HealthTech Hopes & Predictions for 2023 from Inflect & Our Portfolio Companies
by Lindsay Kriger
Lindsay Kriger, MPH (Director of Operations); Rick Newell, MD (CEO); Cat Sartin (Vituity Outpatient Medicine VP); Andrew Smith (President); Bobbie Kumar, MD (Director of Transformation); Lauren Sweeney (Head of Product); Helen Abad (Venture Associate); Peter Allen (Head of Growth); Josh Tamayo-Sarver, MD (VP of Innovation); Soujanya Bhumkar (Advisor)
2022 has been an incredibly exciting and rewarding year for all of us at Inflect, capped by our attendance at HLTH in Las Vegas last month. As we wind down during the holidays, we took some time to reflect on our hopes and predictions for healthtech in the coming year. Here are the highlights, starting with CEOs from some of our amazing portfolio companies:
Tina Beilison, CEO of Seven Starling: More partnerships, collaborations, and consolidation.
Garret Gleeson, CEO of Curve Health:
My 2023 prediction: continued improvements in predictive analytics (driven by machine learning and fed by remote monitoring) create superior outcomes for patients and better resource allocation for providers.
My 2023 hope: This accelerates the move to value-based care models that align incentives across the care spectrum, supporting and advancing care in lower cost settings and care-in-place for vulnerable populations.
Sam Jactel, CEO of Ayble Health:
I think 2023 will be the year of patient-centricity and clinical rigor:
Patients are often “CEOs” of their own conditions — in a siloed, opaque, often frustrating medical system, patients are forced to be resourceful, organized and be the connective tissue between the home and the clinic. Patient founders have superpowers to solve their own needs, and the needs of others. I’m predicting more of these unicorns in the health tech space.
As digital health tools flood the market, it’s going to be imperative to raise the bar on clinical rigor. I’d love to see more partnership between digital health companies and the clinical research ecosystem, running primary clinical studies and going through the peer-review system to validate claims and amplify the impact they can have on patients.
Nanea Reeves, CEO of TRIPP:
I suspect that 2023 will be a challenging year for all of us collectively as a global community, and we will need tools to support our well-being that are easily accessible and affordable. Digital therapeutics (or DTx) are a promising category to fill this need but the current wave of DTx companies have undervalued the importance of designing applications that drive ongoing engagement. This will become a big topic in the coming year following some difficult DTx go-to-market commercialization.
However, with AI rapidly evolving and the growing adoption of XR (AR/VR/MR) consumer devices, which will accelerate in 2023, we are going to see a tremendous amount of innovation in how to use technology for beneficial outcomes.
The winning teams that will have a big impact in DTx are those that have a healthy balance of direct to consumer experience, healthcare subject matter expertise, and data privacy/security experts who are not only focused on building great businesses but actually truly care about the people they are supporting.
Phil Wagner, CEO of Sparta Science:
At Sparta Science, we anticipate a surge in attention to balance as a central function of human movement as well as a key indicator of overall health. While we’ve seen technological innovations in balance training and fall prevention, better assessing and understanding balance at a population level, presenting opportunities far beyond elderly care.
Even the most basic balance tasks require input from multiple sensory systems, musculoskeletal responses, and brain/spinal cord coordination. Thanks to the combination of highly-sensitive, low-cost hardware and powerful machine learning technology, it will be possible to capture the complexity of a person’s balance response and provide meaningful characterizations that can inform not only fall risk but a number of other movement health conditions that impact people of all ages.
Turning now to healthtech hopes and predictions from our team at Inflect:
Helen Abad, Venture Associate
My 2023 prediction is that healthcare companies will focus even more on personalizing customer experiences and targeting specific patient populations that have previously been overlooked. Leaning into curating treatments for chronic conditions, underrepresented patient groups, and elderly populations will shape the future of how care is delivered.
My 2023 hope is that by integrating more personalized AI technologies within companies, real progress can be made and uncover even better care models.
Bart Emery, Venture Manager
Prediction: Retail health and pharmacy will begin to see a lot more traction on their push into primary care, and really drive consumer-friendly healthcare.
Hope: The coming wave of health system financial woes and consolidation will create opportunities for more forward-thinking inpatient and home care.
Andrew Smith, Inflect President
My hope for healthtech in 2023 is that we will have made significant progress in creating accessible, affordable, and efficient healthcare technology solutions that meet patients where they are.
Artificial intelligence will be increasingly utilized in healthcare settings to improve diagnosis and treatment accuracy, and predictive analytics will be used to anticipate and prevent health issues before they arise.
Furthermore, healthtech will become more personalized, allowing patients to access their own medical records, track their health data, and receive tailored advice from their providers.
Finally, I hope that healthtech will have made significant strides toward reducing healthcare inequality, making it easier for individuals of all backgrounds to access the care they need.
And for myself, I hope as an industry we continue to make strong progress with A.I./machine learning to support clinical documentation — and the overwhelming burning our frontline clinicians are experiencing due to documentation burden.
See you in 2023!
Happy New Year and best wishes,
Lindsay Kriger, Senior Director of Strategy at Inflect
