2012 Self-Care Ventures Tsunami

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1881),Self-Reliance

All writing is communication. Creative writing is revelation. It is Self escaping into the Open.

E.B. White (1899-1985), The Elements of Style, 1974

December 31, 2011- It’s here at last – Goodbye 2011! Hello 2012!

What will be the big news in 2012? It will be venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and consumers escaping into the Open by supplying new services to self-reliant individual consumers.

Why?

Think about it. The U.S. is a consumer-based economy. There are 310 million consumers, versus 500 hospitals, 1500 or so health plans, perhaps 900,000 doctors, 5 million other health care profesionals, and maybe 10,000 healthcare supply chain companies.

Think some more. The Internet has converted consumers into self-reliant individuals looking for free information on health care at the best price and advising each other through social media how to best find and use that information.

Think again. Markets are gravitating from brick and mortar to online, from inside hospitals and doctors’ offices to outside sites, from corporate sites to individual sites, from institutional care to self-care, particularly care administrated, orchestrated, and applied in homes, by consumers themselves rather than health care professionals. The U.S. is decentralizing from group, authority, and institutional decision-making to individual decision-making on a massive scale.

Call it what you will - Health 2.0, Health 3.0, self-care, home-care, self-reliance, patient engagement, patient communication, consumer education, disruptive innovation, wellness movement, fitness frenzy, even ATM health care- it is here to stay. It will surely grow. Economic forces -lower costs, greater convenience, more transparent information, and better outcomes - are in the drivers seat.

These consumer-based revelations have not escaped the attention of venture–capitalists, who are in the business of capitalizing on massive consumer-based social and commercial trends – such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Skype, Kindle, and, of course, IPad, IPod, an IPhone, with “I” standing for either "I"nformation or "I"ndividuals.

That said, here are a few of my favorites.

• Instant Medical History – This clinical software allows patients to enter their demographics, chief complaints, symptons and history from their home computer or a laptop in the reception room before entering the exam room. Shortening the otherwise tedious history taking process.

• Emmi Solutions – The Chicago-based company preaches and practices “patient-engagement” by allowing patients to preview all aspects via videos of a procedure they are about to undergo or the consequences of a health problem they may have.

• Practice Fusion – This San Francisco EHR company has changed the EHR revenue model by having advertisers, not physicians. pay for installation, functioning through “Cloud” browsers rather than office-based systems, and meeting “meaningful use” CMS criteria, thus allowing physicians to have a “free” and “user-friendly” EHR.

• All those companies and start-ups who permit self-reliant consumers to test on their own for pregnancy, lipid levels, other blood content measurements, blood pressure fluctuations, weight gain or loss, and telemonitoring and audiovisual monitoring of patient appearances, vital signs, heart rhythms, unexpected complications, and other body functions.

Tweet: In 2012, Smart venture capitalists will support entrepreneurs and start-ups catering to and empowering health and disease-conscious consumers.