So as that connectivity spread, the number and the variants of the different types of parties that would benefit from this ecosystem of connectivity grew. And now, it’s really, every party is benefiting from this connectible nature with others. So it’s typically, as you pointed out, in the background. And our connection into an EHR system or to the laboratory system is typically in the background, and even seeding the analytical results back into the point of care, very often, happens without great obviousness.
What areas of the healthcare system will your data get plugged into next?
Well, specialty pharmacy is the fastest growing sector of healthcare today. Specialty pharmacy is the provision of pharmacy services to [patients with] high-complexity, high-cost conditions. And as the pharmaceutical industry continues to make new discoveries and increase things like precision and personalized healthcare, and amore personally designed care regimen, the demand for specialty pharmacy is just increasing. The numbers have gone from roughly $100 billion in 2015 to close to $300 billion by 2020. And that’s a three-fold increase in just five years, that’s massive.
So, in there is an enormous need for coordination between the various different parties. If you think of a high complexity situation in a pharmacy, you have the need to coordinate with the health plan, the need to coordinate with the patient, the need to coordinate with the physicians, the need to coordinate with the actual inventory of the drug, the authorization of the drug, the distribution of the drug, the management and payment of the drug. All of this coordination, if not done right, lead to delays in care for the patient as well as higher costs of operation.
What would you say are the biggest challenges you’re facing in healthcare today?
The greatest challenges in healthcare today are just the complexities of how care is operated. The enormous number of diagnoses, there are, in the neighborhood of 180,000 different diagnoses in the ICD-10 diagnosis system. There are over 60,000 medications in the MDC medication system. There’s over 100,000 different treatment modalities in the CPT system.
And so, for a physician to know how to navigate the assessment of a patient quickly when they have so little time with the patient, and the healthcare system has become very complex in its payment models, in its quality incentive requirements, and it’s very stiff in regulatory requirements, it’s harder and harder for the physician to deliver great care, consider all of these things, and still be mindful of the economics while trying to be a healer.
And a lot of tools are needed to allow that to still happen really well. And I think that’s a challenge that physicians face, it’s a challenge that administrators face, it’s a challenge that regulators face, and these are the challenges that our tools look to solve to provide great care while also being mindful of the economics.
Read more: Navigating The Growth Of A Major Healthcare Platform