Andy Weissman
Healthcare at the Edge
Healthcare is at a transformational point, with various movements and advancements changing the landscape. People are taking responsibility for their own wellness, sharing and discussing medical breakthroughs, and using wearables and connected devices to measure and track their health. AI is making health data more accessible and personalized. The medical field faces trust issues due to high costs, conflicting incentives, and challenging user experiences. Empowering individuals to take control of their health and challenging the medical establishment is seen as a positive development. Self-directed healthcare, personalized medicine, enablement layers, and specialized networks are emerging trends. USV is actively investing in these areas, as they believe individual, self-directed healthcare is the fastest path to fixing core issues in the industry and placing trust and agency in individuals.
And perhaps most importantly, the medical field faces significant issues with trust, as people have valid reasons to be skeptical. This comes from many factors: high and unpredictable costs that can bankrupt families, conflicting incentives that deprioritize quality of care, challenging user experiences (try to read an Explanation of Benefits), and a focus on treating illness rather than promoting overall well-being. Doctors seem to have little incentive to embrace the Internet’s ability to empower patients. Some lack empathy or simply ignore well-informed patients, further deteriorating our experiences with medicine. (View Highlight)
Anything that challenges the medical establishment by encouraging people to take control of their health – whether through social media, by empowering doctors who want to work more collaboratively with patients, or other means – is a positive development. (View Highlight)
We call this self-directed healthcare. If healthcare exists on a spectrum from preventative measures to emergency care, the self-directed movement has emerged primarily on the former front. Themes like healthspan, longevity, and cardio-metabolic health permeate the dialogue. Focusing on this area helps to keep people healthy and out of the traditional system, which should play a critical role as the place where experts treat patients with acute issues. (View Highlight)