Kris Karson

LSI, BioscienceLA, #LAMedtechweek, and HLTH's #VIVE2024 event resulted in the latest GTM Pulse Check offering which has successfully taken off! As a result, I am continuing on last week's series of go-to-market tactics. Crafting a robust marketing plan is essential for medical device companies to thrive in today's world. By leveraging these outlined sections, organizations can optimize their marketing strategies and drive meaningful impact.This post takes a step back to outline the sections of a marketing plan. Read on 👇🏼 Looking for support in creating your marketing plan?  Let’s chat! Book here 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/g92YA9WK _____ P.S. Enjoying my content? ⚕️Follow me for more tips on medical device commercialization and repost to share with your network. #medtech #gotomarket #medicaldevices #healthcareinnovation

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The role of AI and new technology to aid cardiology “As cardiology starts to face staffing shortages and continued decreases in CMS payments, Biga believes technology advances need to be leveraged in cardiology to help improve outcomes, make workflows more efficient to do more with less, and to help cut costs.” “Many of the solutions that can help were displayed on the expo floor, including telehealth and real-time remote monitoring systems. "I think this area will experience an explosion in use," Biga said. Another major area that will likely see an explosion of use is artificial intelligence (AI). She said AI will begin playing a rapidly growing role in cardiology in the coming years to augment cardiologists and other clinical staff. And not just on the front lines of patient care, but also in the back offices where AI will play a growing role in IT systems, smoothing workflow, analytics, automated quality metrics capture and many other areas. "We must use AI to reduce administrative burdens and improve patient outcomes," Biga explained. “

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As the discourse shifts from models to compound AI systems / agents, we need better AI benchmarks to evaluate multi-modal and multi-step task performance, especially in healthcare and life sciences. When we wrote the first paper demonstrating ChatGPT's performance on the USMLE, we chose the US Medical Licensing Exam as a benchmark for accessibility, speed, and ease. This benchmark was never intended to represent AI model performance on real-world clinical tasks. Today, I still see so many research teams and startups using benchmarks (like the USMLE) that are ill-fitted for assessing the true clinical or scientific performance and utility of the models they are developing for real-world contexts. Benchmark development may be seen as a "less sexy" area of research, but it is of paramount importance. Years after the rise of the transformer, we still lack adequate benchmarks for so many single-step tasks in biomedicine. With compound AI systems (i.e., architectures that integrate multiple AI models to perform complex tasks) emerging, we need new benchmarks for agentic behaviors. I'd argue that developing an agent with novel capabilities without at least proposing a companion benchmark (if an industry standard does not yet exist) may hinder the adoption of said agent, especially for high-stakes workflows. Designing more benchmarks that capture/simulate real-world clinical and scientific workflows will help us mitigate the major discrepancies observed between in silico and in vivo performance and better support safe + effective deployment of AI in biomedicine. There are already brilliant people focused here, and we need more. DMs are open if you're researching or working in this area of multi-step/multi-modal benchmarking in healthcare and life sciences! #healthcare #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai

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Often, innovative #Tech products never have the chance to see the light of day due to the long and complicated regulatory approval process. Some of these solutions have the potential to significantly improve the entire #Healthcare system and benefit both #Caregivers and #Patients. At Caresyntax, we focus on streamlining this process, making it easier for developers to concentrate on improving and optimizing their products, while our team accelerates the whole regulatory compliance process.   Our Clinical Data as a Service program provides medtech industry partners with comprehensive capabilities to gather and analyze #Data throughout the entire care continuum. This platform enables medtech companies to evaluate the effectiveness of their solutions and enhance patient outcomes by leveraging a data-driven strategy.   I believe in strong ethical and legislative compliance for #MedTech solutions. This is why we understand the crucial factors and pillars needed for such solutions to achieve fast and easy market entry. Learn more about our Clinical Data as a Service solution via the link below:   https://lnkd.in/g9qSFp3p #FutureofHealthcare #AIinHealthcare #Caresyntax

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In the last 4 years, we've seen dramatic surges and falls in healthcare private equity deals and volumes. PE investments can revitalize existing healthcare organizations and breathe life into new, innovative approaches. Read more from my colleague Troy Keach on the top PE trends emerging in 2024.

