The Rock Health Podcast

Recorded at Rock Health Summit 2020 Countless players have tried their hand at mastering the holy grail of healthcare: better care at lower costs. Big retail and telecom are next in the ring, and they just might have what it takes. These behemoths excel where traditional healthcare and tech companies have faltered—they unify digital and physical assets to get consumers what they need, when they need it, where they are. Whether it’s in-store foot traffic or in-home service teams, retailers have unparalleled access to consumers through existing relationships outside the healthcare system. But will that be enough? Hear from the strategics behind retail and telecom’s bold, potentially transformative moves into healthcare. Moderator: Erin Brodwin, Health Tech Reporter, STAT Panelists: - Sujata Gosalia, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer, Cox Communications - Marcus Osborne, SVP, Walmart Health - Daniel Grossman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Best Buy

Evidation Health and Omada Health, two of Rock Health’s portfolio companies, are trailblazers in their respective domains in digital health. Both have heritage as evidence-driven and evidence-generation platforms, and together they’re designing the gold standard of decentralized clinical trials. As COVID-19 pushes the industry to gather novel clinical data digitally, Evidation Executive Director of Digital Health Outcomes Dr. Jessie Juusola and Omada Senior Director of Clinical Research & Policy Dr. Cynthia Castro Sweet sat down with Rock Health CEO & Managing Director Bill Evans to share how they’re bringing value to the future of clinical trials by meeting people where they are.

Digital health funding had a wild ride through the first half of 2020—first hitting a record $3.1B in Q1, then hitting the brakes in April as COVID-19 spread rapidly around the globe. Despite this downswing, investors came roaring back in May as several regulatory and reimbursement barriers to digital health adoption were brushed aside in a rush to keep healthcare systems operational in the midst of the pandemic. Rock Health Managing Director & CEO Bill Evans shares some surprising insights about fundraising in the midst of a pandemic and recession in his conversation with Kaiser Permanente Ventures Director Liz Rockett, Bessemer Venture Partners Partner Steve Kraus, and leading digital health strategic counsel Fenwick & West Partner Michael Esquivel, as they look back on the past six months and look forward to the future of the market. Note: This podcast was recorded on 7/30, prior to the Teladoc acquisition of Livongo.

How can healthcare stakeholders reach and sustainably engage patients with innovative, 21st-century technology? Hear from three leaders—HealthTech4Medicaid Executive Director Adimika Arthur, and Rock Health portfolio company founders, Podimetrics CEO Jon Bloom and Arine CEO Yoona Kim—to discuss the lessons they’ve learned in building solutions for high risk, high-cost populations. From diabetic veterans to Medicaid enrollees, they’ll share tactical tips in leveraging technology to lower the barriers to care for patients who need it most. Join the conversation to hear how they’ve found success in scaling these solutions with a digital-first, patient-centric mindset.

At Rock Health, we’re proud to fund and support entrepreneurs working at the intersection of healthcare and technology, and work alongside a diverse group of enterprise leaders making healthcare massively better—always, but especially now. We need collaboration as a rising tide to lift all boats—especially as the COVID-19 crisis accelerates trends reshaping healthcare as we know it. Rock Health President Tom Cassels recently sat down with Advisory Board Senior Research Partner Amanda Berra, Accenture Senior Managing Director Darryl Jue, and ZS Managing Prinicpal Pete Masloski. They discuss what’s next for healthcare in light of COVID-19, and how industry leaders must adapt to the forces that will become more prominent and pervasive in the post-pandemic world.

How are healthcare organizations navigating the pandemic response, and what lessons are they learning along the way? We recently spoke with leaders from three Rock Health corporate partners—Blue Shield of California Chief Innovation Officer Jeff Semenchuk, Banner Innovation Group Executive Director Christy Anderson, and Strategic Benefit Advisors National Clinical Leader Louise Short. From their respective corners of the industry—a health plan covering over 4M lives, a nonprofit health system, and an employee benefits consulting firm—they note that some trends are here to stay: a consumer-first mindset, an appetite for innovation, and the widespread shift toward supporting whole-person health. Conversation moderated by Kiersten Berg, Senior Business Development & Partnerships Manager at Rock Health

Across administrations, there has been a concerted push toward empowering patients with access to the health data that are rightfully theirs. After much anticipation, in early March, HHS released two final rules to implement interoperability and patient access provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act. At the same time, the US—and the rest of the world—found itself in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than ever, the health crisis has accelerated the need for the public and private sectors to unlock health information and deliver value to consumers through new care models, services, and even scientific advancements. Rock Health Managing Director & CEO Bill Evans caught up with two national healthcare leaders who played an integral role in ushering in this new regulatory era—Google Health’s Dr. Karen DeSalvo and HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan. They discuss implications of the new rules, how stakeholders must balance data access with privacy protections, and the opportunities they see for innovation and collaboration going forward.

