| What industry does your company represent? The ever-evolving world of Healthcare and Data Analytics, where we support health insurers/health plans, hospitals, physician groups, associations and state agencies who are responsible for managing program costs and improving outcomes or performance. We specialize in data dashboards, data-driven KPIs, on-demand analyst support resources, and healthcare analytics training.
What makes your company unique? Even though we are selling analytics services, our team is very approachable! We bring pragmatic perspectives to situations and develop innovative solutions to make data more useful and even – dare we say – fun to interact with. We meet our clients “where they are at” in terms of their data analytics journey.
Having a company founded and led by women is unusual in our sector. To learn more about our 2 co-founders’ unique story, you can read about why and watch a short 10 minute video about how VMA was founded: https://www.versatilemed.com/news/why
A key motto for us is “we build bridges” – between the health and tech worlds, and even between entities that haven’t always been on the friendliest of terms. In that theme, we truly enjoy being an active voice in our local community, and we bring that perspective to national conversations in data and healthcare. To us, building bridges also means being collaborative and sharing our knowledge. Our industry is one that tends towards competition over collaboration. We even work with other health technology and analytics vendors – people commonly ask us, “but aren’t they your competition?” We sincerely want to move our industry forward – especially one where the pie is this large – and we know that the only way to do that is to be more open-minded and embracing of a larger ecosystem where everyone brings their own core capabilities and niche expertise to the table. Everything that we do and say demonstrates that.
Describe where you see technology in year 2030. After seeing everything that happened so quickly in the first six months of 2020 alone, we could get REALLY far by 2030! Focusing just on healthcare, here are the key trends we are watching with bated breath:
– Artificial intelligence (AI) will be automating many more processes and fundamentally changing how people and humans work together. Already AI is bringing improvements to patient diagnosis, analysis of populations, prediction of health risks like pandemics etc. Some worry about loss of jobs, however we see the opportunity to upskill human roles and delegate the repetitious manual labor to machines that can be faster, more accurate, and not suffer from monotony boredom!
– Widespread use of virtual care – this will become the new normal. This broad category includes care delivered live by voice and video, plus digital health tools such as remote monitoring and chat bots. Fundamentally, we see a shift towards “virtual-first” as the door for initial triage and then the opportunity to see humans as needed.
– Data, data, data – you knew we would say that, right? Incredibly powerful computers will capture more data, crunch data better and faster. Tools like the ones we are developing will surface insights faster and more accurately.
– Increased robotics and improved health technology – e.g. disinfecting with ultraviolet light, performing or assisting with surgery, and other tasks that require precision, are difficult for a human to do, or are highly repetitious.
– 3D printing for all kinds of health care use cases – even reproducing human organs, medical tools etc. You may have heard that during this pandemic, shortages of equipment were alleviated by 3D printing personal protective equipment (PPE), supplies, and other resources. Check out https://www.nmcovid19.org/, an emergency supply collaborative we have been supporting through our volunteer work with NM Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Through a partnership with CNM, they have 3-D printed things like face shields bands, disposable shields, and other PPE.
How has the COVID-19 Pandemic changed the way you do business? For VMA, the impact of this pandemic has been neutral, if not slightly positive, from a business perspective. Since we provide data insights to hospitals, physician groups and health insurers, we had to pivot quickly to provide answers to questions about the impact of COVID-19. Clients began immediately redirecting our work to support their efforts in COVID-19 analysis, planning, and preparedness. From developing and analyzing new telehealth programs, to identification of at-risk patients, to “what-if” cost and demand modeling to assess potential impact, we have been keeping very busy.
In terms of staying safe while we work, VMA already had a digital and remote-enabled work environment. Transitioning to fully remote was not hard for us – we have continued uninterrupted and full steam ahead. It also helps that we have a physician on our team to provide us with guidance on safety and prevention if we need it!
Like many businesses, we have experienced an acceleration of innovation due to compressed timelines and market pressures. As our mission statement indicates, we like to lean into the future. So we have been happy to help our clients move faster into more digital and modern processes, both on the business and care delivery sides.
Where does your team stand: Red, Green or Christmas? The majority of our team votes Green. And make it HOT!
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Get in touch: info@versatilemed.com |
