Health Solutions to Better Patient Lives

Can you talk a little bit about your roles and responsibilities and your journey as a thought leader in the healthcare industry?

I started a company while studying for my under graduation and working on products in the mobility space. Even though that company didn’t work out, the experience gave me insights into building and starting a business, raising capital, recruiting teams, and doing everything required as a founder or entrepreneur.

After that, I joined an investment fund in Boston and spent 10 years as an early-stage investor, both within healthcare and other sectors, where I worked with founders and helped them grow their businesses. I have now been at Valia Ventures for the last five and a half years, where I am the principal.

How has the landscape evolved in the healthcare sector in terms of the trends impacting the industry?

The biggest change that has happened over the past 5 to 10 years is the emergence of digital health solutions. Many digital solutions have come to the forefront of serving patients, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the pandemic accelerating their growth and patient acceptance of remote care, early-stage companies used software to interact with patients. Due to this, one significant evolution of digital health solutions was the companies powering those solutions because of their effectiveness in treating patients.

What challenges have the healthcare market faced during the evolution of digital health solutions, and how are you addressing them?

The biggest challenge is getting enough early patient data to prove the efficacy of digital solutions. Although payers are willing to bring solutions to the market and deliver them to patients, the product needs to get off the ground with the initial set of data that proves the efficiency of the technology.

For instance, we were speaking to a founder in the neurology space, building a solution for patients struggling with migraines and chronic headaches. The biggest challenge she is facing is to get enough cohorts to prove that it works and show the insurance payors how the product works.

In these cases, founders have to find creative ways to get their first cohorts of patients on board to be able to deliver results. Scaling a solution involves a lot in terms of sales and marketing, and requires relationship building with large payers and provider groups. Therefore, after crossing that initial hurdle of getting the solution to the market and patients using it, the overall standard of care will improve.

What are some strategies that you used to supervise any recent project or initiative you have been a part of?

The healthcare sector is about a quarter of all our investments, which is a meaningful portion of our portfolio. We have recently made an investment in a company called Enter Health, which is building a solution in the revenue cycle management space and making it more efficient for providers to get paid.

Enter health builds its solution on three layers; insurance, providers, and payers. Insurance requires technology to build and interact with the insurance company and review claims efficiently. With its solution, Enter Health tries to make the whole process more efficient by proving that providers can get paid more efficiently, lowering the overall cost to accept the payment. Today, the company is working with providers, mostly on the West Coast, and selling their solutions in both small and large clinics.

Where do you envision the industry moving forward in terms of future medical transformations?

Today, we have some companies that are focused on things like managing diabetes and heart disease. With many more companies going after different parts of oncology and neurology, there are going to be many companies providing specialized and dedicated solutions to different patient groups.

Another area where we are going to see rapid growth is in the number of companies using software like AI and machine learning as a way to help with drug development. For example, there are many large pharmaceutical companies spending more money and recruiting talent to make it more efficient to get drugs into the market. By leveraging AI to build models, companies can evaluate patient data much faster than humans.

Another trend to focus on is the number of diseases we can solve and the drugs that can enter the market through the use of the new platforms. As an investor, it is really exciting to see a drug get into the market efficiently and to the patient’s hands faster.

Do you have any advice for your peers looking to venture into the healthcare arena?

One of the things that excite me about working with founders is that, at the end of the day, the companies will be able to grow and serve their patients efficiently. There are a lot of opportunities to make people’s lives better, so there are a lot of solutions and products an early-stage investor can invest in.

Healthcare is one of those areas where if the company succeeds in a breakthrough, the biggest metric in terms of success is patients served and lives impacted. For anyone starting a company within the healthcare sector, an ample market opportunity is where there are a lot of problems to solve. Through this, we can improve people’s lives and the overall standard of care.