Mini-Essay: Concepts I’m Bullish and Bearish On (Healthcare Services)

Ideas/Categories I’m generally bullish on in healthcare services right now (Dec ‘21):

1. Consumer services and experiences (e.g., Ro)
2. Cash-pay startups, or under-the deductible startups (e.g., Sesame)
3. Cultural or community-specific (e.g., “__ for Asian-Americans”, or Folx for LGBTQ)
4. Aggregators of care navigation/experiences (e.g., Transcarent)
5. Players that help a health plan “go vertical”
6. PBM unbundling (e.g., GoodRx)
7. Risk-Adjustment solutions continuing in some cautious form (attribution/HRA/code capture)
8. Medicaid or ACA-specific solutions (designed around their lifestyle, where/how they get care or interact with healthcare system, e.g., half of Galileo Health, Circulo)
9. Gig-economy solutions (e.g., Catch)
10. At home: (A) Programmable care delivery (e.g., MedArrive), (B) Blood-draws/expedited testing (e.g., Axle, Sprinter Health), (C) Hospital at home (e.g., Contessa)
11. “Down market” care in general with NPs and PAs (e.g., Greater Good Health)
12. Back-end infrastructure companies (e.g., TruePill, Zus)
13. Credit-lines or BNPL solutions (e.g., Paytient, Payzen, Walnut, Peach Pay)
14. Solutions to make healthcare cheaper for Small and Medium-sized businesses (e.g., FireFly)
15. Rolling up/platforms for independent brokers across LOBs (e.g., Spark Advisors)

Ideas/Categories I’m generally bearish on in healthcare services right now (Dec ‘21):

1. Provider enablement point solutions (too saturated)
2. Crypto/Blockchain/Ledgers in healthcare (too early, maybe a handful of use cases right now)
3. Telemedicine point solutions for specific communities (low TAM, low differentiation)
4. Interoperability / data exchange plays (we’ve tried that, it ain’t happening)
5. Behavioral health point solutions (too saturated)
6. SDOH solutions with no clear care delivery impact or path-to-ROI (just buzzwords no action)
7. Transitioning Specialty into value-based care (will only start in very select specialties, slowly)
8. Digital Therapeutics in general (too early, not enough approval and/or market understanding)
9. Paying people for healthy actions (tried this for years it doesn’t really work)
10. Integrating Devices into people’s lives (technology has been around for years, low adoption)
11. Ideas that decrease Cancer or Heart revenue for Big Hospitals (they’ll fight it before adopting)
12. Data that helps health plans “get to know their members” (too saturated)

FYI, this is simply a copy and paste of content that I put on my Twitter account ( 👇). Check me out there @Rsiddhanti > would always value your feedback!