HCB News: Do you think the consumer will play a role in the future of health care and health care technology?

SK: Yes, absolutely. With the onset of Obamacare, we have a wider patient population than ever before, and the mix of patient types is getting more diverse. On the one hand you have that very informed, very savvy patient, but on the other hand you also have patients with less education about their options — they have historically been less engaged in directing their care. Institutions need to be able to engage both audiences, and they’ll need new technologies to do so.


HCB News: Let’s move from the consumer side to the business side for a minute. As an entrepreneur and business advisor, how do you identify and qualify the up-and-comers?

SK: We look for technologies that we believe have broad applicability. I don’t just mean broad from the perspective of the health care marketplace but even across multiple marketplaces. We also seek technologies that are going to be disruptive.

HCB News: Do you have any examples in mind?

SK: I can tell you about two where I have direct experience as an advisor. One company called Health Feed has created an innovative Internet platform for engaging patients with contextually specific content that is identified and curated automatically — that fits in with patient engagement, the fourth area of growth I mentioned before.

We also look for how widely the company’s solution applies within the marketplace. An example of broad applicability is a company called Aegify, which is focused on providing a comprehensive solution for hospitals that can achieve compliance, security and risk management from a HIPAA perspective. They are now pioneering a new module which manages the oversight of what regulators call “business associates” — an increasingly important obligation of healthcare organizations, as these partner/contractors are often the ones who fall prey to cyber attacks and security breaches.

HCB News: What is the environment for funding like today? How do these technologies get off the ground, and how do they get positioned to make an impact?

SK: It is becoming extremely difficult for companies to get funded. The criteria they need to meet are extensive — they need to have a good team in place, traction in the market, a minimum viable product already developed, and more. Previously Series A was in the range of $500,000 to $2 million. Now, that’s coming from angel investors or super angels. We’re also seeing crowd sourcing funding via sites like Kickstarter or Medi GoGo. We’re trying to mitigate some of those challenges in order to help young companies with disruptive technologies make an impact.

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