This week is the Emerging Medtech Summit hosted by LSI at Dana Point, CA and being shared virtually. I almost made the trip to California for my first in-person event, but didn’t quite make it. However, virtually hearing what investors and startups are doing is a great insight into what we’re going to see in healthcare going forward.
Today’s opening keynote was by Scott Huennekens, Executive Chairman at Acutus Medical, and was titled Medtech 3.0 Creating Unicorns. Given the fact that he’s been part of a largely failed startup and 2 unicorns he had a lot of great stories, insights, and perspectives that I thought the Healthcare IT Today community would enjoy. Here’s a rundown of a few of the ideas he shared.
Startup stories are the best stories.
Although, it’s always amazing to me how much market dynamics matters as much as anything else that a startup team does. #LSI2021
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 12, 2021
Huennekens was a great storyteller. So, if you have a chance to hear him or can watch the replay from the Emerging Medtech Summit, it’s worth the time. Although, his stories illustrated multiple times how often market dynamics and timing influenced the success of the companies he was working on. Of course, many of the failed stories led to more stories that eventually led to success. So, there’s something to say about perseverance through failure being a key attribute to a startup companies success too.
If you can’t be first in a market category, create a new category. #LSI2021
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 12, 2021
The thing I’d add to the above comment is that Huennekens’ comments really described creating an adjacent category which I found really interesting. Far too often I see entrepreneurs try and say that they’re creating a new category. Sometimes they really are and it’s tough sledding. However, the concept of an adjacent category is much easier to understand and gain traction. It allows a company to be the market leader, but doesn’t force the customers, investors, and eventual acquirers to have to stretch their thinking so far that it becomes too risky.
One system with many solutions is likely going to win over point solutions that head to head are better.
We’ve seen this a lot in healthcare IT and EHR. #LSI2021
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 12, 2021
This concept is one that I’ve seen play out over and over again. An obvious example was Epic’s lab software. Everyone I talked to agreed that the Epic lab software was inferior to the best lab software on the market (maybe it still is). However, hospitals were willing to accept the inferior software from Epic so they had the integrated data experience and could work with just one company. The hard part for startups is you don’t have the bandwidth to do everything. You have to start with a point solution and then expand from there. Crossing that chasm is challenging but creates amazing defensibility and is very attractive to acquirers.
Love this view into the life of a startup entrepreneur. Often called a roller coaster.
My favorite idea here is that this journey can happen multiple times in a day. #LSI2021 pic.twitter.com/nAOTiuYNsF
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 12, 2021
Entrepreneurship is hard. I read recently that ideas are easy and execution is hard. I think this is why so many people think that they could be a startup entrepreneur. They have a great idea. However, you’ll likely only ever understand the above roller coaster if you’ve been on it. I also love that this slide puts words on the emotions that entrepreneurs feel.
Medtech 3.0 is a mix of technology, IoT, Connectivity, Data/AI/ML, and the ecosystem. #LSI2021
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 12, 2021
This is where we start getting into the keynote speaker’s views on what’s next. It’s also a nice cross over from the previous tweet when it comes to being able to provide a full solution. The unicorn companies are going to need to cross all of these things. It won’t be enough to just do the IoT or just do the connectivity or the data. A unicorn will need the full ecosystem solution.
Autonomous is still 10 years out. So, we’re focused on actionable information and semi-autonomous. #LSI2021
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 12, 2021
I love this perspective on how a health IT startup company should approach the over used word: AI. We’re not there yet when it comes to autonomous AI, but we are there with making information actionable and semi-autonomous (ie. make a piece of the solution autonomous).
The future of healthcare tracking: Plan -> Do -> Check -> Adjust #LSI2021
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 12, 2021
I loved this framework for where all digital health solutions are heading. If you haven’t put together this framework in your digital health company, you should consider doing so. The new model is going to require agility and a learning digital health solution.