There's Instagram and Instacart—but how close are we to Insta-health? While the healthcare experience is increasingly digital, privacy issues, the changing patient-physician relationship, and differences across population segments paint a more nuanced, complex picture of consumer behavior. And a critical question has yet to be fully answered—what value is flowing back to the patient? The authors of the 2019 Digital Health Consumer Adoption Report—the Stanford Center for Digital Health's Dr. Mintu Turakhia and Rock Health's Sean Day and Megan Zweig—recently sat down and parsed through the findings from the fifth annual survey of 4,000 Americans about the role technology plays in their healthcare journey.

Across the last decade, digital health has grown from a blip on the radar of investors to a robust sector receiving nearly one in ten venture dollars invested in the United States. In 2019, digital health saw six IPOs and the second-largest funding year on record with $7.4B. What will the future hold? To provide a survey of the digital health landscape, Flare Capital Partners co-founder & Partner Michael Greeley joined Rock Health Managing Director & CEO Bill Evans in conversation with Rock Health Director of Research & Marketing Megan Zweig during JPM 2020 week in San Francisco.

Digital health companies seeking to scale through large enterprise organizations have their work cut out for them—especially in an increasingly crowded space like digital mental health. To find out what makes for a successful partnership, we teamed up with Kaiser Permanente Ventures on an event bringing together two leaders who have been instrumental in getting such a partnership off the ground. Roger Dowdy, Kaiser Permanente Washington’s Director of Mental Health and Wellness, and Karan Singh, co-founder and COO of Ginger, sat down Shruti Kothari of Kaiser Permanente Ventures to break down the why, the how, and some lessons learned for others looking to pursue similar collaborations—and impact—in the space.

The industry is at a unique crossroads: pharmaceutical and digital therapeutic (DTx) companies have begun to act on their ambition to advance digital therapeutics—but the path to successful alliances and, importantly, scale remains uncertain. As a follow up to our recent research on building pharma-DTx alliances, we sat down with two leaders to get their perspective on: -The dos and don'ts of pharma-DTx partnerships -Evidence standards for digital therapeutics -Channel pathways and business models for DTx companies -Assessing the value of working with pharma as a DTx company Hear from ZS' Paul Darling, Novo Nordisk's Amy West, Pear Therapeutics' Corey McCann, and Rock Health's Megan Zweig in our latest podcast episode.

In 2018, digital health companies leveraging telemedicine received nearly $1.5B in investment. And although telemedicine adoption has grown across the board in recent years, the majority of users remain the urban and the young. How are different healthcare stakeholders thinking about tackling barriers to adoption, potential limitations of virtual care, and the evergreen question—how telemedicine should be paid for? Hear from Blue Shield of California's Director of Investments & Corporate Development Moses Ike and Pandia Health Founder & CEO Dr. Sophia Yen on the evolving space.

In 2017, the FDA launched its Digital Health Innovation Action Plan, detailing its plans to review and update regulation of software. Among the digital health programs is the Pre-Certification Program, also known as Pre-Cert, wherein FDA is working with innovators to develop a new approach to regulatory oversight for software-based medical technologies. Nearly two years into the pilot program, we wanted to get a status update and hear what’s in store this year and beyond. Rock Health Managing Director and CEO Bill Evans caught up with Bakul Patel, the FDA’s Director for Digital Health, and Jared Seehafer, cofounder and CEO of Rock Health portfolio company Enzyme, to discuss the FDA’s new look, the proposed framework for regulating AI and machine learning, and how startups should navigate—and participate in—the evolving regulatory process.

Will artificial intelligence help humanize healthcare and get medicine back on track? Signs point to yes—with a few caveats. Rock Health Managing Director and CEO Bill Evans spoke with leading cardiologist and digital medicine researcher Dr. Eric Topol about his new book, Deep Medicine, which provides a wide-ranging overview of the current state of AI in healthcare. Together with Dr. Topol, we explore the fundamental shift from “shallow medicine” to “deep medicine,” the data and privacy issues at hand, and why there has never been a more urgent window of opportunity to fix healthcare with the transformative potential of AI.

Even when serving patients is their primary goal, most digital health solutions go to market via large enterprises, whether through payers, providers, biopharma, or employers. That’s why effective digital health companies build expertise not just in their product, but in cultivating relationships with large enterprises and implementing solutions across them to reach patient populations at scale. Rock Health recently co-hosted an event with Kaiser Permanente Ventures to discuss what it takes to build a lasting, impactful alliance between enterprise and digital health companies. Hear from Kaiser Permanente's Executive Director of Telehealth Angie Stevens and Validic’s SVP of Product Brian Carter in a conversation moderated by Kaiser Permanente Ventures' Director of Strategic Engagement Shruti Kothari.