Jul 21, 2014
Stan Berkow is co-founder and CEO of Sense Health, a NYC-based healthcare startup focused on delivering superior health support to underserved patient groups. Prior to Sense Health, his passion for better understanding health and behavior brought him to the Columbia University Medical Center, where he coordinated clinical trials in the Department of Behavioral Medicine. His experience at Columbia highlighted the immense gaps in care patients receive and led him to pursue his interest in improving people's health using technology and design. A firm believer that technology will only improve healthcare when infused with empathy, humanity, and great design, he is focused on creating products that connect providers and patients while still taking into account the unique needs and constraints of both groups. Stan contributes on the Huffington Post and holds a BA in neuroscience from Bowdoin College.
4:00 - Stan's
start as a clinical trial coordinator.
4:36 - What
exactly is SenseHealth? It's a texting platform dedicated to
helping providers maintain consistent communications with their
patients in order to improve patient accountability in an efficient
way from the provider standpoint that fits into patient
lifestyles.
6:00 - An
interactive dialog between providers and patients, but which fits
cleanly within the provider workflow by creating the conversations
ahead of time.
7:42 - Does
opening up a new communication channel create an overload of
information that descends upon providers at inconvenient hours?
Inherently connecting providers to patients will open up a new
communication channel, and opening up a new communication channel
will mean a rise of communications. SenseHealth strives to
streamline the flow of the conversation to automate what can be
automated, but deliver information that requires a
clinician.
10:00 - Basic
questions about chronic care, motivational messages, messages
designed to change behavior. The combinations of messages that
drive behavior change.
11:30 - How does
a nurse or doctor get a patient into the SenseHealth system and who
is appropriate. SenseHealth focuses on the high-risk medicaid
population. The nurse or doctor enrolls during an office visit.
Gaining opt-in.
13:09 - Focus on
depression & mental health, cardiovascular concerns like
hypertension and heart failure, diabetes and obesity.
13:51 -
Preconfigured care plans are tailored around where a patient is
around being "activated" a psychological construct designed to
reduce the cost of engage a patient to improve outcomes.
15:21 - Sense
Health undergoes a randomized control trial that tests the
technology in a clinical setting with Universal Behavioral
Associates, a part of Montefiore Health System.
16:47 -
Randomized trial results. Significant improvements in patient
knowledge, confidence, remembering to come to appointments, to
follow care plans, to refill prescriptions.
(self-reported).
19:00 -
Improving adherence details.
20:23 - The
difficulties of getting quantitative data at the provider level. It
is more possible on the payer side because claims data is
available.
21:51 - Stan's
entrepreneurial journey unfolded in more of a "one thing leads to
another" fashion then any sort of grand scheme.
22:50 - Honing
on a specific group of patients helped differentiate SenseHealth.
They also spent a lot of time working on the provider interface and
user experience.
24:00 - Why
SenseHealth started within the Medicaid population. Through the
Affordable Care Act, a number of resources are being allocated to
improve the management of high-cost members.
25:10 - The
hypothesis that SenseHealth enables case managers to manage more
patients. This could be important because there's currently a
crunch to increase the capacity of case managers to handle
expanding case loads.
Automating the
repeatable tasks in a manner that is much more human for the
patient receiving support and in a way that connects the provider
so that a clinician is there when needed.
27:00 The big
concern around regulations and text messages. Text messages are
non-encrypted so there are privacy concerns. For private
communications, texting is not an appropriate communicate channel.
SenseHealth has a well-defined opt-in policy to comply with
regulations as well as safeguards to insure that private
information is not sent inadvertently by a provider.
30:00 As new
technologies roll out, early stage companies focus on a feature--
one aspect of what a health organization needs to be doing, but not
all encompassing. And then they add a feature at a time. Buyers
should make sure that tech companies have the capacity to expand
into new areas of the clinical workflow. Evaluate which early stage
companies can grow with the needs.
32:52 - The pros
and cons of being a tech entrepreneur in the healthcare
space.
"There's a
social good that comes from our work."
34:16 -
Expanding out our features to fulfill different engagement areas
with current customers and work with managed care organizations and
ultimately reach our goals to support more patients.
sensehealth.com
stan@sensehealth.com
Montefiore
Behavioral health Center: http://www.montefiore.org/mbhc