Bringing Outside Tech Expertise to Healthcare – Braid Health

One of the most common comments we get here at Healthcare IT Today is “Why Doesn’t [Insert Big Tech Company] get into healthcare and fix healthcare?”  That’s often followed by something about their favorite tech devices or application and how easy it is to use and how challenging many of the EHR and health IT systems are to use in comparison.

I’ve written previously about why “Your EMR Isn’t As Easy as iTunes” which explains why a healthcare company can’t just bring their skills to healthcare and why it’s unfair to compare simple consumer apps with complex enterprise applications like an EHR.   Healthcare is a complex beast and that’s proven itself out with things like the failed Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault to name just a few (Although, both companies seem to be doing better this time around).

While I think it’s far too simplistic to think that any of the big tech companies could enter healthcare and “fix it” just based on good usability and design, I do think healthcare could benefit from much of the tech expertise and approach these tech companies take in the consumer industry.  That’s why I was intrigued when I heard about a new company called Braid Health that’s just entering the market.

Braid Health’s co-founders come from Apple and Twitter and are bringing their unique experiences at these companies to try and work on some of healthcare’s most challenging problems.  While they’re currently only launched in radiology and urgent care, their work to connect patients to great information and to reduce the cognitive load of medical providers is a concept we can all get behind and can certainly expand to many more parts of healthcare.

In order to learn more about Braid Health’s background and what they’re working to do in healthcare, I sat down with Alessandro Sabatelli, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Braid Health.  In this interview, we learn about Braid Health’s background before getting into healthcare.  Alessandro shares the big vision for Braid Health and where they’re at today.  I also ask him why he thinks Braid Health will be successful in healthcare when so many tech startups have tried in healthcare and failed.  Plus, I ask Alessandro to share what things he learned at Apple that could help healthcare.

Thanks to Alessandro for giving us an intro to Braid Health and we look forward to seeing what he and his team can accomplish.  I love that they have a big vision for healthcare and aren’t focused on chasing the money available in our dysfunctional health system.  We’ll be watching to see how they continue to evolve and grow.

This article is part of the #HealthIT100in100

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About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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