Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Torben Nielsen, Co-Founder of HealthSparq (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The value proposition is very clear and very compelling. I’ve actually talked to the eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani. I don’t know if you know him.

Torben Nielsen: I read your article on that. I thought that was very interesting.

Sramana Mitra: He talked to me about this problem as well. I’m very much aware of the issue. It’s something that should happen and should have happened already but hasn’t.

Torben Nielsen: It’s so overdue.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, I agree with that. It seems like it is happening now. It’s a matter of time. Probably by the end of the decade, we will have this in place.
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Disinfecting Hospitals, Impacting Healthcare: Morris Miller, CEO of Xenex (Part 3)

Morris Miller: I got 168 No’s before I finally found an investor to say Yes. I would work Monday through Friday. I’d work the weekend. I’d work the next Monday through Friday and the next weekend. Then, I might take three days off and go to New York to pitch somebody. Back in 1992, the venture capital community existed but it was very small and they didn’t necessarily interact with a brand new entrepreneur the way your incubator is facilitating that now. That’s the amazing thing. Today, a guy like me could go to an incubator. Then they’d say, “Let’s spike the idea. Let’s get it going and see what kind of market reception there is.” Back then, you couldn’t do that. You literally had to go find individual angels step by step.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise?

Morris Miller: $1.25 million.

Sramana Mitra: From one angel?
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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Torben Nielsen, Co-Founder of HealthSparq (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Great. This is very interesting. What percentage of the health plan market has adopted solutions like this such that consumers can access this facility today?

Torben Nielsen: It’s a great question. We do an annual survey here at HealthSparq surveying 1,600 health plan executives. We just completed our second annual survey. What it shows is that health plans really are very interested in these transparency tools. Where they really fall short, oftentimes, is in ensuring that the members really know that this type of data and these types of shopping tools are available to them.

Traditionally, health plans are big and large. They are still very new to the element of consumerism, if you will, and talking more proactively to their members. What we’ve realized at HealthSparq is that a lot of members are asking for this information especially with plans coming out >>>

Disinfecting Hospitals, Impacting Healthcare: Morris Miller, CEO of Xenex (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The Internet was not yet on the horizon.

Morris Miller: The Internet was not there. When I was in Law School, I read an article in the Forbes magazine. It talked about how Steve Jobs had just raised money for NeXT computer.

Sramana Mitra: My husband used to run NeXT computer.

Morris Miller: They published this article and there was this one line in the article that said, “These NeXT computers are going to have read-write CD-ROMS and you’ll be able to put a library’s worth of information on a disk.” I called my dad and said, “When you’re in Law School, they >>>

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Torben Nielsen, Co-Founder of HealthSparq (Part 2)

Torben Nielsen: You’ll be surprised, that even though everybody’s insured, at how much variation you see in price within just one block of wherever you live. By going to an in-hospital versus a surgical center that’s right next door, you can save thousands of dollars. That’s exciting because it’s almost the analogy that we like to talk about. Remember in the good old days when you wanted to buy used cars. You, as an individual, didn’t have any information. You would walk into a lot and the car salesman would say, “I have these three cars. You can choose between them. One has run 50,000 miles and is 13 years old and I’m going to charge this much for it. The other one is the same model but only ran 25,000 miles and is three years old. I’m going to charge this much.” You had no idea whether that’s a good or bad price until Edmunds.com came about. Then, you started to get all that information as an individual. You started to have just as much information as the used car salesman.

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Disinfecting Hospitals, Impacting Healthcare: Morris Miller, CEO of Xenex (Part 1)

Morris Miller was an original investor in RackSpace, and ended up running the company for almost seven years. Following RackSpace, he is now building a super interesting company in disinfecting hospitals and saving lives. Read on. Exciting stuff!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were your born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Morris Miller: I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. My father is a physician. My uncle is a physician and there was every expectation from the family and me that I would become a physician. I went to public school all the way through school. Then, as a sophomore, I decided to go to Felis Exeter Academy up in New Hampshire. I was the only one to go to boarding school.

Sramana Mitra: You returned to Texas though for your college or did you stay back in New England?
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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Torben Nielsen, Co-Founder of HealthSparq (Part 1)

The consumerization of healthcare, moving into the 21st century, a Web 3.0 world — let’s discuss these with Torben Nielsen.

Sramana Mitra: Please introduce us to HealthSparq and yourself.

Torben Nielsen: I’m the Co-Founder and the SVP of Products and Strategy here at HealthSparq. HealthSparq is a leading provider of cloud-based healthcare transparency solutions. In essence, it means that we’re trying to change something in an industry that has been very slow at changing. I think healthcare is one of the few, if not the only one, where you don’t really know what it’s going to cost until after the treatment. You go see your doctor and have a treatment done and you have no idea whether that doctor is the right doctor for you. You don’t know the quality of the doctor. You don’t know what it’s going to cost you until maybe 30 days after, you get something in the mail that says, “This is not a bill. This is an explanation of benefit.”

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tom Hogan, CEO of Kony (Part 7)

Sramana MItra: The healthcare industry has been the most active in the history of the healthcare IT industry. It’s really moving and active right now. I anticipate that, within the next decade, the healthcare IT penetration is going to be humongous. There’s going to be huge changes.

Tom Hogan: I agree. I have a theory for why it’s going to happen for the next 10 years. Do you have a theory for why it’s finally kicking in?

Sramana Mitra: It got kicked off by the stimulus to begin with. Now the stimulus is actually going to end, but the momentum has already picked up. I think the stimulus is no longer necessary. It’s the same thing—consumerization of IT. The industry is facing a huge consumerization of their customer base so they have to play along and stay in tune.

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