Why More Health Techs Should Adopt the Product and Platform-Led Growth Model
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
July 13, 2023
Once a health tech product or solution has been delivered to market its fate is arguably sealed.
You may have identified the gap or the problem to solve, but did you have the right team in place to constructively challenge your proposition, to ensure that what you're bringing to market is actually valuable?
Competitive pressure can lead to behind the scenes airbrushing or scrimping, in the rush to 'differentiate'. Reality eventually catches up, and reveals too many products have become obsolete, considered by users to be irrelevant, cumbersome to use, or over-engineered.
One tried and tested approach to ensuring you minimise the risk in getting it wrong is the product and platform-led growth model (PLG). An increasing number of successful health techs have adapted and refined this model on their own terms, at different stages in their growth. And we see that it continues to serve them well in both their portfolio and geographic footprint expansion.
In this post, I review the core pillars of this model, how it's not simply a 'product first' push, and how it benefits all your newly empowered teams.
I also give examples of health techs that are testament to the power of embracing PLG.
See publication
Tags: Customer Experience, Design Thinking, HealthTech
Converged Healthcare and Life Sciences in 2030: Scenario Planning
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
April 03, 2023
With no end in sight to the tumult gripping markets, trying to ringfence global directional trends across Healthcare and Life Sciences (HLS) in 2023 is pointless. Scenario planning offers a comparatively better grounding than demand forecasts.
You may feel immune to the course corrections underway within tech innovation circles; that your vendor strategy remains sound enough overall to carry on. It may take longer in the current climate, but you'll get there.
You may end up wrong footed. Relying on a single customer base, however compelling your proposition, increasingly leaves you vulnerable to a ‘must win at all costs’ culture, blinkered to alternative routes to market.
Deciding where you (re)position gets more critical with each passing year, as buying power shifts, different services skills are sought, and managed contracts face greater scrutiny. There is no single answer.
You therefore need to consider whether your core customer base today will serve you in the future, and if so to what extent.
I suggest four future scenarios to 2030, framed within two axes: appetite for convergence and AI maturity level – which I see as wholly aligned. Underpinning these are 64 variables.
As we move towards greater convergence, no single HLS sector dominates. Here, the main HLS actors evolve beyond their core position, to assume different roles within new configurations.
Scenarios will help your teams to not only assess the strength of your position within each future state, but also to validate, flag up, and steer what you do next in response.
See publication
Tags: AI, Ecosystems, HealthTech
NHS Health Tech in 2023 | Focus on Jobs to be Done
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
January 31, 2023
2023 marks a year of transition for tech and digital investment across the NHS. For buying teams, it's all about jobs to be done to support the new Integrated Care System model (ICS), and clear the post pandemic backlog: Clear outcomes; RoI; More of what has underpinned successful delivery. Tech to underpin weak foundations, boost efficiency, empower.
To support vendors on where to direct their effort through 2023/24, Experiential HealthTech has mapped out which digital and technology areas are high priority, and therefore most likely to attract available budget.
These priorities are grouped across four categories, to reflect the spectrum of digital maturity at individual provider level, and the greater need to align capability at ICS cluster level: From Foundational through to Innovational.
I also introduce first-tier components from the Simply Experiential framework, which I use with my clients to review the impact of their internal operations on their market success today, as well as their robustness for future-mapping.
Vendor teams looking to launch into the NHS find it invaluable.
See publication
Tags: Digital Transformation, Ecosystems, HealthTech
Can the Virtual Ward Model Evolve?
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
November 24, 2022
Virtual wards seem a win:win. But some stakeholders are sounding a cautionary note over their sustainability, highlighting the ambiguity about what actually defines a ward. We need to unpick the fundamentals before considering what’s next.
While the more personalised care elements of the ward are attractive, this promise of on par hospital-grade care is interdependent on a robust back end, even before we consider technology.
And in the overall backdrop of what most Healthcare systems are grappling with, the messaging around virtual wards risks appearing over-simplistic.
Virtual wards are exciting, but they must be handled carefully.
In this insight piece, I highlight some of the potential barriers for greater deployment of virtual wards, where pathway progress is being made, how the vendor competitive field is intensifying through the need to add value - this is about so much more than wearables and sensors - and I offer some suggestions on how to differentiate and build provider trust.
