It’s Time to Partner with Amazon, Google, and Apple: Update 3.0
Following the Investment Surge with Startups and Tech Giants
By partnering with digital companies, healthcare associations can grow revenue by leveraging brand, clinical guidance expertise, and access to member innovation skills. Corporate partnering can co-design new collaborative services, products, operational units, and business joint ventures. Platform revenue models can be shared based on licensed content, jointly developed intellectual property, or distribution deals.
This article updates the November 2020 article that covered the collaboration landscape for three big digital companies: Apple, Google, and Amazon. All three companies have agile market power, diverse talent, and creative ideas to dominate healthcare’s digital disruption for the foreseeable future. Here we will highlight the most striking recent first quarter 2021 market moves of these companies and the surge in start-up company investments that suggest some promising potential collaborations.
How is your association taking the lead in the innovation spaces of AI, telehealth, medical devices, mental health, women’s health, health IT, and health equity?
Big Tech Opportunites
For a start, consider the initiatives of the big tech companies in health care this past quarter.
Consider how the healthcare market drivers highlighted by CB INSIGHTS create opportunities for your collaboration agenda and platform business partnerships.
A growing focus on Medicare & Medicaid populations’ needs
Medicare and Medicaid recipients are becoming increasingly targeted patient populations for cost reductions. This has resulted in a growing interest in solutions tackling key gaps in care delivery such as social determinants of
health (SDOH) disparities and lack of access to innovative technology.Consumer-centric healthcare solutions gain more traction
Healthcare solutions that prioritize the consumer or patient experience are gaining more traction as they bring more accessibility, transparency, and personalization to the overall experience. From flexible patient payment plans to clinical exams done remotely, consumer-centric solutions are growing in importance.Data aggregation & analytics remain a key priority across stakeholders
Interoperability mandates are driving increased market activity in health data platforms, providing methods for payers and providers to comply with emerging data-sharing requirements. Going well beyond compliance, these solutions are now helping health systems push insights, with clinical and financial impact, to providers at the point of care.
Google and Health Equity
Research shows that roughly 7 in 10 people turn to the internet first when looking for health information. Associations have the opportunity to collaborate in new digital services that address the access needs of underserved communities and help guide them to the right resources and find the information they need. This interview with Dr. Ivor Horn may trigger new ideas on how your association can address the social determinants of health and related health inequity.
Amazon Care — A New Healthcare Service Model
Amazon is announcing that Amazon Care is available to serve other Washington-based companies. Additionally, beginning this summer, Amazon Care will expand its virtual care to companies. Amazon employees in all 50 states across the U.S. Finally, Amazon Care’s in-person service will expand to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and other cities in the coming months. Amazon Care will be offering millions of individuals and families immediate access to high-quality medical care and advice — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. How will your association work with Amazon Care?
Apple’s Platform to Streamline Health Data Access
Integrate Apple HealthKit with your provider and patient apps for iOS and watchOS to create a more seamless user experience. With ResearchKit and CareKit, you can develop an app that can drive health science through research at scale. Discover how your app could take your work further and join a global community that is transforming health through technology.
Nonprofit Sector Digital Health Spin-offs
Mayo Clinic spin-offs announced this spring would capitalize on advances in AI and remote telemetry. Anumana will develop and market algorithms for the early detection of disease. Lucem Health can collect device data and feed it into clinical workflows.
“The dramatically increased use of remote patient telemetry devices, coupled with the rapidly accelerating development of AI and machine learning algorithms, has the potential to revolutionize diagnostic medicine,” said Mayo Clinic Platform president Dr. John Halamka in a statement. “What’s happening in 2021 is we are seeing the emergence of sophisticated AI algorithms that can, in combination with novel data sources, result in breakthroughs in disease detection and wellness,” he added. “But that will require an assembly of technology, policy and patient engagement, combined with cultural change in order to make it happen.”
What is your association’s plan to engage in the cultural change to advance technology, policy, and patient engagement?
Health Innovation Funding of Startup Companies
A new wave of health tech adoption of virtual care, telemedicine, and remote patient monitoring is heralding the After-Covid era in global health. Is your association joining the era of digital innovation with growing investments in new services, programs, and initiatives to empower your members for success in this new era?
How to get started
It is hard to imagine a healthcare association without a potential connection to these three companies’ digital health strategies, their multiple business units, and the multitude of healthcare-related startups.
There is a wide range of innovation pathways for associations to escape the traditional corporate sponsorship model’s limitations. Digital transformation by Amazon, Google, and Apple invites associations to embrace collaborative value creation. Partnerships and collaborations with health care startups and nonprofit service sector entrepreneurs are also possible. Those relationships, in turn, offer the promise of non-dues revenues based on partnership business models.
The Association Ventures Innovation Model (AIM) points to six action steps to strengthen and advance digital practices and engaged ecosystems. Use this article to start your journey to
- Creating value at the core
- Measuring digital services impact
- Looking far and wide
- Embracing new opportunities
- Measuring the value of sharing data
- Choosing a partnering focus
Begin your innovation journey with the other resources in the Association Ventures Playbook and solution services from Association Ventures. These tools for facilitated ecosystem mapping, opportunity design sprints, and collaborative business models offer a viable pathway to advance your association’s role in the digital transformation of healthcare.
For information about virtual digital strategy workshops and design sprints, reach out to barrybarresi@associationventures.com.
Learn more about Association Ventures at www.associationventures.com
