Earlier this month, Cohere’s Chief Product Officer, Gina Kim, was invited to present at the inaugural Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit West Coast (DHIS-West), organized by the Cambridge Innovation Institute. DHIS-West brought together leading innovators, investors, payers, providers and policymakers who are driving the digital health revolution.
The panel, “Breakthroughs in Digital Health Enabler Technology, Connectivity, and Middle-Ware Solutions,” was moderated by Julie Yoo of Andreessen Horowitz and focused on several companies, including Cohere, that are innovating on the infrastructure layer of our healthcare system in various ways. We’ve highlighted a few themes that emerged throughout the event:
Evidence and outcomes are essential
Troy Brennan, MD, EVP & CMO CVS Health, spoke about what’s making an impact in digital health. In contrast to the pharmaceutical industry, wherein products require numerous degrees of evidence before going to market, digital health solutions aren’t typically held to the same standard; in fact, evidence is often thin for new technologies entering the market. Brennan affirmed that the companies that are most attractive to a business and purchaser like CVS have extremely firm evidence when they first come in the door.
Digital health needs strong infrastructure to drive value
“In order to be good infrastructure, you need to deeply understand the problem you’re solving,” Gina shared. Cohere, for example, is intently focused on solving prior authorization, doing so with a full-stack solution. By virtue of the unique place in which prior authorization sits in the care process – connecting patients, providers, and payers – it enables us to also be an infrastructure platform and connect other ecosystem partners into and across the patient’s care journey.
As Cohere works to solve the problems inherent to traditional prior authorization processes, we tap into this infrastructural nature to deliver more valuable services to patients and, in turn, better outcomes and reduced waste. We enable providers to see the full context of the patient’s journey, rather than one transaction at a time, and this includes services outside of the provider’s four walls, thus connecting all of the stakeholders in the care path. “By slotting in the appropriate programs throughout the episode, we have real-world ways to test the value of those programs.”
What’s on everyone’s digital health wish list?
- Infrastructure that can get clean, reliable data into and out of EMRs
- A continued shift towards higher-value, evidence-based care
- Delightful consumer-centric experiences