See publication
Tags: AI, Design Thinking, HealthTech
Multimodal Learning and Composite AI | Accelerants to HLS Precision
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
November 15, 2022
It may be counterintuitive to position AI as an accelerant to precision. And yet an under-exploited paradigm, Multimodal Learning combined with Composite AI, is powering discovery, resetting the benchmark for ‘real world’, and evidencing that precision medicine isn’t a pipe dream. If a broader range of stakeholders across Healthcare & Life Sciences are to benefit, our mainstream conversation needs to evolve. More SITS vendors must step up in support.
We know that a lot of work under the ‘AI’ banner has as many moving parts and shortfalls as it has roadblocks. We also know that embedded within the volumes of good data collected across HLS are swathes of rich but untapped information.
We have reached a tipping point: our current practice of training algorithms from a single modality doesn’t do justice to our universal efforts to understand comorbidity, monitor disease recurrence, or advance personalised care and drugs discovery.
We need a move away from the lean diet of ‘ML is doable in single mode; AI is elusive’. The multimodal/composite combination offers an alternative.
In this piece, I cover the elements of the mainstream conversation that need to evolve, such as Explainable AI, interpretability, and the trade-offs we have to balance.
Plus, why I think the ongoing convergence of several cultural and data sharing elements across HLS bode well for a more composite approach beyond ML, to benefit multiple workflows and applications.
See publication
Tags: AI, Analytics, HealthTech
Retail Pharmacy's Transformation and the Foothills of AI
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
September 24, 2022
We talk about Transformation, Digital Transformation, and Disruption as if organizations are hard wired to know when and how to 'do' this. Yet many fail.
The Retail Pharmacy sector is transforming and disrupting, with success stories to share.
I highlight the core principles its successive leaders have honoured - including culture and a focus on their future customer - to effect widescale operational transformation, a digitally literate and empowered workforce, and a services portfolio that's taking them deeper into the Healthcare stack.
But their transformation to meet real world need is ongoing: insight remains the oxygen to validate and enhance their work.
We see how some 'big tech' players are comfortable supporting value based care, through co-designing analytics and AI maturity frameworks.
I also share some examples of how Retail Pharmacy leaders are equally focussed on supporting SMEs with their own transformation and AI evolutions.
See publication
Tags: AI, Digital Transformation, HealthTech
Could Web3 Galvanize Healthcare and Life Sciences?
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
July 11, 2022
Healthcare and Life Sciences (HLS) leaders have dug a lot of deep holes for themselves. Could Web3 yet prove their saviour, and diminish some of their self-inflicted, and our real-world problems?
Pockets of pioneering HLS have over the last 7 years successfully notched up a range of use cases that exploit several of the core components of Web3.
But the real sustainable benefit of Web3 will come from the bringing together of these ‘proven’ elements, along with others yet to be fully explored.
This is far from a fad. The HLS community is one of the verticals that can more natively build a solid Web3 business case.
To my mind the two greatest jewels in the Web3 treasure chest are DAOs and synthetic data. Hand in glove, they offer those within the HLS community the first real opportunity to get ahead of the innovation and discovery curve, instead of chasing their tails.
On the tech side, new Web3 competitor types are emerging, not necessarily familiar with HLS. Closer to home, those currently stealing a march are cloud leaders with an HLS footprint, biotechs, and the new breed of health tech bellwethers - culturally geared to operate in ‘future-ready’ mode.
See publication
Tags: HealthTech, Ecosystems, Metaverse, NFT
Taking Your Provider Relationship to the Next Level
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
May 26, 2022
Despite several ‘big story’ headlines over the last few weeks, slamming both the enterprise and health tech sectors for their arrogance in thinking they can crack Healthcare simply, providers do appreciate the value in working with the vendor community.
Equally positively, as more advance along their Transformational and digital journey, they now recognise the need to shift from a transactional to a collaborative relationship: that they too have a role to play to ensure a tech partnership is successful; that they must better articulate their needs.
But there is a big ask from you too, the vendor.
