It’s really appealing that almost anyone in healthcare could submit an idea to your company, especially in the wake of patient-engagement. Who do you think will be the most powerful driver of innovative development over the next few years: patients, providers or the patients?
Healthcare is a highly complex and ever-evolving ecosystem and, thus, an enormous breadth of expertise is required in order to effect change. Furthermore, healthcare will increasingly be delivered outside of the acute care setting and we will begin to see a tremendous amount of innovation around “at home” care delivery. A result of this is that patients will have a greater ability to influence delivery, monitoring, and compliance models. For this reason, we adamantly believe that the true healthcare innovation can only be optimized through successful collaboration among all the players in this complex ecosystem – providers, payers, patients, and innovators.
There is some talk about how the patient has been missing from the equation, at least on the HIT development side, up until recently. Now we are seeing patient engagement and patient-centric devices and technologies come to light. Why do you think it has taken us this long to get here in terms of developing with and for the patient? How do you think this new evolution of patient importance is going to change the landscape for entrepreneurs or for healthcare itself?
There are a number of factors within healthcare that have historically resulted in the patient’s input being excluded from the value equation — the biggest factor is arguably the role of payers in the mix (i.e., “supply” cannot equal “demand” when middlemen are involved). With better-aligned incentives around accountable care combined with advances in technology and changes in reimbursement, patients are finally gaining a voice in shaping their own healthcare.
Edison Nation Medical is well-positioned to serve the needs of these newly-empowered patients by providing a clear and easy pathway for anyone — physicians, nurses, entrepreneurs, even patients and caregivers — to submit a medical invention idea for full evaluation and potential commercialization. By applying best practices of open innovation to aggregate, validate, determine efficacy, build proof of concept, develop and commercialize truly disruptive ideas that come to us from individual and organizations around the globe, we empower each individual to participate in shaping his or her own healthcare. .
It does seem like an exciting time for those on the development side. So many possibilities out there. But there is a consensus that some in healthcare are dragging their feet when it comes to embracing HIT development, especially when they are getting so much new technology thrown at them these days. Provider buy-in is important to the success of a lot of HIT and healthcare innovations. So, how are you helping your entrepreneurs overcome the challenge of persuading the provider?
Fortunately, we are partnered with Carolinas HealthCare System, the second largest public healthcare system in the United States, and they are looking to Edison Nation Medical to bring them innovative healthcare device inventions that improve care. Via this partnership, we have access to expert medical feedback, locations for product tests and trials, and often a first customer for those successful innovations. From here, we can use this successful implantation as the white paper and case study to push these ideas out to other systems, which helps speed up healthcare innovation.
Following that question, what are some of the other industry specific challenges these entrepreneurs face that you are helping them overcome through the support of Edison Nation Medical?
When an inventor submits their innovation to Edison Nation Medical for review and possible commercialization, they do not need to invest any additional time, capital, or efforts to see it be successful. We welcome their involvement if they desire, but it is not necessary.
Through our online portal, we provide a pathway for the inventor to get their quality innovation commercialized by providing the capital, management expertise, efforts, and healthcare access needed to get an innovation reviewed from an intellectual property, medical efficacy, and commercialization perspective. If these innovations pass our review team, we then will work to get them commercialized either via product licensing to leading medical device companies or via company incubation. We then share the royalties that are generated based on this successful commercialization.
This time in healthcare, particularly HIT, reminds me a bit of the Dot-com bubble. There is a groundswell of innovation and development going on right now reminiscent of that time. How is this era in healthcare any different? Or are we going to see a lot of promising technologies in the dust in a few years? Why or why not is this technological era in healthcare different?
With technological innovation reducing the time and cost necessary to develop an idea, many entrepreneurs will be able to pivot more quickly. With that said, in the HIT category especially, I think it will likely be a ‘winner take all’ (or ‘winner take most’) reality over the next few years; with those winners being decided by the quality of their software and the healthcare access they are able to achieve.
Innovation, by definition, is a dynamic process. A promising technology today might inspire an even better technology tomorrow, which then leads to an even more promising technological advancement a few years later. And so, while individual companies or individual technologies will most certainly flounder or even fail, the groundswell of innovation we are all experiencing within healthcare will continue to “raise the ship” and improve patient care for everyone at a macro level, which makes this a very exciting time to be involved.
With technological innovation reducing the time and cost necessary to develop an idea, many entrepreneurs will be able to pivot more quickly. With that said, in the HIT category especially, I think it will likely be a ‘winner take all’ (or ‘winner take most’) reality over the next few years; with those winners being decided by the quality of their software and the healthcare access they are able to achieve.
If there is one key message you want to get across through the ambitions of Edison Nation Medical, what is it? What’s the resounding aim here
Our goal is to break down the traditional barriers that inhibit healthcare innovation and change the paradigm for how healthcare ideas come to life by providing greater access for the individual entrepreneur to get their healthcare invention commercialized and for the individual to shape his or her own healthcare experience.
As things grow and develop, how do you see the role of Edison Nation Medical evolving or changing, if at all?
I think Edison Nation Medical will continue to grow into the preeminent resource for the individual inventor – the doctor, nurse, patient, or caregiver – to get their innovative healthcare inventions reviewed and commercialized. I think as we gain greater industry awareness to our existence, our company will only continue to grow as we providing a valuable service to groups historically ignored in the healthcare innovation sphere.