Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Life Image CEO Matthew Michela (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How long do you think it’s going to take for those seven kinds of datasets to build up in an accessible fashion? Are we a decade away?

Matthew Michela: We shouldn’t be 10 years away at all. We’re probably in a three to five-year timeframe. You’re going to see, next year, significant advancements. Where does this thing start to elevate?

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Life Image CEO Matthew Michela (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long has this company been around?

Matthew Michela: Life Image is 11 years old.

Sramana Mitra: You have 11 years’ worth of data that is built up in your system. That data is valuable. My next question is, how do you make that data available to people who are trying to do research or anything that can be built on that data. What is the mechanism?

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Life Image CEO Matthew Michela (Part 4)

Matthew Michela: Because data is so hard to get even in this new world of statistical evaluation in front of us, the data that you use is still inadequate. What data is easily accessible? Claims data or data out of an EHR?

That’s real world because I can tell you what I paid for two weeks ago or yesterday. I can pull data out of an EHR that happened yesterday or five days ago. That’s a payment evaluation. EHR has been built, principally, from the foundation of how do I keep track of things so I can bill and get reimbursed. It doesn’t have a lot of clinical information.

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Life Image CEO Matthew Michela (Part 3)

Matthew Michela: The second thing we’re doing in this big trend in AI, which I think you’re going to see dramatically more of in 2019 to 2021, is adoption of AI. We spent this first generation of AI creating the new algorithms and the computational tools and outcome. If you look at that entire industry, there’s very little adoption.

The reason there’s little adoption is because it’s not a technology solution. I can be the smartest data scientist in Silicon Valley and create an algorithm that gets approval and works. But what I have to get that software into the workflow where they’re not going to change everything they’re doing for one piece of AI. They need to fit.

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Life Image CEO Matthew Michela (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: My next question is going to be about what trends are you seeing. How are your customers using data? Obviously you have a very rich dataset in your ecosystem.

What are some unique and interesting visionary ways that data is being used and interesting applications of it being developed on top of that data?

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Life Image CEO Matthew Michela (Part 1)

An in-depth conversation on the stage of data in the medical world.

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

Matthew Michela: I’m the President and CEO of Life Image. Life Image is a medical evidence-based technology platform that services a wide variety of healthcare entities and partners inside the healthcare ecosystem on a global scale. We’re a relatively mature company of about 11 years.

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: CareDash CEO Ted Chan (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are the open problems in your industry that new entrepreneurs could be starting companies around?

Ted Chan: Telehealth is a very big opportunity for making healthcare more seamless, more efficient, and more cost effective. There’s a trend. A lot of consumer health companies have been getting mega-funding. They’re getting a lot of pushback in the medical community because, for instance, women can get their birth control pills through telehealth or the partner we work with in the teletherapy space. >>>

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: CareDash CEO Ted Chan (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How would you tackle the issue in any given community? Let’s say you’re a patient in any given community. Given your insurance and its coverage, there aren’t that many options. How do you deal with that in terms of provider choice?

Ted Chan: What we’re trying to do is give a patient a view of all of the providers that are available to them. One of the things that we are really on the leading edge of, especially from the perspective of healthcare directories, is that we’re huge proponents and supporters of telehealth. I’d say at this point, it’s part of our core mission to educate patients on telehealth options that are available.

Especially in rural areas, you tend to be able to get primary care. You tend to be able to get emergency care. But any specialist care is hard to come by. One of the things I’m really proud of is, we’ve been driving a lot of teletherapy appointments. That’s where somebody sees a mental health counselor in a Skype-like interface. >>>