See publication
Tags: Business Strategy, HealthTech, Innovation
Health Tech’s High Stakes | Growth Strategy Isn’t a Stab in the Dark
Andrena Logue
February 01, 2022
This pandemic has put all tech vendors through the wringer. And as we emerge from two years of what has felt like innovation on-the-fly, it’s becoming clearer which companies have been peddling furiously in the background, now running out of steam, or on the verge of collapse.
For those positioned within the Cloud computing space, where it’s not yet a table-stakes issue across the Healthcare landscape, GTM and growth planning has become more challenging.
SMEs face the most intense pressure, with the risk of being cut off in their prime though unstable and erratic revenue streams. But we can’t blame it all on the pandemic.
I profile one such high profile casualty from the UK - UKCloud Health - as it seeks to stymie a £30m gap in funding, and I offer advice on how to make sure your brand doesn't become your Achilles' heel.
See publication
Tags: HealthTech, Business Strategy, Ecosystems
2022 Trends: The Year of Purpose-Led Convergence
Andrena Logue
December 22, 2021
I believe that 2022 will herald a new era of converged thinking and action. Exchanging the frantic on- the-fly pace for a more considered approach; an era where we harness the positive outcomes and cultural shift underway, to set the blueprint for Healthcare’s next chapter.
There will still be tensions to resolve, and pockets of conservatism to overcome, but these present opportunity as well as challenge.
And for you the digital and tech community, this shift in market dynamics calls for you to look inwards as well as outwards, to assess how relevant you will remain: under the banner of ‘align, empower, and transform’, you can work with your teams and partners to identify gaps, or gaping holes, and work to plug these. I’m happy to share the first-tier components of the Simply Experiential framework, which I use with my clients to explore and work through these issues.
Finally, to round off the impressive organisations I’ve highlighted through my reports this year, I’ve selected a further six, which I believe will make their mark in 2022.
See publication
Tags: Ecosystems, HealthTech, Predictive Analytics
Value-Based Contracting is the New Sustainable | Is the Tech Community Ready?
Andrena Logue
November 17, 2021
Value over Costs | Outcomes over Processes
Sustainability will be key across Healthcare in 2022, and many are backing value-based care as the route to survival, post-pandemic and beyond. This time it’s different – an international movement is driving this. You need to sign up.
See publication
Tags: Design Thinking, Ecosystems, HealthTech
How to Support Healthcare's Rising Star - the CIO
Andrena Logue
November 04, 2021
More Health and Life Sciences (HLS) leaders now appreciate that ‘digital’ is a living breathing culture that empowers during volatility, uncertainty, and complexity. The CIO has emerged from the pandemic as a hero. As they start to re-evaluate priorities over the next three years and determine their future vision, they’ll need you more than ever.
See publication
Tags: Design Thinking, Ecosystems, HealthTech
Is Your Corporate Echo Chamber Driving your Healthcare 'Innovation'?
Andrena Logue
July 01, 2021
More of you have come full circle, from dismissing calls that Healthcare has different technology needs, to competing full-on with your industry specific application. But is 'going vertical' an innovation?
Many health systems struggle to identify, commission, and incentivise teams to adopt innovation. It has many different definitions, with technology one accepted component.
But is innovation pragmatic or ground-breaking? Does it mean agile? Does it relate purely to start-ups?
If as a TMT vendor, you were asked where you fit on an innovation quadrant, could you pinpoint this? Some innovation is easy yet remains elusive (e.g. single sign on), while other forms are disruptive, and take time.
Will anything change in how you engage with your customers post-COVID? Are you part of their barrier to greater tech adoption, or do you have their back as they work to reconfigure their core?
See publication
Tags: Design Thinking, HealthTech, Innovation
Ethics and AI
Andrena Logue
June 24, 2021
With the value of real-time data access so evident during this pandemic, the conversation on AI has become amplified X-fold across healthcare systems, Research, and Pharma (‘Healthcare’). Great news for many among you. But you can make an even deeper contribution by committing to the drive for ethics.
Ethics relates to how, in the absence of any framework, all stakeholders can work to set clear parameters on the safe adoption and integration of AI – to build towards consistency across real-world settings (clinical and in the community), discovery research, and smart city design.
