The Gift of Time

How we choose to use time is a funny thing.? Take this newsletter for example.? As much as I enjoy writing, when faced with the blank page, suddenly I ‘find’ time for all the little chores that I’ve not had space to do until this very minute.? Tasks like de-icing the refrigerator, bleaching the kitchen sink, removing a handful of small leaves from the patio. Suddenly I’m very motivated to knock these off my mental to-do list.

Being conscious of my procrastination has served a purpose in sparking the topic for this week’s edition – converting time into value.

Years ago, I was fortunate to attend a breakfast session with a visiting professor from UCLA specializing in Technology.? He shared his belief that productivity and time gains from tech advancements in the consumer space would largely translate to increases in entertainment/leisure and shopping, with companies such as Netflix, Airbnb and Amazon benefiting.? The outsized gains of those companies in the ensuing years have shown he wasn’t wrong.? But somehow, I don’t think that GPs are going to be catching up on GOT anytime soon, do you?

One insight my cofounder, Govin Murugachandran and I are trying to draw from speaking with GP practice leaders is the understanding of what they will value most from the time our solution will be saving them.? After all, the solution comes at a (small) cost, but GP practice budgets are often as equally stretched as their time.? How do we help them convert time saved for their practice into value?

Converting Time Into Value

Through 1:1 interviews, we’ve grouped the main categories of ‘time conversion’ into three buckets – increase investment into patient care (either by growing the patient list or giving more time to existing patients), increasing practice profits by reducing staffing costs (eg through attrition/hiring costs or shift reduction) or give the practice staff breathing space to improve wellbeing.? Ultimately, we’d like to use the knowledge of which is most important to particular GP practice leaders and correlate that with their eagerness to take up Zonder 's chronic care service.

It's interesting work (I do love chatting with people under the guise of ‘research’), but it’s also slow going.? As you can imagine, GP leaders are especially strapped for time to have a chat, so I was especially pleased this week to discover an existing research study from The Health Foundation which answered our very question - - How would clinicians use time freed up by technology?? Important side note, Zonder will be freeing up time not only through leveraging technology to streamline processes but also through upskilling and specializing our team on chronic care.? But I believe the results of the study are relevant for our situation.? The survey was asked of a variety of clinicians, a portion of which were drawn from the Royal College of General Practitioners .

Main conclusions

• When asked of clinical staff how they would likely use freed-up time, survey respondents allocated only 27% of that time to patient care or direct clinical activity.
• Having better work-life balance is important, whether taking the form of less overtime or simply time for a break.
• In addition to increasing care volumes – a proportion of freed-up time could be used for activities, such as training or research, that would not only benefit productivity but make a crucial contribution to improving job quality.
• And, no surprise to those familiar with academic research, more research is needed. I don’t know if this is a British thing or something ubiquitous, I’ve never noticed before, but every study I’ve read since starting Zonder has included ‘more research required’ as a key conclusion.? That’s one way to encourage job security.? To be fair, in doing a literature audit on the subject of technology time savings in clinical settings, they found that less than 1% of studies mentioning the impact of digital and telephone technologies on staff time considered how staff used any time saved.

This table shows at-a-glance how tech time savings would be applied:

Another conclusion the authors of the study drew will be important in Zonder’s long-term success, and we're already speaking to people expert in this area:

‘Explicit planning is required to ensure the effective repurposing of time, and this should be done with staff and wider stakeholders. So good change management is critical to deriving the benefits from time-saving technologies.’

Cost Benchmarking

Meanwhile we are helping GP Partners to better understand their direct costs of chronic care.? We’ve developed a benchmarking tool, whereby practice leaders can input into our model several figures specific to their practice to see how much chronic care is really costing them in purely economic terms and how this compares to practices similar to theirs.?

GP leaders who would like to see where their practice stands in the benchmarking study can request free access by getting in touch with me at [email protected] .

This week’s -

Lowlight: communication around the conditions of pre-seed funding in our accelerator program led to some initial drama swirling around our cohort.? Thankfully this was short-lived as clarification was sought and gained in a matter of a couple days.

Highlight: additional traction on the commercial front. That’s all I can say at the moment, but it’s good news for Zonder.

My Ask: the more practices using our benchmarking model, the more robust the data for all.? So if you’re a practice leader (or know one who might benefit) please reach out for a link and easy instructions.

In Other News from My Cohort

A Founder’s Story – Marjo Palanee , is now focusing the spotlight of her blog on under-represented founders and their startups whilst offering her services in building communities on social media. I highly recommend her workshops!

Air Aware Labs - providing personalized health insights from air pollution data

Kuma Health - transforming immune mediated disorders care through personalized medicine

Deep Roots - Securing additional revenue streams for farms and building resilient supply chains through agroforestry

Ultra BiOmics - improving your metabolic health

Smart Shift Energy - empowering consumers to reduce their home energy costs