding and getting to know you piece
as well as ongoing patient engagement, sort of mini versions
of that as you re-engage with your provider. So we're
solving things like new patient onboarding, responding to emerging events.
What happens if you end up in the hospital or
you forget to pick up your prescription? How can somebody
intervene in those moments? And for each one, we're going
(17:02):
deep on how to take the sea of data relevant
to that problem, that job to be done and derive
meaning from it. So an example is you may have
hundreds or for some patients, even thousands of data points
regarding your medications, every pick up, every prescription, every sort
of administration, so on and so forth. How do we
(17:23):
distilled that down into the medications that we should talk
about in our first visit that we need to double
check and have a conversation about? That's a lot of work.
And we're really taking on problems like that and inventing
the workflows that exist in a world where you have
access to that kind of meaningful data because those may
(17:43):
not be out there yet. The other thing we're starting
to test the waters on and prove out is like,
what does it look like to collaborate across some of
these organizations? What happens when your care team spans not
just one digital health provider, but maybe somebody outside the
digital health ecosystem or within it, Right.
S1 (18:02):
That's super helpful. Is it worth giving an example? I
don't know if you want to talk about the partnership
with Firefly or any other kind of in that ecosystem
working with zoos to bring that vision home.
S2 (18:14):
Yeah, I can talk a little. So Firefly is definitely
an example of someone that we're working with, and they're
providing longitudinal virtual first primary care. So with them, we're
looking at their onboarding experience, really trying to streamline it,
make it much more informed and provide efficiency to their
care team as well. Right. How do they spend that
(18:36):
first visit and the time leading up to prep for
it in meaningful, personalized conversation, relationship building instead of data gathering?
We're looking at that. We're also sort of exploring what
does it look like when they refer a patient to
somebody outside their practice, whether it's somebody sort of in
their network, another digital health provider, so on and so forth.
(18:58):
So they're great because they're a primary care provider and
then they're also starting to offer a full benefit as
a plan which gives them that broader sort of network perspective.
And then there are a handful of other organizations, some
in primary care similar to them, a lot that are
more sort of specialty focused, that are constantly sort of
(19:19):
trying to figure out that patient acquisition and then ongoing
engagement problem as well as what does it look like
to communicate back to the ACP? What does it look
like for them to coordinate with another specialist that might
be behind one of the medications on that list and
ensure the patient is adhering and has the necessary adjustments made.
S1 (19:40):
Salutes to the day that we can have more of
that seamless experience. I'm pretty sure that many in our
audience can think of episodes where you had to either
wait in line to fill up that form or there
was a lot of phone calls back and forth to
the doctor's office to just get clarification between appointments or referrals.
(20:02):
In this day and age, honestly, yeah, those are table
stakes really. And this is such an honor. Honestly, Ada,
for someone like yourself to bring such a different insight
and such a different skill set to really solve some
of these very complex problems as you go about your day.
So I guess I'm curious, where do you draw inspiration
(20:24):
for the work that you do from other industries or other,
I guess, trends or places that you look at the
read about podcasts, books for our audience.
S2 (20:35):
First and foremost, I draw inspiration from sort of our.
Customers prospects. The digital health community and the users they
think is a product person. I'm always trying to get
as close as possible to walking a mile in their
shoes and really understand what's happening in their world, what's annoying,
What risks are they afraid of? Something might be easy,
(20:58):
but if it's not approved for my from my hospital,
for me to be allowed to use it, I can't
use it. Right. So balancing some of those risks and
I think really getting in their shoes and in their
heads I think is very, very important. That's where it starts,
especially with some of the innovative folks that we're working with.
I think beyond that, there's sort of a lot of
(21:18):
inspiration that I take from the technology platform world. So
looking at companies like Stripe and Plaid and what they've
done for the fintech world and how they've really enabled innovation,
how they've grown, how they've started in sort of small pockets,
I think also looking at a lot of the collaborative
sort of work tools space. So we're also accustomed these
(21:41):
days to Google Docs and Slack and a lot of
these innovative collaboration platforms. Sigma Right. They're doing really cool
things to allow designers and creative folks to collaborate real time.
We've gotten used to that, but it's really worth appreciating.