No-one is suggesting that tech solutions have been sold on hype. But since regulators are deemed to not yet have all of the appropriate skills to evaluate 'good' AI, Healthcare is taking ownership, to scrutinise validity and tech impact across the AI life cycle.
See publication
Tags: AI, Design Thinking, HealthTech
Telcos in Healthcare | Table Stakes
Andrena Logue
May 19, 2021
In so many digital health contexts, stakeholders' paths should cross with telcos. But they don’t.
In fact, when I frequently ask digital health solutions vendors in different countries about the role that telcos do or could play in their offer, this tends to draw blank expressions.
There is a strikingly urgent tone among many within the telco community to find an entry point into the Healthcare sector, offering more than connectivity. But where, how, and with what exactly?
See publication
Tags: Business Strategy, Design Thinking, Innovation
The Quantum Leap for Mankind that Healthtech Incumbents Must Make | Part 2: Delivering Trusted Experiences with Federated Learning
Andrena Logue
March 30, 2021
Building Trust By Design
AI has underwhelmed Healthcare to-date, provoking more than encouraging. But a deep learning paradigm, Federated Learning (FL), offers the framework that Healthcare needs to overcome trust deficits, harness data silos, and embed privacy and security. At scale and pace. The game changer? Healthcare is orchestrating this shift, aided by a new breed of healthtech bellwethers. As incumbent healthtechs, more of you now need to prepare for the direct and indirect impact on your portfolios.
See publication
Tags: Business Strategy, HealthTech, Predictive Analytics
The Quantum Leap for Mankind that Healthtech Incumbents Must Make | Part 1 - Flattening the AI Learning Curve
Andrena Logue
March 03, 2021
AI is getting significant coverage across Healthcare. But the focus within a diagnostic and preventive context is often skewed, applauding what’s been achieved, and not what’s been neglected.
This is my Call To Action to healthtech incumbents, to exploit your skills to better support Healthcare’s move towards a model that actually reflects the diverse make-up of local populations.
Until more systems can contextualise around basic demographic data such as gender and ethnicity (staggeringly this is often missing) then algorithms will remain biased.
For tech vendors, that means stepping up to support some of the sectors you’ve dismissed as too complex, outside your remit, or offering a low return. New channels are also opening up to provide more inclusive touch points for healthcare and wellness. Data is fundamental here. Pharma, medtechs, payers, and retail pharmacies all recognise this. So must you.
See publication
Tags: AI, Diversity and Inclusion, HealthTech
BT Health | Moving Beyond Connectivity at the Speed of Trust
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
May 11, 2023
Telcos successfully embedded within Healthcare remain a rare breed.
UK Incumbent BT’s virtual ward & care launch, spanning AI and digital therapeutics, follows two years’ collaborative prep work.
This is a critical re-set for BT Health. I highlight what's different this time around from its legacy Healthcare positioning, including the rich resource and knowledge pool into which it can tap to realise its ambition.
On offer is a multi-faceted but targeted proposition which places BT Health firmly at the intersection of modern digital infrastructure and clinical futures.
For that reason, Experiential HealthTech lists the vendor as 'One to Watch' through 2023.
See publication
Tags: AI, Digital Transformation, HealthTech
Generative AI in HLS | Open to Interpretation
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
May 04, 2023
The race among vendors to offer Generative AI may look like commercial FoMO. But within Healthcare and Life Sciences (HLS) a measured modest approach is unfolding.
Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal AI certainly aren’t new. But ChatGPT from OpenAI has delivered ‘AI’ to the masses, elevating it overnight to super-hero status, with the promise of democratization, scale, speed, and simplification.
In this report, I highlight the approach that savvy vendors are adopting, to strike that fine balance between attracting and overwhelming clients to sign up to Generative AI.
I discuss the need for human-in-the-loop, and which forms of grassroots AI work will remain critical if Generative AI is to advance responsibly.
I also highlight the value propositions of those vendors first off the block to either integrate ChatGPT 3/4 or launch an alternative.
A fork in the commercial GTM route is already underway with two vendors striking out with an even more pragmatic stance.
This is a watershed moment in the field of AI with a lot at stake.