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Also don’t outsource your hospital’s core services to a GPO ran by foreign PE… I do find it so odd that Vizient’s own contracts couldn’t stand on their own so they had to create a aggregation group with Mayo Clinic called Capits. (https://lnkd.in/gpiVDKvn) Which by the way Mayo Clinic is being sued because not only does Mayo control pricing on supply chain contracts for Vizient, but guess who controls pricing on their self insured insurance plan. (https://lnkd.in/guvx5mqr) Oh and as of November of last year Mayo Clinic lead their state in adverse healthcare events. (https://lnkd.in/gXsPi2sw) Should I go on or have I made my point clear on why Oklahoma hospitals should not blindly follow Vizient, Captis, and the Mayo Clinic?

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SPACs are increasingly used to take private healthcare companies public, offering an alternative to traditional IPOs. This trend has been growing, especially between 2012 and 2021. SPACs provide a pathway to public markets for companies that may not meet traditional IPO financial performance targets. They also typically incur lower underwriting fees and are less likely to face shareholder lawsuits. 👉 SPACs could lead to higher prices for healthcare services and products due to increased consolidation and vertical integration .... ultimately raising costs for employers, insurers, and patients. 👉 Corporatization of healthcare through SPACs may result in adverse clinical events, as seen with previous private equity acquisitions. 👉 The need for regulatory compliance and transparency may present challenges. 👉 SPACs can be risky investments, as they often merge with companies that have not yet achieved profitability. 💡 Financial engineering and creating value in the healthcare value chain are two distinct pursuits. #SPACs #SVP #HealthcareIPO #Digitalhealth

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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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Mandatory bundles in surgery are a bi-partisan objective, and (in)ability to optimize cost/quality will dramatically impact hospital P&L. Regular insights from granular data , and AI-based decision support are the only way to systemically reduce unwanted variability and be both profitable and high quality.

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How can we build the right infrastructure to support remote patient monitoring (RPM) for all kinds of patients in all kinds of settings? Check out this new paper in NEJM Catalyst by recent medical school graduate, Nina Singh, MD on why and how to create the core capabilities within a health system , taking a different, more scalable approach -- "the focus is on building tools and workflows for practices that are interested in using RPM rather than on building centralized RPM programs for specific high-need populations." Practical tips include a #playbook for RPM and much more: "Exploratory features include a playbook detailing best practices for RPM use across NYULH, a device loaner program, direct Bluetooth pairing (as opposed to Bluetooth syncing and transmission of data through data aggregator pathways), systematic offboarding workflows for inactive or stable patients, and small centralized programs being developed among groups of practices with similar patient populations and needs (e.g., primary care faculty group practices managing hypertension). Super proud of Dr Singh's work during her year off with Nader Mherabi and others in informatics at NYULANGONEMEDICALCENTER. She's heading to University of California, San Francisco Department of Medicine to start her internship--what a star! Talmadge E. King, Jr. MD Robert Wachter Atul Butte https://lnkd.in/e-VpGie7

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Digital Health: Countervailing Forces… Consider this: over the past five years nearly $78 billion has been invested in digital health companies and yet just this past year over 20 million Americans were taken off the Medicaid rolls. Certain policy changes can be very damaging, to say nothing of other human-induced factors like pollution, climate change, wars, inadequate housing and education, and hunger which have staggering implications on health. At times it can feel like bailing water out of a sinking ship.    The overall venture capital activity in 1Q24 was a relatively muted $36.6 billion across 2,882 companies for an average round size of $12.7 million, as compared to $51.6 billion and 4,026 companies in 1Q23. Notwithstanding that the level of investment activity in the healthcare technology sector has receded from the $30 billion highwater mark in 2021 to a more manageable $10 – $12 billion annual pace, the opportunities to “transform the business of healthcare” remain obvious and acute. Arguably, the 2021 hangover still lingers in the healthcare technology sector as companies that raised too much capital at too high a price work to sort out challenging cap tables. Out of the 2021 mosh pit of too many companies, it appears that the sector is in an “Emerging Winners” phase that will drive companies with narrow and/or incomplete offerings to combine or shut down.   Thoughts on what to expect for the remainder of the year… https://lnkd.in/egy7Afhg Flare Capital Partners #digitalhealth

