Finding the Needle in a Haystack
As a physician, it likely won’t (or shouldn’t!) surprise you to hear that my first and foremost focus has, and always will be, on the patient. Whether it be as a practicing physician where I saw patients daily, to numerous opportunities working in both healthcare and computing with consulting firms and technology companies – the patient comes first.
That, along with the admiration and respect I have for my new co-workers, is why I’m thrilled to join BaseHealth, serving as Chief Medical Officer for the company behind a truly predictive, evidence-based and data-driven population health management solution.
We’re going to change the way the world thinks about population health management.
Why BaseHealth? I’ll tell you my story. I was approached by an industry friend a few months ago, who was working with a new company with potential to have an impact in healthcare and technology. They wanted to speak with me. So, we set up a call – several actually – for me to learn more about the company, what they were offering and the executive leadership team.
I was immediately intrigued by the technology, the aggregation of this huge wealth of data – leveraging 23 million peer reviewed scientific publications and data for thousands of risk factors, including medical, environmental, behavioral and genomics – and how it pulled that data together in a way that makes it actionable to physicians at the point of care.
The reality is, we have a lot of data today, but most of it isn’t being used. So BaseHealth is unique in that it capitalizes on the wealth of scientific data that already exists and applies it at the individual level.
Beyond the technology, another thing that really impresses me is the leadership at BaseHealth. As the saying goes, the whole is only as good as the sum of its parts. Jason Pyle, the Chief Executive Officer at BaseHealth, is a medical doctor and holds a PhD in Neuroscience, Molecular and Cellular Physiology, so what could he really want with me? My voice and perspective, and that of the rest of his team. He’s not just interested but is passionate about the success of BaseHealth and wants to learn, listen and gain perspective from his team – a team who all shares the same ultimate goal of improving patient care to the point where real lives can be saved and precious healthcare dollars preserved.
This is an attractive quality for any organization. Furthermore, BaseHealth isn’t afraid to change course as needed – founded in genomics research – and now realizing the opportunity to solve the population health management puzzle. They’re agile, and move quick – now working toward stopping likely medical conditions before they start
Take the videotape format war between Betamax and VHS, for example. One was executed properly, and one was soon forgotten. Success in any organization requires the right innovation and the right team in place to execute on those innovations. BaseHealth has both.
When I started on this digital health path more than 30 years ago, I knew I couldn’t practice clinical medicine and computing simultaneously. It just wasn’t sustainable. But I still have a huge passion to impact and bring positive change to clinical health.
For me, BaseHealth is an opportunity to return to the medicine I signed up for when I went to medical school, and now, my ability to impact patients is so much greater because I’ve extended my capability with technology.
And with that, I begin my new journey. I hope you are all as excited about this opportunity as I am and I look forward to working with many of you in my new role. Thanks for reading.
This post previously appeared on Medium/@Basehealth