See publication
Tags: AI, Generative AI, HealthTech
Discord Within the Ohana Tribe | What’s Next for Salesforce?
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
January 19, 2023
When a pioneer and elusive competitor like Salesforce falls from its pedestal, it lands hard.
Perhaps it was always naïve to assume that the co-CEO model, and post-acquisition mergers would be any smoother here than elsewhere. But Marc Benioff has built momentum around ‘Ohana’. This past month has diluted the strength of this culture when pitted against profit.
Its Healthcare and Life Sciences businesses (HLS) will not be immune, given the strategic direction in which they’re being pulled.
Salesforce has been gearing to move deeper into the HLS stack, yet clearly views a single integrated proposition (enterprise bleeding into vertical portfolios) as logical from a cost and profits perspective.
In this report, I cover: how its ambition to expand across the HLS landscape has been shaping up; the challenges Salesforce faces; an NHS case study of mixed success; its new Retail strategic partnership with Walmart, and how that could extend into Healthcare; plus its partnership base.
See publication
Tags: AI, Ecosystems, HealthTech
Palantir and the NHS | So Near and Yet So Far
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
December 20, 2022
Palantir positions itself as a data harmonizer, integrator, and analytics facilitator, yet its National Health Service (NHS) detractors label it a data thief.
The current barrage of recycled criticism surrounding the company is short sighted, when really, Palantir is being scapegoated for a decade of poor NHS leadership on nurturing a data driven culture.
Now, the NHS Transformation Directorate is spending inordinate amounts of time defending its decision to exploit the effective partnership it forged with Palantir through the pandemic.
In this report, I highlight the mounting tension across the NHS in relation to this impending high stakes decision.
I also confirm what Palantir does and doesn't do, why this deal makes so much sense for the NHS, and the high calibre of Healthcare and Life Sciences partners it's attracting elsewhere, alongside a growing range of technology partners.
See publication
Tags: AI, Analytics, HealthTech
From Happify to Twill | A Masterclass in Patient-Centricity
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
July 25, 2022
Attempts to be ‘patient centric’ (PX) still elude most across the Healthcare landscape.
Ironically, it’s the new breed of health tech bellwethers that have grasped PX from the outset, and kept it core to every aspect of their mission.
One such exemplar is Happify Health, one of 6 companies I highlighted in my 2022 Trends report “The Year of Purpose-Led Convergence | Vendor Watch List”.
And so, I’m not surprised about the next chapter, marked by its transition to @Twill.
This move consolidates its progress over the last 5 years – expanding from D2C to B2B, and launch of its prescription DTx range - while signalling its ambitious next 5-year plan: to map deeper into an individual’s treatment cycle to offer as bespoke a range of interventions as possible.
Why is this important? Twill is one of the few working at the intersection of mental health and acute comorbidity. It has, with scientific evidence, successfully brought together more service components than many of its peers.
Its next gen model embraces federated data, clinical AI, a culture of composability to underpin Ecosystem 2.0 orchestration, and an open (API) platform.
This is the future. Not for everyone, But for many out there struggling.
Twill migrates us away from point solutions to a model that not only resonates with service demand gaps, but also chimes with the new forms of clinical workflow and patient flow that we're crying out for.
See publication
Tags: AI, Ecosystems, HealthTech
Larry Ellison | Healthcare’s Misplaced Hero
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
June 20, 2022
Larry Ellison has had plenty of time to mull over his ‘Future of Healthcare’ proposition, unveiled this week.
He’s drawn on Oracle’s solid relationship with 28 of the top 30 global life sciences leaders, its support of some big name providers and US payors, and how it threw its weight behind some pioneering collaborative discovery through the pandemic.
And yet, he’s somehow managed to miss the mark.
See publication
Tags: Analytics, Ecosystems, HealthTech
Nokia and Equideum Create New Dimensions with Blockchain in Healthcare
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
May 04, 2022
I’ve been lukewarm to the blockchain push in Healthcare, and sceptical on its positioning as a gateway to interoperability.
Despite some success, we’ve not seen anything like the groundswell projected. Was blockchain considered a step too far, or a nice to have ‘icing on the cake’ when the cake hadn’t yet been baked?