And then I think the other piece from more of
a consumer perspective is looking at kind of e-commerce and
(22:03):
fintech as well, both based on sort of the breadth
of innovation that those spaces have opened up to. Also
the consumer centricity and how things are also stitched together
in the background. So the fact that I can, you know,
buy a hand-dyed scarf from a specific sort of creator
(22:24):
on Shopify, but at the same time my account and
my credit card or my transactions are stitched together in
the background. I think that balances is really inspiring. So
really looking all around and I go through spouts of
listening to a lot of health care podcasts and really
going deep into health care and taking a little bit
(22:44):
of a break and trying to look beyond. So one
of the classics that I've always enjoyed listening to is,
is how I built this. And that's always a great
oldies but goodies. And then Andy Slavitt started a podcast
called In the Bubble during COVID. And I found that
to be really interesting because, well, he did speak to
a lot of health care leaders, some digital as well.
(23:06):
There's a really well-rounded perspective ranging from like, you know,
entertainment figures to politicians. And I really enjoyed getting so
a more comprehensive view of health care because I've grown
up on the technology side. So I've always really enjoyed that.
S1 (23:23):
This is so awesome. I bet there are people in
the audience, so they're thinking, Well, we want to find him.
We want to follow her. Where can we find you?
I'm like, I know where to find you, but for
the rest of us, yeah.
S2 (23:34):
So probably the easiest is our company website. So use
health z u s dot com. And there's a form
up there that you could reach out, particularly for folks
that might be interested in learning more about this. And
then I'm also on LinkedIn, so folks want to reach
out and do my best to keep up there. So
I look forward to hearing from some of your audience.
S1 (23:56):
Thank you so much either for your time. I learn
so much every time I speak with you. It's absolutely
an honor to have you on the show. Thank you
so much for gracing with your time and your presence
and answering the questions, bringing such a rich point of
view to the conversation for our audience. Thank you so
much for your time. It's a pleasure to be with you.
(24:18):
And we wish you a great rest of the day.
S2 (24:20):
Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day, everyone.
S3 (24:25):
Thanks for tuning in. If you like what you heard,
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(24:47):
you need and it's all for free. And remember, we
might have a lot of work to do in health care,
but we'll get there faster together. Thanks again.
Hi. Welcome to Paving the Path. I'm your host, Shiva Meter. Say.
People know me as a customer experience champion and a
digital executive at Fortune 50 companies. I plan on paving
the path in my show with women game changers, thought
leaders and executives touching the entire spectrum of digital transformation
in healthcare. Join me in exploring the digital renaissance that's
(00:33):
shaping healthcare today and forever changing the future of wellness,
care and health. Hello, everybody. Super excited today. My guest
today is a dog lover. She is the chief product
officer and co-founder of Zoos Health, a shared health data
(00:55):
platform designed to accelerate health care inventors by giving them
access to immediately usable patient data and enriched workflows. Prior
to zoos, ADA was a product management leader and a
senior health driving initiatives in value based care and launching
a new revenue cycle service. There was also a co-founder
(01:19):
and product leader at CERN, an award winning digital curriculum
for kids to learn and love math. She started her
career as a consultant with Bain and Company and holds
degrees from M.I.T.. Welcome. It's absolutely terrific to have you
on the show. Why don't you tell us a little
bit about yourself and how you've arrived at Zuse and
(01:43):
in this role and broadly, what has attracted you to healthcare?
S2 (01:47):
Yeah. Sheeba, thank you so much for having me on
the podcast. I really enjoyed meeting you so recently and
it's really an honor. As you said, I mean, Glover
and I lead product for, for Zs Health a little
bit about my background and sort of how I think
about myself and my role. I'm really someone that loves
solving problems. I've always been drawn to technology and design,
(02:08):
and so product management was sort of the right functional
role for me. It took a little while to get there,
but eventually found it. And one thing that's always been
really important is being able to have an impact on
sort of systemic, challenging issues that really matter to us
as a society. And so health care is one of
these pockets where there are a lot of workflow and
(02:29):
data challenges that really sort of draw me in from
a from an engineering sort of puzzle perspective. And it's
really meaningful. It's something that all of us experience. We
can see all of the opportunities for technology to play
a meaningful role in improving our collective health care experience.
Like you said, I spent a number of years at
(02:50):
athena health, which is one of the leading cloud based h.r.
