Can 10 successful entrepreneurs come up with solutions to 10 of healthcare’s most “wicked” problems in 10 days?
That’s the question Denver’s Tom Higley started asking himself three years ago. Tom, a successful entrepreneur himself and tireless Colorado startup advocate, is the brainchild and chief organizer of an event, dubbed 10.10.10, happening right now in Denver that aims to learn what’s possible.
In a first of it’s kind event, 10 entrepreneurs have been brought together to create products and companies to solve 10 of health care’s wicked problems. Day 10 is today Thursday, Feb. 26th, where we’ll find out what things the CEOs will be working on in the months to come.
Think of it as an executive-level healthcare startup hackathon that lasts 10 days. If it works, it’s going to be taken on the road and into other industries such as food, water, energy and education. With 80% of outcomes linked to things such as nutrition and education, I suspect some of these future events may have an impact on health care as well!
To be sure, coming up with solutions to such problems on short order, in an area where even Apple is apparently struggling to innovate, may seem like a tall order to many on the front lines of digital health, but the expectations are appropriately muted. Higley will measure success by having at least a few solid, fundable companies in the next nine to 18 months.
Perhaps an even bigger story is the dedicated community of people are working to make Colorado a major player in digital health, with 10.10.10 as a showcase. The event and the entrepreneurs are supported by over 100 volunteers and as well as the Colorado Health Foundation, Kaiser, and many others. Bryan Sivak, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ chief technology officer and entrepreneur-in-residence, sent a video in support of the event that was played at the kickoff last week.
There’s also a distrinctly consumer-centric perspective on solutions here as well. Esther Dyson, VC Brad Feld and SomaLogic CEO Larry Gold discussed as much yesterday on a panel, challenging the CEOs to come up with products and business models related to health, not health care, and providing access to data for consumer. If someone’s a patient, it’s often too late for intervention, according to Dyson.
You might want to keep Colorado on your map if you are thinking of starting a digital health company. A new state-of-the-art digital health campus called Stride, set to open in the coming year, will focus on creating a hub of digital health companies. Several major players in health care are rumored to be setting up a presence (more on this in the months to come). Places like Stride, events like 10.10.10, and the dedicated community that supports them, along with success stories like iTriage, are starting to put Colorado on the digital health map.
A cornerstone to the environment I see growing is the willingness of pitch in and help. Local VC Brad Feld talks about that helpful ethos of the Boulder startup community in his book “Startup Communities,” and it seems to have caught on among the digital health people throughout the front range.
Each element of the 10.10.10 event has a “coopetition” aspect to it, even the problems. Individuals and organizations pitched in and submitted problems and the final list was selected based value, difficulty and market opportunity.
The event so far
The first public-facing event was the kickoff where the problems and entrepreneurs were announced. The wicked 10 problems will be familiar to many in involved in digital health and certainly reflect the new realities of non-Fee-for Service (nFFS), quality-based care, public health and a few oldies but goodies:
The 10 Wicked Health Problems are:
- Alzheimer’s
- Childhood Obesity
- Patient Engagement
- Antibiotic Resistance
- End of Life Care
- Pandemic Weapons and Bioterrorism
- Patient and Data Matching
- Health Guide Maps
- Health Data
- Patient Mobility and Independence
Depending on how you categorize, the wicked problems are pretty evenly divided between public health, patient-empowerment, health IT, and science-focused. Now matter how you organize them, they are big, wicked and broad. It will be interesting to see how the entrepreneurs hone them down to problems to areas that are manageable.
At the midway point event, February 20, the entrepreneurs seemed to be leaning toward some solutions, but no decisions had been made. We’ll have to find out on Thursday where things are headed, I’ll tweet-report back this Thursday, so follow #101010health to find out more.
I hope the midway panel offered some insight to where things are headed. There was an excellent panel with Kaiser’s Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis, SomaLogic (Proteomics company) CEO Larry Gold and Peter Sheahan of ChangeLabs. The dynamic was great, had some great one-liners and made a few things pretty clear. I hope the 10 entrepreneurs, who were sitting in the front row during the session, use some of these takeaways as a guide:
- New payment models are happening, we need to reallocate that money to behavior change.
- People will be in charge of their health more and more, people need the power to make better decisions.
- Longitudinal tracking of everything will happen, but how?
- We need to balance security and access of all this info.
- There’s still too much harm that can come from the lack of security on health data.
- We understand what drives sickness, but not what drives health. How do we move upstream in predicting (beyond stepping on a scale?).
- It’s the interaction, not the visit.
- Make the healthy choice the easy choice.
- Bricks and mortar care will change, but coexist in new ways with the digital.
- Many of the changes needed in our health care system are social, not rational.
Peter Sheahan related the story of a meeting where a fresh-faced twenty-something told the Joint Chiefs of the U.S. military that social media would help foment geopolitical unrest. Of course, they snickered and dismissed him out of hand. This was six months before the Arab Spring.
That story makes me hope that we have some of those kinds of thinkers at 10.10.10. I wonder who will be laughed at, but keeps on building, and is eventually proven right in health care? Will it be one of these?
Craig Misrach
Founder and CEO of medical device company Freedom Meditech.
Cheryl Kellond
Co-founder and CEO of Bia Sport, a sports watch company.
Joy Randels
Seasoned executive with a long string of successful companies and an IPO.
Monique Giggy
Monique has started and grown several companies, including Swing by Swing Golf.
Lizelle van Vuuren, Denver, Colorado
Founder and CEO of marketing company Effectively.
Kelly O’Neill Dwight, Denver, Colorado
Principal consultant of KMD Consulting Services.
Zackary Lewis
Founder of Liquid Compass, a radio streaming company.
Lincoln Powers, Billings, Montana
CEO and chief data architect of Rocky Mountain Technology Group.
Best wishes to all to fix some of these wicked problems! It won’t be easy, but we’re rooting for you! Looking forward to tonight to see where things are headed!