And yet, Q1 2022 has been marked by a few noteworthy alliances – looking at the bigger picture through a pragmatic lens, without sensationalism.
‘Noteworthy’ given the names involved. One is Nokia (with its Nokia Bell Labs R&D arm) and Equideum Health – formerly blockchain specialist ConsenSys Health, led by the experienced Heather Leigh Flannery, ex-Hashed Health.
If this alliance carries risk, it’s well calculated: Nokia, already familiar with blockchain, brings Federated ML/AI orchestration, connected devices and ‘ageing in place’ experience; Equideum adds security, and tokenization. Together, they do the heavy lifting and broker.
It’s also a shared bold vision, since it embodies ‘the future is now’ but recognises the complexities surrounding each component alone – eg. cognitive augmentation, remote decentralised trials, adaptive trials, edge computing, Web3 - and accepts the challenge of combining them.
I give it a gold star for the open invite to the trials matching community to shape this Exchange over the next 6 months.
See publication
Tags: Blockchain, Ecosystems, HealthTech
AstraZeneca and Huma Therapeutics | Setting a New Type of Relationship
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
March 30, 2022
This week’s announcement of the sale of AstraZeneca’s chronic disease management platform, AMAZE, to Huma Therapeutics in return for a stake in the company and collaborative partnership has generated a mix of responses.
I see this neither as a spin off from a biopharma losing interest in digital healthcare, nor an attempt to catch up with peers that have already launched digital therapeutics products – as has been suggested by others.
See publication
Tags: HealthTech, Predictive Analytics
Amazon and Babylon Mount Their US Telehealth Bid | So What? | Part 2 Babylon Upacked
Experiential HealthTech
March 10, 2022
Babylon set the primary care market alight when it launched back in 2013 as the hero Healthcare needed, intent on disrupting the inequitable primary care model.
9 years on, and rarely out of the headlines, it’s certainly progressed, but the bold ambition it laid out hasn’t been fully realised. Along the way, it’s accumulated as many critics and sceptics as it has fans.
SMEs always face a strategic moment of reckoning, and for Babylon that came in 2020/21 – with the realisation that future growth and scale would be dependent on two aspects:
• its willingness to properly address the weak underlying aspects of its model, achievable only by bringing in acknowledged expertise
• accepting the need to go deep as well as broad to translate its strategic vision
Much of that realisation was probably accelerated by its ambition to break into the US, alongside its recent SPAC deal. This is a high-stakes moves in an already crowded market, where the leaders continue to innovate at-pace.
Babylon needed to configure a new model. One that remained aligned to its mission, would work laterally, and resonate quickly. The start point is telehealth, not telemedicine, in a market where the expectation on ‘convenience’ and value in all settings is high. So, Babylon has stepped up with a range of capability enhancements, embarked on an acquisitive path, and has armed itself to the hilt with big names from the data and analytics circuit
The signs are positive.
In this profile, I critique what’s transferable from the core global Babylon model, the assets it’s accruing, and highlight how its composability mindset can help it to grow within the new Ecosystem 2.0 model – as a complementor, not orchestrator.
See publication
Tags: Ecosystems, HealthTech
Amazon and Babylon Health Mount Their US Telehealth Bid | So What?
Andrena Logue
February 28, 2022
Many Healthcare disruptors are circling telehealth and DTx (digital therapeutics).
We shouldn’t therefore be surprised to see two more vendors throw their hat into the telehealth ring in the US: Amazon, the power brand with combined eCommerce and hyper-scaler credentials; and Babylon Health, the digital primary care SME on a mission to deliver universal, affordable, and value-based care.
But should we care about two players which have only been operating on the fringes of the Healthcare spectrum? Can Jeff Bezos and Ali Parsa sufficiently penetrate a market as complex as the US to make a difference?
As latecomers, and until recently sitting on the same side of the Healthcare fence as partners, they face the urgency to scale, amplify reach, and build momentum. And from what we’ve seen most recently, although their strategic responses differ, they both clearly realise that their success hinges on the ability to tether their services directly to the clinical setting. Game on.
I believe that Amazon and Babylon each views telehealth as the front door to something bigger. But I also believe the only way they can fulfil this ambition is to embrace ‘Ecosystem 2.0’, the model we need to see across Healthcare, which is underpinned by a culture of composability.