Companies and had an opportunity to work on a number
of things across the organization and really get my legs
and health care through that experience. And then when i
was ready for something new, i was really drawn to
this new era of digital health innovators that were really
trying to bring technology to the forefront the same way
(03:12):
that we've seen many other industries transform. And I really
wanted to be a part of that movement. And when
I reconnected with Jonathan Bush, who's the former founder, CEO
of Athena and then the CEO of Zoom, it just
seemed like the right opportunity and also the right time,
because we were at a moment from a technology perspective,
from a regulatory perspective, from a market perspective, where we
(03:36):
felt like the industry was ready for a digital transformation.
S1 (03:40):
That's wonderful. And just for our audience, Jonathan Bush is
another magnificent leader really in health care and breaking down
a lot of the status quo kind of ways of
operating really the old healthcare. And he's a serial entrepreneur, very,
very successful. It's just amazing to see the chain of
(04:00):
change really coming from, you know, someone with your background
and his background, starting with Athena Halls. You mentioned something
really interesting. I mean, the way you worded it out,
I think it was perfect. You said systemic challenges that
healthcare is really facing. Can you give us any person's
kind of explanation of what this House does and your
(04:23):
role and why it's different?
S2 (04:25):
Yeah, absolutely. So this is building a lot of the
technology infrastructure that health care needs for a lot of
the common workflows and actions to be much more data informed.
So like in the rest of our lives, you know,
we're fed our optimized Netflix feeds and we have every
song we could ever imagine at our fingertips. We can
collaborate with anyone that has access to basically any device.
(04:48):
But when we go to the doctor, you know, we're
given that blank clipboard as if we've never been to it.
We've never had health care before. And while we're seeing
a lot of experience transformation in the digital world, data
is not really following us. Instead of the clipboard, we're
getting sort of a 150 question form that we we
get to fill out on our phones. And so this
(05:10):
is really trying to solve that problem by making it
easier for health care innovators to have access to data,
but also derive meaning from it and create workflows that
really improve the patient experience and care team efficiency and outcomes.
So that's what we're up to. And I think it's
a little bit different than what's going on elsewhere for
a couple of reasons. So first of all, this this
(05:30):
focus on bringing meaning to data in workflows. So we've
seen a lot of sort of analytics oriented efforts out
there that are really bringing meaning to sort of population. Analytics.
And there's a lot of incentives in the industry that
make that attractive. But when it comes to the point
of care, it's really hard to get data that's not
generated in your own system. And often it's very overwhelming
(05:55):
for clinicians and their teams to just sift through that data.
And so we're really hoping to bridge that gap. And
then I think the other piece is we're working with
a lot of these cutting edge digital health innovators that
we believe are really paving the way for for the
future of health care, often focused on longitudinal sort of
more always on relationships with their patients, using lots of
(06:17):
different modalities and a bend towards kind of preventative care.
And that's different than potentially partnering with with some of
the existing players in the industry, although we hope to
get there eventually. Yeah, and in my role as chief
product officer. So, you know, at a high level, I'm
responsible for figuring out what problems we solve or what
customers and making sure our solutions sort of have that
(06:39):
desired impact, right? What do we build for whom? Practically speaking,
I manage our product design teams and they work hand
in hand with the engineering and commercial side to really
figure out what the highest priority problems are for our
customers and prospects. Build their solutions, test them to make
sure they work and make sure that they're brought to
market in a way that has the necessary impact. So
(07:01):
really thinking about that product development process holistically. I really
love it because I get to think about the business
and sort of leverage a lot of my sort of
strategic thinking skills, but still roll up my sleeves and
get pretty close to the engineering side, which is really
near and dear to my heart.
S1 (07:17):
Absolutely. It's amazing how just listening to you. A lot
of the skill sets that has been available to other
industries be retail or travel or now creeping into what
have already creeping into healthcare, product management, digital mobile experience,
(07:39):
human centered design type of roles and skill sets that
really didn't quite exist in the healthcare, you know, ten,
15 years ago. It's quite a leap going with that
narrative and the fact that consumers expectations are evolving all
the time. And really those expectations are set, as you mentioned,
(07:59):
not by health care organizations but the likes of Netflix,
Amazon and the likes. How do you see this kind
of eventually the health care model evolving to what does
the future look like for health care?
S2 (08:13):
Ideally, it's a great question. We're starting to see a
lot of the transformation sort of at the edges, things
that are more consumer driven, things that are sort of
more opt in or preventative in nature. I think bringing
some of those trends to sort of the highest acuity
care is probably something that will take quite some time.
