What is your goal for Hello Health?
The goal for Hello Health is to create an online network and tools that empower doctors all across America to have the freedom to simply practice high quality medicine. There are so many doctors out there who are practicing and feeling that their life isn’t what they thought it would be like back in medical school. So we created this robust online platform that allows doctors to be doctors rather than deal with their current hassles. Docs simply create a profile and start practicing. Chuck Salter, in the Fast Company article about Hello Health, describes it best: “It’s part electronic medical record, part practice-management system, and part social-networking site, complete with profiles and photos of doctors and patients, all in a secure environment that complies with federal privacy standards.”
Is what is going on in Washington concerning healthcare reform going to impact what you are doing?
I don’t really believe that a top down effort will revolutionize the fastest growing and most profitable industry in America. The lobbyists from all the main healthcare players have descended on Washington to protect their profits. And democracy is the best system to protect the status quo and make what should be a simple system, much more complex. If anything, the new reform is going to make practicing medicine more regulated, more costly, and more inefficient. Unfortunately that’s not going to be a good experience for most doctors and I think we’ll see an exodus from that painful environment into systems that guarantee freedom, like Hello Health.
What would you say to medical professionals who might view what you are doing as “risky” or “controversial?”
Hello Health enables real relationships with your patients. It’s a partnership enhanced by today’s communication that enables you to have a better understanding of your patients’ health. We have disclaimers in multiple places within Hello Health ensuring patients understand that online communication is for everyday problems...not for urgent or emergent issues.
What do you think it will take for doctors to begin embracing technology?
If Health IT is affordable, user-friendly, and a time-saver for doctors, I think we’d see widespread adoption. However, health IT solves one problem-billing. It doesn’t help doctors be better doctors. It helps them get paid. And it doesn’t even help them get paid more because there’s a negligible ROI. And don’t forget that the majority of it looks like Windows 95 at best. Health IT needs to focus much more on communication and be friendly to use like Flickr, iTunes and Amazon.
Do you think the incentives that the government is going to provide will do this?
I think the incentives offered by the government are counterproductive. The main reason why only about 15-20 percent of doctors use health IT is because the current 1986-based business models used to sell health IT don’t make economic sense for 80 percent of the healthcare system. Health IT is highly profitable but siloed.
How does it feel to not be practicing medicine anymore, will you ever return to it?
I trained as a pediatrician and also did a preventive medicine residency at Hopkins. I’ve always been drawn to systems thinking and how processes can be designed to encourage efficiencies. I feel like I’m in a much better fit for my interests and my skills. I’m sort of like the guy who designs the Toyota factory to build the highest quality cars in the most efficient way possible rather than the guy on the front lines building that car. Both are absolutely necessary to produce something awesome.
What are you currently reading?
I’m currently reading Chris Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.” However, I just got done reading the most influential healthcare book I’ve ever read, Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care.”