Such an ecosystem celebrates open innovation, federation, and risk: reward, so it’s not for everyone.
It also opens the door for more telcos to realise their Healthcare ambition, if they step up. Payers, providers, and Pharma can also join to exploit their own assets and co-create to pioneer.
In this two-part profile, I’ll unpack each organisation in relation to how I think they’re laying the groundwork to move towards this new model.
First up, Amazon.
See publication
Tags: Ecosystems, HealthTech
Citizen Scientists in Healthcare | The data-generating bridge to precision medicine
Andrena Logue
October 07, 2021
True patient-centricity remains an aspiration. We agree that patients still get a raw deal. And we know that despite some effort, the disconnect between how health systems and Pharma view ‘centricity’ versus those living with chronic health remains wide. Patient advocacy groups are under-utilised. Telehealth is being pushed as a catch-all model, and in the wrong context.
Patients have always been ahead of the curve. Many know the value of their data and are comfortable sharing, in what they feel is the right context.
Citizen science goes way beyond this. In terms of disruption, the clue is in the title, ‘citizen’ – giving any willing individual with no scientific or medical background the opportunity to roll their sleeves up and get directly involved in a real-world study within Healthcare, biomedical research, genomics, or public health.
Already proven globally in ecological and environmental settings, citizen science could be the game changer that Healthcare needs, offering a way to overcome some of its biggest ongoing challenges.
It doesn’t in any way undermine existing structured and highly governed collaborations between universities, research institutions, hospitals, and Pharma. Rather, it’s positioned as a complementary route to accelerating the conversion of results into application - from the lab to the citizen and the community and then back to the lab for further work.
Citizen science proves that passivity and placebos are out. Open data is in.
See publication
Tags: Big Data, Diversity and Inclusion, HealthTech
Smart Healthy Cities | An Exemplar from the UK
Andrena Logue
September 16, 2021
Sustaining Our Communities Through Networked Wellbeing Villages:
It's a bold promise to offer personalised, preventive, integrated healthcare and wellbeing within a socially cohesive community. The Welsh regenerative project (in the UK), 'Pentre Awel', aims to deliver.
Unlike projects such as Saudi Arabia’s NEOM City, this is tailored to supporting the local community’s needs- high deprivation, unemployment, an ageing population, and chronic co-morbidity. Geared to be high-tech and high-touch, participatory care, shared facilities, and telemedicine will be standard.
See publication
Tags: Health and Wellness, HealthTech, Smart Cities
The Next Chapter for Telstra Health | Taking in the Experience
Andrena Logue
September 09, 2021
Back from the brink, and bolstered by a new strategic investment plan, Telstra Health means business.
Telcos considering either an entrée or comeback into Healthcare, or those among you exploring a relationship with a telco will gain a lot from the lessons learned across Telstra Health: the last 7 years have seen its diversified growth plan screech to a halt following a leadership change, only to be resurrected in 2017 by a new clinically led executive team, that’s been diligently resetting its course.
It now has a well-developed antenna on where and how it can add value, not only saving it from chasing elusive rainbows, but also steering its choice of partner – acknowledged as critical to its growth.
Telstra Health’s repeated key takeaway? Healthcare is a long game; and not all its sub-sectors deliver significant profit. Choose wisely!
See publication
Tags: Business Strategy, Customer Experience, HealthTech
Digital Medicines Management in Elder Care
Andrena Logue
August 11, 2021
Age UK’s report on the impact of prolonged self-isolation on elders reveals deteriorating health and increased medication. The outcome? Escalating polypharmacy and medication errors. One part of the UK, Northern Ireland, is pioneering in response - boasting a global first.
See publication
Tags: Digital Transformation, Health and Wellness, HealthTech
(Digital) Psychedelics at the Intersection of Neurotech & AI
Andrena Logue
August 05, 2021
Our escalating global mental health crisis needs a compelling response. No longer on the fringes, psychedelic drugs (aka hallucinogens) as a legalised assisted treatment may offer a breakthrough. Governments, HCPs, Biotechs, and VCs think so. AI is driving discovery and new integrated models of care. Digital is following.
