Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: David Weingard, CEO of Cecelia Health (Part 1)

David and I talk about diabetes management in this conversation.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Cecelia Health.

David Weingard: I’m the Founder and CEO of Cecelia Health. We’re an organization that improves the health of people with diabetes and other chronic conditions by leveraging experts and using technology to scale their reach.

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: HealthGrid CEO and Serial Digital Health Entrepreneur Raj Toleti (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You are no longer going to integrate with Epic and the others? You’re just going to focus on Allscripts?

Raj Toleti: No. 80% of my customers before Allscripts acquired us were non-Allscripts.

Sramana Mitra: That integration will continue. You will continue to cater to other EMRs but you will obviously penetrate deeply into the Allscripts ecosystem.

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: HealthGrid CEO and Serial Digital Health Entrepreneur Raj Toleti (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: To achieve what you’re talking about, you must have had to interact with some of the existing systems. I live in Menlo Park, California. The two medical systems that our family interfaces with are the Stanford healthcare system and the UCSS healthcare system.

They have their own electronic medical record system. Epic is very popular. What is the interface that you’ve had to navigate? How are those interfaces adopting this consumerization of healthcare IT?

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: HealthGrid CEO and Serial Digital Health Entrepreneur Raj Toleti (Part 1)

Starting a company in the healthcare sector might be easier than you think. Learn how to start your entrepreneurial journey with Sramana’s Udemy courses.

Raj has built and sold three HIT companies and is a real expert in the domain. Excellent discussion on the state of the union in the field and open opportunities that need entrepreneurial problem solving.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself. Give us a bit of background as well as your various healthcare IT companies.

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Nancy Ham, CEO of WebPT (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the insurance side. It’s notorious. Physical therapy not being covered by insurance is a notorious issue. How do you think about that? What can be done, innovation-wise, to address that issue?

Nancy Ham: Most insurance companies cover physical therapy but they, maybe, don’t pay a lot or there’s a high deductible co-pay that is financially burdensome. Most PT courses of care tend to be 15 times. If you’re in a high-deductible plan, that can get pretty expensive for you. There are some things happening that, unfortunately, aren’t broadly public yet.

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Nancy Ham, CEO of WebPT (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Innovation in your industry is also happening on another vector – in treatment. I actually introduced a company from our portfolio to Heidi a few months ago that has a laser-based pain treatment device. We have one in our portfolio. There’s quite a bit of work going on out there in various kinds of pain treatments and physiotherapy-related treatment besides exercise. What is your view point on that?

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Nancy Ham, CEO of WebPT (Part 2)

Nancy Ham: Our data shows pretty encouraging results of people staying in care longer, which means they have a better chance of getting their best health outcome. Now, let’s look at the ability to engage with future patients. Physical therapists are out and about in the community. They staff road races. They’re at the high school football game. They publish health and wellness information.

Now they have a chance to meet people and then bring them into this technology platform and communicate with them on an ongoing basis. If your family member needs physical therapy at some point, they’ll think, “I should definitely go to this therapy. These people have been sending me great information.”

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Nancy Ham, CEO of WebPT (Part 1)

We’ve covered WebPT before, featuring founder Heidi Jannenga on Entrepreneur Journeys. We’ve also had Heidi on our roundtable.

This conversation explores the evolution of WebPT to a broader product footprint and also discusses the open issues in the physiotherapy practice management space. It also explores pain-related medical devices, the role of insurance companies, and other interesting nuances of the industry.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by giving a brief introduction to WebPT and your current activities. As you know, we have had your founder, Heidi Jannenga, on the Entrepreneur Journeys platform as well as at our roundtable. Our audience is very familiar with WebPT.