The People behind Healthcare Innovation: Interview with Erik de Heus, CEO at SkinVision

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.

The tenth conversation is with Erik de Heus, Chief Executive Officer of SkinVision, a company that has developed a machine-learning app for early detection of skin cancer.

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

 Erik: When I started my career, I would never have thought of myself as an innovator. I’ve always had an interest in building businesses, problem solving, and driving customer solutions. Transforming industries has always been an exciting ground for personal development; by leading this growth, you are fundamentally changing an industry, driving solutions, and have the opportunity to work jointly with stakeholders. I started at Hewlett-Packard working across computer, financing, and re-marketing of computer equipment, then I moved into renewable energy. I entered the healthcare market working for Philips to establish a new business for them in the United States, after having experienced a variety of industries—I understood why the healthcare industry was in need of innovation.

 Looking at global trends, I saw, of course, that as people become older and with aging populations, there is a growing demand for healthcare services. As a consequence, the cost of healthcare has grown phenomenally—and without technology, the healthcare sector cannot cope with this high demand. The number of people in need of treatment is difficult for healthcare systems to handle, and there is a shortage of carers to provide support. The availability of personal devices enables us to deliver solutions to help these customers: technology and smartphones are an outlet to deliver health solutions. However, the technology must be deployed at scale, and at a fast pace. I looked at this as an obstacle to overcome, which presented an enormous opportunity to think through how healthcare should evolve… and to create growth and impact.

Since I joined to lead SkinVision, my background has helped me gain a broader understanding of how our service can improve healthcare systems. SkinVision’s goal is to innovate the healthcare sector by empowering users to take their health into their own hands. Our service enables individuals to transform their smartphones into a medical device as accurate as a specialist dermatologist. 

Tobias: Where do you see the field of smartphone-based health solutions moving to in the next ten years?

Erik: I see smartphone-based health solutions at the forefront of innovation. In a short time, we’ve seen technology become part of our everyday lives—especially our smartphones. Smartphones will become even more pervasive because they give us access to so many things that we need in our personal lives—and phenomenal access to information.

It’s logical to assume that people will want to start using their phones for health and health-related activities such as physical activity, diet, and lifestyle. Biomarkers are evolving, and most of the more in-depth health services are not necessarily something that customers want to have in the forefront of their lives, but perhaps in the background.

Most smartphone-based therapeutics are channeled through the device with a simple interface, while consumers’ health is monitored continuously in the background. At SkinVision, we aim to do this for our users because we know that people don’t want to think about skin cancer in their day-to-day lives. What we do know is that they want to have notifications with a heads-up indicating when it’s time for them to check their skin spots. The more we can use machine learning or artificial intelligence–based technology, the more it becomes intelligent and can be seamlessly integrated into healthcare systems. 

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

Erik: The most significant opportunity for innovation in healthcare is for technology to be simple for customers to adopt, so there will be few limitations how widespread innovation can become. Because of this, deployment opportunities are possible on a global level to create scale, to democratize services, and to make them available for everyone at a low price point — quite the opposite of the status quo where scalability is low and the cost is high. Also, the quality levels in today's health systems are not consistent, and sometimes the differences in countries’ healthcare provision can be dramatic. With the use of technology and global opportunities, healthcare systems can evolve and improve.

The obstacles for innovation: The services provided must be regulated in-line with the currently available health solutions. Also, research to create evidence for the innovation can take many years to come to fruition. I believe that innovation needs to be geared towards the lay-person and kept simple so the average patient can understand the technology. Making services simple and easy to understand will, of course, be the limitation because it’s not always feasible to make health technology easy to adopt. On the other hand, the growth projection for the health services we need is so large that the only way to supply this is via technology. For that reason, I think adoption is going to come in the reverse order: First via patients adopting the innovation, then innovation "flowing up" into healthcare systems. 

Tobias: When you look at the health system as a whole (providers, payers, regulators, doctors, patients) where did you see most/least openness for innovation?

Erik: Today, we see a lot of adoption taking place in health insurance companies because they are aware of the rising demand, the cost impact and they often understand the need for change. Implicitly they have all the pressure to create change yet a limited ability to raise prices. They see the growing costs of treatments and understand that it’s not sustainable long term. Insurers know that the only way to create change is to deploy technology solutions in the best and brightest form. And insurers are creating grounds for change within the market: Both in terms of health impact and cost. They have significant adoption potential, but face challenges in how they reach their insured customers.

If five to ten percent of all healthcare costs were to be reallocated over time towards prevention, it could make a tremendous impact.

Other healthcare professionals who are making a positive impact are policymakers at government level. They see the trends and challenges and are working on policies, push regulators and the health systems to develop easier "entry points" into the health system and increase the appetite for new technology. The more health systems are transparent in terms of costs and benefit, the more people will have the incentive to do the right thing. On government level, there is a balancing act to play, to keep the public safe and secure, while facilitating the needed change to a more sustainable and affordable healthcare structure. The support provided for new solutions is vital for success: We can see the direct impact in those markets that are leading and those that are lacking the change—through easy regulatory access, targeted subsidies and also through communicating to the public at large that health systems must change.

Tobias: What’s the single most important thing that policymakers could do to enable the digital transformation of health system(s)?

Erik: Policymakers should collaborate at an international level to avoid separate entry points for innovation in different countries. The system should have fewer hurdles in terms of complicated reimbursement and payment work, to protect the interests of newcomers pushing for innovation.

Also, within many countries’ health systems, preventative health is not seen as reimbursable. If five to ten percent of all healthcare costs were to be reallocated over time towards prevention, it could make a tremendous impact. If they make these kinds of significant fundamental steps in terms of allocation of budgets, they will also drive and create a market in itself. In the beginning, initiatives need to be supported by extra funding to develop and establish a market; this can create momentum and also provide evidence of outcomes.

Today, what is hindering the development of new initiatives is that there’s not enough ability to foot large programs to demonstrate impact over time. By constraining impact, that’s limiting opportunity. 

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

Erik: If I look back, I wish I would have had a more robust understanding to predict and anticipate the expectations of stakeholders around our services to be able to meet their (developing) demands. Lately, I feel like we’ve expected that everything needs to come through quicker than what is realistically possible. In the end, it’s important to understand that timing can take longer than expected, and this is something I’d consider much more than before.

I wish I would have also known that the level of regulation and quality expectation is very high and that investment in this is essential to move forward and bring innovation that can be widely adopted in multiple markets. There is a natural tension between investing for the long run and short-term results. We are now in for the long run and make sure we create sustainable solutions for our business partners to make the needed change towards high-quality, highly effective solutions at a low price-point.

For more information, see Erik de Heus and www.skinvision.com

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.