Portfolio News

Hopes are high for Amazon’s entry into health care – as long as they don’t ‘pull a Facebook’

Amazon is entering the healthcare business. While there is great opportunity for success as it becomes among the first tech giant to enter the industry, it also means Amazon must tread cautiously. Success or failure could hinge on how the company chooses to manage patient data. If done correctly, Amazon may be able to reinvent the drug supply chain and provide more transparency within the health-care system, said panelists at CNBC’s “Healthy Returns” conference. Amazon’s plans to enter healthcare are already having an effect, as the industry...

Partners HealthCare Expands Use of Kyruus Technology Across Its Network to Enhance Patient Access

Partners HealthCare has expanded its use of the Kyruus ProviderMatch™ suite of patient access solutions. Kyruus, a McKesson Ventures portfolio company, is a leading provider of enterprise software solutions that enable hospitals and health systems to optimize the patient experience across all channels of patient access. Partners is implementing ProviderMatch for Access Centers to enable a consistent patient experience across entry points. Over the coming months, the health system will deploy the enterprise patient access initiative. It will enable the Kyruus access center solution in many of...

Providers don high-tech specs to cut screen time, boost patient interaction

At Dignity Health, dozens of physicians are donning Google Glass as part of their new daily routines. Dignity has adopted the technology through Augmedix’s remote scribe service, saving physicians up to 15 hours per week. That translates to about one to two-and-a-half hours per day. “Physicans have an incredibly high documentation and administration overload. You feel a bit like you’re in a sausage factory,” says Pelu Tran, who is the co-founder and chief customer officer and president of Augmedix. “The problem Augmedix seeks to solve is...

Aledade, Horizon BCBS J.J., Form Value-Based Care Partnership

Accountable care organization (ACO) company Aledade, Inc. and health insurer Horizon Healthcare Services Inc. just announced a new value-based care collaboration. The partnership’s goal is to deliver coordinated care to more than 20,000 commercially-insured and Medicare Advantage patients, the ultimate object being to lower costs while also improving quality of care. Last month, Aledade, a Maryland-based company, announced that it would be creating a new ACO based in New Jersey under a physician-led model. The new partnership with Horizon represents Aledade’s first commercial contract in the state,...

Silence is golden: This sales team measures success by how much they *don’t* talk

SHYFT Analytics is a software-as-a-service company dedicated to helping salespeople thrive in bio and life science industries. It provides ongoing training and education for clients and blends industry and company-specific data with demographics to deliver market insights to inform client decisions around drug launches, healthcare services, and more. Part of its secret to success, and its charm, is that the sales team refuses to talk their clients’ ears off! Unlike many in the pharma sales industry, members of the SHYFT team take a listen-first approach. In...