frontier of healthcare

Block Party 

We put together a report of companies working on the cutting edge of healthcare, from CAR-T to non-invasive monitoring and more. Check out the 90-slide report analyzing new technologies and startups working with them to change healthcare.

Hey now, you’re a blockstar

One of the technologies we talk about in the horizons report is blockchain. If you haven’t heard, we’re in the middle of a token craze with companies raising multi-millions of dollars pre-product. Many of these products are seeing lots of money raised and then later crater when the hype dies down or they get hacked, resulting in a market cap curve some of you may be familiar with. And before you ask, yes there is a blockchain system for dentists.

There are a few specific problems healthcare has in spades that blockchain is actually designed to address. Some include:

• Interoperability – Data siloes are a huge problem in healthcare. A blockchain system means all participants record each transaction on their own ledger, so data is where it needs to be.
• Authentication – A lot of healthcare has to do with authenticity and approvals. Doctors signing off on prescriptions and prior authorizations. Drugs being real vs. counterfeit. Layers and layers of required compliance. Blockchain + smart contracts have built-in systems to ensure authenticity.
• Payment/Claims – The current claims and reimbursement process for healthcare is slow and inefficient. On top of that there seems to be a new fraud case every other week, and medical billing errors is a large enough industry that several startups have popped up to fix it. A blockchain system can speed up the process, verify the claims, and prevent double entries/incorrect filings.

There are more use cases and healthcare startups deploying blockchain in our brief here.

But as promising as this sounds, there are a lot of the same obstacles which digital health companies face that don’t vaporize thanks to blockchain. A blockchain EMR still has to compete with existing EMR systems, these startups still have to get legacy players to shift all their processes onto their own systems, the sales cycles are long, etc. Even just getting hospitals onto EMRs required a $30B+ incentive system from the government.

And if all of this blockchain stuff sounds confusing, don’t worry, we have an upcoming research briefing to get you up to speed. Sign up here.

Stay healthy,

Nikhil
@nikillinit

P.S. If you missed our deep dive into Apple’s healthcare strategy, get the slides here. I’ll be answering questions I received about their strategy in this collection on the CB Insights platform for clients.