The people behind healthcare innovation: Interview with David Meinertz, CEO and Founder of ZAVA

As part of my work, I have the privilege to speak with many inspiring innovators. However, the business community usually focuses more on companies, pitches, and valuations, and less on the innovator. I think it would be interesting to learn a bit more about the people behind healthcare innovation. Therefore, I’m sharing some of my conversations with innovators in a condensed format: six questions and six answers about their experience, their opinions, and their learnings.

This latest conversation is with David Meinertz, CEO and Founder of European telemedicine platform ZAVA.

Tobias: What’s your story and how did you become an innovator in healthcare?

David: As a patient myself (a rather impatient one), I found the route to receiving my high-blood-pressure medicines to be full of barriers. I used to have to take time out of the office to visit the doctor’s surgery and then wait for a couple of hours in order to get a follow-up prescription; after that I would have to go elsewhere to collect my medicines from the pharmacy. This was really inconvenient; it seemed inefficient to me and didn’t fit into my lifestyle, so I saw the opportunity for change.

However, my motivation to create more accessible healthcare was not just influenced by my own experiences as a patient but also my upbringing. My father is a cardiologist and he used to take me on patient rounds every other weekend, something that was tremendously inspiring and which motivated me to build healthcare that is accessible and dependable.

And here we are a few years later. Today, I can reach out to my doctor digitally to obtain advice and receive my medicines at the local pharmacy within the hour or by mail the following day. My investment in time and the logistical effort is significantly lower, with the same or better outcomes. As a result, I strongly believe that digital healthcare will make the difference we are looking for.

Tobias: Where do you see digital-first healthcare moving to over the next ten years?

David: Projections currently estimate that four out of ten healthcare interactions will eventually move to digital over the next ten years. This means six out of ten interactions will remain in a traditional setting—the GP practice, outpatient clinic, or mini-clinic on the high street. I can see a future where the patient journey is a combination of both: a hybrid that builds patient pathways based on available data in which patients and healthcare professionals can combine “building blocks of care” to provide convenient and efficient journeys that enable better patient outcomes.

A digital-first mindset implies that the entry point for any healthcare interaction— e.g., patients’ research, health education, appointment booking, patient reminders —will become increasingly digital. However, it is important to have support available, when patients need to talk to a doctor (in a convenient way) and then obtain an appropriate level of healthcare, whether this be a teleconsultation, practice visit, or referral to a specialist. Ten years is a long timeframe and I would prefer to see this change realized in five years.

Tobias: Looking more broadly, what are the biggest opportunities and obstacles you see for innovation in the healthcare environment?

David: There are barriers to patients receiving the healthcare they need. In many countries, these barriers can include payment barriers, data-security barriers, regulatory barriers (for example, an upper ceiling for physicians to provide telemedicine consultations), and interoperability barriers between sectors and across countries.

However, these barriers also present opportunities for innovators and meet patient demand in a way that fits into patients’ lives. At ZAVA, we’re also making things more efficient: for instance, with the introduction of asynchronous consultations, whereby patients can be diagnosed and treated by doctors using clinical questionnaires based on medical guidelines, the potential to make a limited number of doctors available to more patients is huge—much higher than with a standard video or in-person consultation.

Additionally, e-prescriptions and electronic patient records present opportunities for improved and more convenient patient journeys.?

Tobias: When you look at the health system as a whole (providers, payers, and patients) who do you see driving innovation the most?

David: Innovation within the health system will be driven mostly by patients. It is the patients who will seek to find solutions to their changing lifestyle preferences, and it is up to healthcare professionals and payers to create pathways and services for them. These innovations can be built by passionate entrepreneurs, some of whom will most likely be patients themselves (like me), who want to solve real patient problems.

The asynchronous solution that we have built at ZAVA was not created because a reimbursement scheme was already in existence; it was originally an out-of-pocket service only and therefore it needed to be a really convincing offering for patients to use it. We were able to show that we had solved a problem for many patients and that they were willing to pay for it. Only when we were able to provide evidence of hundreds of thousands of patients using ZAVA across Europe were we able to include our services in selective agreements with statutory health insurances in Germany.

Meanwhile, doctors will benefit from these innovations through more flexible working hours and being able to help their patients in ways that patients need.

Tobias: In your opinion, what is the single most important change that will better enable digital transformation in health systems?

David: By allowing doctors to have more freedom in the way they treat patients, the focus can be on enabling doctors and teaching medical students doctors during their education. The current digital tool they extensively use is a practice management IT system, which was primarily built for administration purposes and not for navigating digital patient journeys. We already see huge differences across countries: For example, in the UK, there are a lot of quality certifications and guidelines existing for doctors to give them guidance on how to provide digital healthcare. I hope this will also happen in other European countries.?

Tobias: What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were starting out as an innovator?

David: There are three top tips that I can share, mostly from having learned things the hard way—I made a lot of mistakes along the way:

1) Stamina is key. Healthcare is probably one of the most challenging industries to enter and succeed in. The ever-changing regulatory environment and varying approaches and attitudes to digital healthcare mean that doors often close (rather than open). You have to be persistent.

2) Cash is king. Figuring out a revenue model early extends your runway and enables you to remain in relative control. The key challenge here is to understand how complex it is to navigate a health system to establish a scalable business model and how much time this will take.

3) Hire for attitude rather than skill only. Given the above, you require people on your team who share your ambition in healthcare and bring to the table the persistence that is required. You need a crew to sail your ship rather than many passengers.

For more information, see?David Meinertz?and?ZAVA.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and his guest contributor and do not reflect the views of McKinsey & Company.