San Francisco, CA – My first Rock Health Summit was well worth the trip. Inspiring companies are everywhere you look and I am constantly reminded of the healthcare shift that is happening. Patients are getting access to more and more information and ways to influence their health and well-being in a multitude of new ways. From tracking your steps and sleep to sending away information to have your genome analyzed we are entering into an arena of healthcare that is doing it’s best to enable the industry with new types of data and some dedicated innovators trying to figure out the best way to advance the industry. Over my next few posts I’m going to do my best to bring back some of the inspiring information and share some of the passionate talks about some prevalent subjects in healthcare.
The summit started for me with a set of tours deemed “innovation tours.” The first company I chose to tour was the home of the brain training company, Lumosity. During our tour I learned how integrated the science of neuroplasticity was in everything that the company was a part of. Hearing from Glenn, the Director of Clinical Trials, was incredibly informative. The big takeaway from the Lumosity tour was how involved they are in holding and contributing trials that are geared to aide in the diagnosis and understanding of brain-related and aging related conditions. I couldn’t help, but imagine what the impact could be if wearables and applications like Lumosity could meaningfully contribute to trials and giving a much needed science-first impression to applications in general. The company is heavily involved in advancing the new field of cognitive training and invested heavily in the Human Cognition Project. This was especially interesting to me and I plan on following up later on HXP as to how this company is taking the extra effort to put science first in their products.
The next stop on the innovation tour was the corporate offices of One Medical Group. This company was especially interesting because they offer a service that boasts patient convenience and techniques that save on costs in an often expensive private practice space. One Medical touts a customer-centric design, smart application of technology, and primary care physicians that actually listen. A common testimonial from these Physicians was that they “get to be doctors.” What is meant by that is that they don’t have to deal with the day to day office-related tasks like making sure the electric bill is paid. Using technology to effect the efficiency of primary care One Medical offers services that are often same day and are quickly expanding. They clued us in that they have recently opened up their first family practice and that was possibly the most interesting part of our tour. They explained that their product teams practice “design thinking” when they approach new ideas. You can see evidence of this type of thinking in everything from their apps to their office design. They believe that the smallest aspects of a patient’s experience add up, so when they took on the challenge of adding family practices to their portfolio they took the extra effort to invite family practice doctors, as well as, parents and children to create a unique, efficient and pleasant experience for all those involved. One small, but impactful design decision was to have furniture made for the offices that were built smaller, so they could see over the desks and be part of the conversation.
The innovation tours were are great start to the summit. I have a full schedule of exciting talks ahead of me the next two days and at minimum I can’t help, but be inspired by companies like Lumosity, that are taking steps to help how improve ourselves, not to mention looking at age-related cognitive conditions and One Medical Group that is focused on improving the ways that we receive care through a dedicated set of Primary Care Physicians.
