Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Art Papier, CEO of VisualDx (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What level of adoption does this represent? You have a lot of hospitals, clinics, and individual doctors using your software. What level of penetration do you have in your total available market? This gives me an indication of the status of this technology adoption right now in the market.

Art Papier: We are at 5% of the global market. It’s early in the cycle because most healthcare systems have focused on business analytics. In the US, it’s all about charge capture and making money in a fee-per-service system.

We are making a long-term bet on improving decisions in the exam room and at home. These improved decisions sometimes don’t align with deeper service medicine. We have been doing this for a while, but we are now seeing a lot of acceleration because of Telemedicine and also equity.

Three medical schools, which previously said they had no money, contacted us in the last three weeks and decided to get a license with us. 

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to switch gears and ask you for open problems from where you sit in healthcare IT. Could you point us to some open problems and white spaces that new entrepreneurs could solve?

Art Papier: If you are not meeting a need, then you don’t have a business. You have to meet a need. Put aside the term healthcare IT and let’s just ask what the needs in healthcare and healthcare delivery are. A huge need that we don’t address is psychiatry, psychology, and mental health issues.

In all societies, there is a stigma around mental illness. I think COVID has accelerated global anxiety. People have been separated from their support system. When you think about the drivers of the use of medicine you step back and look at those social determinants of health.

There is a lot of societal work that we need to do globally around poverty, bias, and all the things that cause people to have inadequate care. Whether you are rich or poor, mental illness is an equal opportunity employer. There are plenty of fabulously wealthy people that are miserable and there are plenty of poor people with mental illness as well.

It’s a huge problem and I don’t know exactly how healthcare IT addresses it. There is some evidence that people interacting with computers regarding emotional issues feel secure because they see the computer as non-judgmental. There have been studies that show that people will open up and interact better with a software in terms of their mental health. I don’t know if that white space is for healthcare IT, but I know that this is a fundamental issue that we need to address around the world. 

Sramana Mitra: I enjoyed listening to you very much. Thank you for your time. 

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Art Papier, CEO of VisualDx
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