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Interoperability in healthcare refers to timely and secure access, integration and use of electronic health data so that it can be used to optimize health outcomes. Hear from our own Bobby Sherwood on the challenges and best practices around #interoperability.

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The "suburban rut" of saturated markets plagues both broadband providers and healthcare systems (IDNs). My recent blog post explores how this shared challenge presents a golden opportunity. Leveraging telehealth and innovative solutions can make reaching rural populations profitable for both sectors. This shift not only benefits patients with increased access to care but also unlocks new revenue streams. Over the last 4-5 years I have been drawn into projects that involve and impact rural communities. For those of you who know me, I have spent decades developing broadband access markets working for global network equipment manufacturers, and more recently as part of Harbor Pilots. In my Connected Hospital experience working with Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) the notion of "access" had a slightly different meaning for healthcare providers but the challenge with access in broadband and healthcare revolves around population density and the cost to reach people. Working with Duke Tech Solutions we provided State and Local Governments with tools to optimize the $42 Bn Broadband Equity Access Deployment (BEAD) funding from the NTIA. Here's a blog post about the opportunity for Telecom providers and IDNs to look at rural communities as an attractive market where they can retreat from the intense competition in saturated suburban markets. I'd love to hear your comments. https://lnkd.in/erJAtJUa

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"“The detection of AFib significantly improved over the past two decades, primarily due to advancements in technology, changes in clinical practice and increased awareness,” the authors wrote. “Approximately a third of patients with AFib are asymptomatic, and enhanced detection over time may lead to increased lifetime risk of diagnosed AFib. Another possible reason is the global increase in life expectancy.” Meanwhile, AFib patients faced high lifetime risks of developing heart failure (41%) or experiencing a stroke (21%). The lifetime risk of an AFib patient suffering a myocardial infarction was 12%. “Our findings encourage greater attention to secondary prevention of heart failure after AFib, and in line with a recent report from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, relevant future initiatives include development of non-anticoagulant pharmacotherapies, effective implementation of weight loss and risk factor modification, and designing successful programs for cardiac rehabilitation. As AFib is a common arrhythmia, a lower incidence of complications may reduce the future economic costs in healthcare.”" MedTech Innovator American Heart Association Heart Rhythm Society American College of Cardiology #epeeps LSI

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This is an impressive channel for healthcare innovators outside the U.S. to enter the highly regulated healthcare/life sciences market in the U.S. strategically and effectively.

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In a recent report, only ~20% of healthcare executives claimed that they fully trust their data. At Fullsteam Health, we think that % is way too low. We're committed to reversing this trend with our automated data curation platform which was initially developed at Duke to address this very issue and allow for fast access to data that is needed and that has been cleaned, grouped, and continually monitored. https://lnkd.in/epWvPTDV

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Shout out to Clark Valberg at Tiferes Ventures for sharing this article in his weekly AI briefing. "When clinicians are analyzing brain or tumor scans, instead of only looking at one patient’s image, they can now compare it simultaneously with those from millions of other patients...The cancer types that will derive the most benefit from AI assistance are those dealing with imaging data or high-dimensional data" https://lnkd.in/ec8UTJCn

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Great blog by Tom Nolan... if you want to learn more about the differences in the #healthcare markets in the US and abroad, take a look at this part 1 of 2 post. #medtech #consulting #healthcaredelivery #purchasedservices #indirectspend

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