(08:33):
But I think eventually there are a couple of things.
I think one sort of access and putting consumer patients
and consumers more in the driver's seat the same way
that we used to have to speak to a bank
teller or talk to a travel agent to book, travel
or transact on our accounts. But today we can do
that all ourselves. How can we empower the patient to
really interact with our data, communicate with the care team,
(08:56):
sort of navigate the system I think is really important.
The other piece that's interesting and we'll have to see
how it plays out is sort of the role of
both regionalization but also choice in health care today. You've
got your local health system, maybe a few smaller practices,
but that's sort of the ecosystem that you live in
With digital experiences. You can get much more specific in
(09:19):
terms of who you are as a person and the
personalization of care as well as sort of what kind
of care you need. And you can see a lot of,
you know, early stage companies that are popping up or
more mature ones that are treating a specific condition or
focused on a specific population, whether it's care for, you know,
(09:40):
a specific Asian-American population or, you know, women with PCOS.
There are so many sort of niches and you can
get care that really fits what you need. The flip
side of that is how do you allow all of
those sort of thin slices to collaborate and provide continuity
the same way that I can use Venmo to pay
my friends and still, you know, have direct pay for
(10:02):
my credit card. How do you provide that that shared
infrastructure that will allow collaboration? And I'm hopeful that that's
the direction that we're moving towards, where you can really
find care that's easy to access in the hands of consumers.
And then also much more nation within fits the needs
of a specific population.
S1 (10:23):
That is so deep and truly groundbreaking. I mean, when
I joined and now a few years back, the social
determinants of health was the topic that everyone was covering
and still is. By the way, the fact that health
care is so local and that your zip code really
is more definitive of your. Your health and anything else,
(10:43):
but you brought up something else that is addictive and
probably even more transformational. Is that the regionalization? Because your
DNA is your DNA essentially, right, irrespective of where you
live and what your zip code is. So that regionalization
and that personalization of health care is a whole other
(11:03):
theme that technology is helping kind of transform and disrupt
in a positive way, hopefully. The question that comes to me, though,
is one of the challenges to health care that unless
you're in it, you probably wouldn't realize is all the
incentives that payers have payers, providers, you know, your doctor, office, pharmacy, pharmaceutical,
(11:26):
they are not necessarily aligned. There are all these different silos.
And you mentioned actually that that continuity of health, not
just from a consumer perspective or the patient perspective, but
also in the ecosystem, we have to somehow get there.
It's a loaded question, I know, but just curious to
get your thoughts. What have you seen that gives you
(11:48):
hope in terms of connecting and kind of aligning these
different incentives and what is is still missing and you
you hope to see in the future?
S2 (11:59):
It's a great question. I think what's giving me hope
is seeing sort of the growth of value based care.
And the way that contracted appropriately, you do start to
see incentives align sort of across that stack from the
payer to the providers that are taking on risk and
freeing folks from trying to cram as many appointments in
(12:22):
as as possible and instead have the freedom to really
spend time with the patients that need it most and
provide treatment asynchronously and not worry about whether they're being
compensated and really sort of practice within a broader set
of flexibility. I think the other thing that's interesting is,
you know, looking at all of the different paths to
(12:44):
market that a lot of these digital solutions are exploring.
So there are definitely payers that are bringing, you know,
whether it's care management or specific digital programs into their
benefit because they see the value and outcomes that are
coming out of those employers are also starting to sort
of play in that space and piece together some of
(13:05):
these benefits, some of which are sort of regarded as
a traditional health care benefit under a plan. And some
things are just an add on whether it's a one
medical membership or fertility benefits, really looking at the continuum.
So I think what gives me hope is that there's
a lot of experimentation going on to try to figure
out who is going to bring the network together, who
(13:27):
is going to offer that care navigation across it so
that patients can find the care that they need. The
incentives are starting to lock into place. Of course, with anything,
there's sort of two sides to the coin, right? There's
a lot of data required for value based care to
work because you're trying to measure on the basis of quality.
You're trying to risk adjust in some cases. And so
(13:50):
I think that's really the other challenge as well as
how do you slice that payer equally, right? If the
patient is seeing ten different providers or, you know, a
specialist for a discrete period of time to treat a
more acute or, you know, episodic element, how do you
make in their care, how do you make sure that
that is appropriately sort of dosed up? And that creates
(14:14):
a whole number of of new incentive challenges.
