Delivering Personalized Care for Chronic Health Conditions: Live from SXSW 2023 with Lee Shapiro

·28 min·1 clip

At Livongo, a glucometer linked to the cloud let the team intervene before blood sugar went off track.

1. The Real Chemistry Podcast episode centers on Lee Shapiro and personalized care for chronic health conditions, recorded live from South by Southwest 2023 in Austin, Texas. 2. Aaron Strout, Real Chemistry’s Chief Marketing Officer and host, interviews Lee Shapiro, the co-founder and managing partner of Seven Wire Ventures, who has also worked with Glenn Tolman at Allscripts and Livongo. 3. The episode asks what healthcare looks like when technology, consumer experience, and measurable outcomes are used to improve care for people, not just patients. 4. Lee says his healthcare work began close to 30 years ago with investing alongside Glenn Tolman in businesses that used technology to address broken business processes. 5. He names early ventures including a precursor to Instacart called Shopping at Home, work for charities managing donors, and a travel company sold to American Express Travel. 6. Lee says healthcare kept pulling him back because the industry had so much broken process that it could “last us a lifetime.” 7. He describes Seven Wire Ventures as focused on a thin slice of healthcare needs and on building “better informed and connected health consumers.” 8. Lee says the firm does not invest in medical devices or life sciences, and instead backs technology-enabled services used by individuals to help manage health. 9. He gives three criteria for a great Seven Wire company: a strong consumer experience, objective improvement in health outcomes, and a hard return on investment. 10. Lee says that ROI must show up in outcomes such as fewer emergency room visits, fewer unnecessary doctor visits, and better medication adherence. 11. At the South by Southwest panel, Lee says he felt “a lot of hope” after hearing about Walgreens and Homeward serving underserved urban and rural areas. 12. He points to communities where people drive hours for care and says bringing care to where and when it is needed can help close disparities. 13. Lee adds that health should be treated like police protection and fire protection, because “you’re not healthy if your neighbor’s not healthy.” 14. On Allscripts, Lee says the original goal was to improve health by delivering medications at the time people saw their doctor. 15. He says about 20% of prescriptions are never picked up, and that one out of every five people not following doctor’s orders is a “scary thought.” 16. Lee says doctors asked for practical tools, which led the team from a medication cabinet idea to a handheld computer, the HP Jornada, and eventually to a stealth EMR. 17. He says Allscripts went public in 1999, rode the dot-com boom, and then fell from around $16 a share to about $1.97. 18. On Livongo, Lee says Glenn’s son Sam’s type 1 diabetes made the team see how hard chronic disease management is, from bad test strips to pharmacy trips and long office visits. 19. He says the team wanted to move glucometer data to the cloud, intervene earlier, and use a “coaching angel” to help people stay in range and avoid emergencies. 20. The conversation stays conversational and unscripted, with rapid-fire closing questions about South by Southwest, Joe Andres, unlimited wishes, and the Beatles’ White Album.

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