Q.
Right. Now, when we talk about interoperability, it seems that, at least with the big vendors, that it’s, kind of, practice. Where does AirStrip fit into that picture as far as interoperability?
If you recall, I was saying, we took a stab at doing front-end integration, because it will take a while to do back-end integration.
So, there are standards. Compliance with standards is the challenge, so a lot of organizations are saying, “We’re going to develop new standards.” No, there are standards, it’s just, are people compliant with those standards?
We clearly are seeing that there is a wave of people becoming more open, but not at the level that everybody talks about.
So there is the ability to collaborate on a case by case basis and the ones that are helping a lot are the powerful providers like Dignity, HCA, Ascension Healthcare, those providers that have such a massive number of systems, but they are so big that they have the power to say to the vendors, “Either you open up or I standardize on somebody else.” I tell the providers, “The next 12 to 24 months it’s your job to enforce the standards. After that, I am going to enforce them as a consumer. They way to enforce that is, I’m not going to go to your organization because I cannot get my records out of your place.”
So, we as consumers, we are going to be the biggest nightmare in the next 24 months. That’s why the providers need to be proactive and they need to enforce it, because if you let the vendors drive the market, this is going to take forever and then you’re going to start getting patient leakage. Patients are going to go away and you’re going to go, “What happened! I’m working with vendor X that everybody likes.” Well, you didn’t enforce the standards.
But we are very positive. We are actually, I have to say. It’s funny how we started with mobility, but now we are supporting all devices, but we’re the first ones that decided to tackle this on the frontend on an episode of care, and people are opening up, because I’m not competing with the medical device companies. I’m not competing with the EMRs. I’m not competing with anybody and exactly nobody’s competing with me yet, until everybody thinks, “Oh my God, AirStrip!” And everybody has to follow AirStrip. But, the reality is we are really tackling this interoperability issue one vendor at a time, with one large provider at the time. It’s happening, just not at the pace that it’s announced out there.
Q
Where do you see the evolution of AirStrip? So you gave me kind of the high level, but where do you see AirStrip in the next five years, and then, where do you really see this healthcare industry in the evolution of everything integrating together? Where do you see that in the next few years?
Well first I’m going to start by saying that healthcare needed a change, and the Affordable Care Act with all the criticism, is forcing all of us to take a look at this. This is the time that all of us, vendors, providers, payers, pharma companies, we all have to collaborate to solve this problem otherwise we’re going to implode.
So, starting from that statement, now I go through the evolution of AirStrip. So, we decided to take that approach. We want to be agnostic. We want to support an ecosystem. We welcome everybody to collaborate and we are showing that in every place that we are at. Every place where we install, we open up, and if somebody says, “Well, I have this app that overlaps with yours.” I turn mine off if the customer wants that and I integrate around what that customer needs.
So, if you look at us we have prepared for the last three years to sustain innovation. We use an applied innovation approach. We innovate on the application. We innovate on the process, the business models, the distribution, and the organizational models, internally. We build the organization also externally through the partners like the University of Michigan and MedStar; taking science into the market. So, I think that we have done enough horizontally on integration; now, we’re going to go deeper and we’re not going to reinvent the wheel. On analytics tools, I’m going to pick whatever is out there that is efficient, on algorithms, body sensors, whatever is out there that works and is proven, we’re going to go out there. So, we’re going to look for incubators, we’re going to look for academia, and we’re going to leverage from that. That’s why we created that translational research business unit.
Q
Right, so in essence that’s really AirStrip’s approach to healthcare innovation. Okay, because that was going to be my last question, what’s your definition of healthcare innovation?
If you don’t build first, how do you sustain innovation and create a culture in the company that is balanced? And it’s all driven around innovation. I mean, 45 percent of everything we do is core incremental: interoperability, development. That’s what we do, 45 percent. Forty percent is adjacent, architectural innovation. It’s the ability to build on the platform, wrap other partners; it’s the ability to move into home monitoring.
The last one is, we do transformation innovation 15 percent. That’s more on the sensor technology and more and more algorithms, so we are very much equipped to do that. I was at a conference where Peter Diamandis, the guy that wrote the book “Abundance”, he was a keynote speaker. He said that in today’s world you have to disrupt yourself on an ongoing basis. He even quoted AirStrip, saying, “This is a company that disrupts itself over and over and over again.” If you look at what we have done in the last three years it’s just incredible from (starting as) an OB product. So, we’re having fun.
