Why We Started Reveal HealthTech

Author: Sanchit Mullick

The transformational power of technology to improve the delivery of care and make a real difference in the lives of patients and providers alike has been widely documented. There is also abundant coverage of the accelerated adoption of technology across the care spectrum as an outcome of the pandemic. However, the pathway to technology implementation and adoption continues to be an arduous journey.

About a year back I had a chance meeting with?Pankaj Jethwani?(Executive Vice President at?W Health Ventures) where he mentioned the challenges his portfolio companies in the U.S. were facing in addressing their technology requirements. At that time, I was servicing the technology needs of private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies, and the one sector that remained elusive was Healthcare. It got us thinking and we decided to validate if our experiences were anecdotal coincidences or if there was an underlying gap in the market.?

Over the next several months we spoke to 30+ care delivery and provider tech organizations & investors. Stakeholders included early-stage digital health startups, growth-stage firms that were past Series A/B funding, and enterprise hospital systems. As it turned out there were challenges across the board and 3 clear themes emerged:

1. Talent: Healthcare firms were struggling to onboard engineering talent. 75% of engineering roles were open for more than 3 months.
2. Cultural Misalignment: There was an expectation mismatch amongst onboarded employees, they were not happy with the work they were doing. Employee dissonance was high amongst software engineering teams at Healthcare organizations leading to high attrition.
3. Lack of domain expertise: The firms that undertook outsourcing often found themselves in a trough of disillusionment because of the lack of domain understanding in partners. This is particularly problematic in healthcare given complex terminology, regulatory requirements, multi-stakeholder interactions, and data privacy considerations amongst others.

These observations were consistent across the healthcare ecosystem irrespective of the size and maturity of the organization. U.S. healthcare companies spend over $120B on their technology needs, with over $60B on technology services. We decided to revisit how we could address the challenges faced by healthcare companies in procuring technology services. Our conclusion was to build an organization that would be an engineering partner to the healthcare ecosystem, with the common goals of maximizing patient health and removing technology as a constraint to healthcare innovation.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Reveal HealthTech can help your organization, reach out at?[email protected].