S1 (14:17):
Absolutely. Creating that one glass view of the consumer. I mean,
back in the days, right, in the retail, in trouble
in banking, same challenges, especially in highly regulated, highly complex ecosystems.
We have faced similar issues. I think with health care,
it's even more complex. But what gives me hope is
(14:38):
that a lot of smart people are looking at it,
and we have overcome a lot of complexities in other
industries and a lot of those entrepreneurs and a lot
of those investors are coming to health care, if not already.
And so it's all about your very special skill set,
problem solving at the core of it. That gives me hope.
Truly more of a partner in the industry.
S2 (15:00):
Well, I think what was interesting, having been in the
education world as well, you almost have a somewhat similar
set of challenges, very regional, a lot of disparities, and
then also a lot of sort of distance between the
sort of end user and the recipient of services and
the decision makers. Right? You've got superintendents and parents and
(15:22):
teachers all sort of trying to navigate what the best
curriculum is, very regulated, just several steps away from the
children actually trying to learn. And I think there are
some parallels to health care. I think those two spaces are.
So important for our society, but also both in some
(15:43):
ways suffer from getting those incentives aligned and providing both
consistency and innovation. So I don't have all the answers,
but they're definitely interesting based on my background, to draw
some some parallels there.
S1 (15:56):
Absolutely. It's a fabulous time to be in health care,
in health tech, irrespective of where you are in that ecosystem.
I think it's the renaissance of health care, truly. With
that said, coming back to zoos House, what's in the
work for the next 6 to 12 months? What are
you looking forward to and what should we pay attention to?
S2 (16:17):
We're still sort of in the early days of building
our platform, and I'm focused on a very user centric approach,
really making sure that we're crafting one use case at
a time and in the process, building a lot of
tools that in the long run will be used in
so many ways that we can't even imagine. So today
we're really focused on the early phases of a patient journey,
(16:39):
sort of their onboarding and getting to know you piece
as well as ongoing patient engagement, sort of mini versions
of that as you re-engage with your provider. So we're
solving things like new patient onboarding, responding to emerging events.
What happens if you end up in the hospital or
you forget to pick up your prescription? How can somebody
intervene in those moments? And for each one, we're going
(17:02):
deep on how to take the sea of data relevant
to that problem, that job to be done and derive
meaning from it. So an example is you may have
hundreds or for some patients, even thousands of data points
regarding your medications, every pick up, every prescription, every sort
of administration, so on and so forth. How do we
(17:23):
distilled that down into the medications that we should talk
about in our first visit that we need to double
check and have a conversation about? That's a lot of work.
And we're really taking on problems like that and inventing
the workflows that exist in a world where you have
access to that kind of meaningful data because those may
(17:43):
not be out there yet. The other thing we're starting
to test the waters on and prove out is like,
what does it look like to collaborate across some of
these organizations? What happens when your care team spans not
just one digital health provider, but maybe somebody outside the
digital health ecosystem or within it, Right.
S1 (18:02):
That's super helpful. Is it worth giving an example? I
don't know if you want to talk about the partnership
with Firefly or any other kind of in that ecosystem
working with zoos to bring that vision home.
S2 (18:14):
Yeah, I can talk a little. So Firefly is definitely
an example of someone that we're working with, and they're
providing longitudinal virtual first primary care. So with them, we're
looking at their onboarding experience, really trying to streamline it,
make it much more informed and provide efficiency to their
care team as well. Right. How do they spend that
(18:36):
first visit and the time leading up to prep for
it in meaningful, personalized conversation, relationship building instead of data gathering?
We're looking at that. We're also sort of exploring what
does it look like when they refer a patient to
somebody outside their practice, whether it's somebody sort of in
their network, another digital health provider, so on and so forth.
(18:58):
So they're great because they're a primary care provider and
then they're also starting to offer a full benefit as
a plan which gives them that broader sort of network perspective.
And then there are a handful of other organizations, some
in primary care similar to them, a lot that are
more sort of specialty focused, that are constantly sort of
(19:19):
trying to figure out that patient acquisition and then ongoing
engagement problem as well as what does it look like
to communicate back to the ACP? What does it look
like for them to coordinate with another specialist that might
be behind one of the medications on that list and
ensure the patient is adhering and has the necessary adjustments made.