See publication
Tags: AI, Mental Health, Startups
Around the Pill | When Pharma Meets Pharmacy
Andrena Logue
July 15, 2021
Pharmacies are investing heavily in tech to deliver a total customer experience; Pharma is just getting started. One is highly trusted; the other barely known. They belong together. Time to “Hit Refresh”.
See publication
Tags: Health and Wellness, HealthTech, Innovation
The Evolving NHS Landscape
Andrena Logue
July 08, 2021
The transformation playing out across England's National Health System (NHS) will culminate in 42 localised healthcare clusters, aka Integrated Care Systems - more ambitious and far reaching than the established ACO model in the US.
I believe this marks a new chapter for an arguably different NHS: more appreciative of how tech aligns to clinical and operational outcomes; articulate on digital direction; empowered to champion change at grass roots level; confident in challenging tech shortfalls; open to collaborative innovation; receptive to new health tech vendors, and SMEs.
Below, I share some of the most potentially impactful issues worth keeping front of mind as you gear for this new landscape, whether as an incumbent tech vendor or newcomer to this sector.
Your one key takeaway: The NHS now ‘owns’ its challenges, and is making good inroads in how to address these with a digital underpin. Passivity is out. CX/EX and PX are in.
See publication
Tags: Business Strategy, Design Thinking, Digital Transformation
Pharma's High Stakes in DTx and Mental Health | Otsuka's Mixed Run
Andrena Logue
June 06, 2021
Since mental health treatment has until recently received relatively poor coverage, it’s no wonder that the role ‘Big Pharma’ has played has largely gone unnoticed, particularly among the public.
For good reason: a drugs pipeline that has not developed any breakthroughs in decades; a reluctance to commit to R&D investment to understand how psychiatric medications work; a collective portfolio of generic medications to cover a broad spectrum of mental health conditions. Consequently, not only have patients been exposed to a reliance among providers to over-medicate, too many have not had their case management reviewed regularly, leading to poor outcomes.
But the perfect storm that has rattled across the Pharma sector in recent years has triggered some remarkable mental health interventions that offer alternative pathways. The enabler - digital therapeutics (DTx).
DTx has been hailed as Pharma’s saving grace: a chance to rebuild credentials among patients; collation of new rich data to underpin targeted analysis and personalisation; a way to extend the life value of some drugs; a new quicker GTM route that will generate better returns. Indeed, several ambitious Pharma companies foresee a future that possibly overwrites their own ‘beyond the pill’ moves with a completely digital strategy. But that’s for another day.
DTx in any context is not for the faint hearted. Despite the euphoria it has generated, it’s still early days, with a variety of GTM models taking shape. And despite success within some pockets of Pharma underpinned by considerable investment, building for a sustainable position remains challenging.
See publication
Tags: HealthTech, Mental Health, Risk Management
Using Health Data for Research and Analysis
Andrena Logue | Experiential HealthTech
December 31, 1969
Professor Ben Goldacre from Oxford University was commissioned by the UK government to review how the NHS and its partners can make more effective and safer use of data for research and analysis, across multiple contexts.
“Better, Broader, Safer” is a deep dive that leaves no stone unturned. It critiques the very working relationship among peers, the unintended consequences of data hoarding, and the mis-perceptions about commercial interest.
Goldacre drags us away from the glamorous aspects of data science and ‘AI’, taking us back to the beginning with raw data. He forces us to reconsider the core elements of data preparation, curation, and analysis. That if we want to ensure wider interoperability, priorities must be reset, and a culture of Federated Learning embedded.
The report makes 185 recommendations that would benefit patients and the healthcare sector.
I’ve covered off the most important points for tech vendors – for those working with the UK Health sector or those aspiring to. Whether or not data features in your core offer, you need to be aware of the shifts un expectation that will result from this review.
Those of you from the US comfortable with the context of open data sharing with your client base, and perhaps undergoing your own internal transition will be encouraged. For others, there are so many rich recommendations on how a vibrant data-savvy health system operates, and how we all benefit.
See publication
Tags: AI, Ecosystems, HealthTech
Highland Marketing
Founder and Principle