S1 (19:40):
Salutes to the day that we can have more of
that seamless experience. I'm pretty sure that many in our
audience can think of episodes where you had to either
wait in line to fill up that form or there
was a lot of phone calls back and forth to
the doctor's office to just get clarification between appointments or referrals.
(20:02):
In this day and age, honestly, yeah, those are table
stakes really. And this is such an honor. Honestly, Ada,
for someone like yourself to bring such a different insight
and such a different skill set to really solve some
of these very complex problems as you go about your day.
So I guess I'm curious, where do you draw inspiration
(20:24):
for the work that you do from other industries or other,
I guess, trends or places that you look at the
read about podcasts, books for our audience.
S2 (20:35):
First and foremost, I draw inspiration from sort of our.
Customers prospects. The digital health community and the users they
think is a product person. I'm always trying to get
as close as possible to walking a mile in their
shoes and really understand what's happening in their world, what's annoying,
What risks are they afraid of? Something might be easy,
(20:58):
but if it's not approved for my from my hospital,
for me to be allowed to use it, I can't
use it. Right. So balancing some of those risks and
I think really getting in their shoes and in their
heads I think is very, very important. That's where it starts,
especially with some of the innovative folks that we're working with.
I think beyond that, there's sort of a lot of
(21:18):
inspiration that I take from the technology platform world. So
looking at companies like Stripe and Plaid and what they've
done for the fintech world and how they've really enabled innovation,
how they've grown, how they've started in sort of small pockets,
I think also looking at a lot of the collaborative
sort of work tools space. So we're also accustomed these
(21:41):
days to Google Docs and Slack and a lot of
these innovative collaboration platforms. Sigma Right. They're doing really cool
things to allow designers and creative folks to collaborate real time.
We've gotten used to that, but it's really worth appreciating.
And then I think the other piece from more of
a consumer perspective is looking at kind of e-commerce and
(22:03):
fintech as well, both based on sort of the breadth
of innovation that those spaces have opened up to. Also
the consumer centricity and how things are also stitched together
in the background. So the fact that I can, you know,
buy a hand-dyed scarf from a specific sort of creator
(22:24):
on Shopify, but at the same time my account and
my credit card or my transactions are stitched together in
the background. I think that balances is really inspiring. So
really looking all around and I go through spouts of
listening to a lot of health care podcasts and really
going deep into health care and taking a little bit
(22:44):
of a break and trying to look beyond. So one
of the classics that I've always enjoyed listening to is,
is how I built this. And that's always a great
oldies but goodies. And then Andy Slavitt started a podcast
called In the Bubble during COVID. And I found that
to be really interesting because, well, he did speak to
a lot of health care leaders, some digital as well.
(23:06):
There's a really well-rounded perspective ranging from like, you know,
entertainment figures to politicians. And I really enjoyed getting so
a more comprehensive view of health care because I've grown
up on the technology side. So I've always really enjoyed that.
S1 (23:23):
This is so awesome. I bet there are people in
the audience, so they're thinking, Well, we want to find him.
We want to follow her. Where can we find you?
I'm like, I know where to find you, but for
the rest of us, yeah.
S2 (23:34):
So probably the easiest is our company website. So use
health z u s dot com. And there's a form
up there that you could reach out, particularly for folks
that might be interested in learning more about this. And
then I'm also on LinkedIn, so folks want to reach
out and do my best to keep up there. So
I look forward to hearing from some of your audience.
S1 (23:56):
Thank you so much either for your time. I learn
so much every time I speak with you. It's absolutely
an honor to have you on the show. Thank you
so much for gracing with your time and your presence
and answering the questions, bringing such a rich point of
view to the conversation for our audience. Thank you so
much for your time. It's a pleasure to be with you.
(24:18):
And we wish you a great rest of the day.
S2 (24:20):
Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day, everyone.
S3 (24:25):
Thanks for tuning in. If you like what you heard,
please spread the word. Tell your colleagues to tune in
for all the awesomeness and leave a review on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you listen. This show is produced by Shift
Forward Health, The Channel for Change Makers. Subscribe to Shift
for Health on your favorite podcast app and you'll be
subscribed to our entire library of shows. See our full
lineup at Shift Forward Health.com one subscription. All the podcasts
(24:47):
you need and it's all for free. And remember, we
might have a lot of work to do in health care,
but we'll get there faster together. Thanks again.
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