The bustling, buzzing health technology incubator MATTER in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart has a vibe quite different from a typical physician’s exam room—and that’s the point.
MATTER gives entrepreneurs interested in health tech a supportive space and community to nurture their ideas. MATTER members benefit from mentorship, networking and shared resources as they develop the next generation of health tech—advancements like evidence-based digital health interventions, software that automates physician practices’ daily tasks and mobile solutions for integrated care planning.
Recognizing the importance of harnessing new health solutions, the AMA partnered with MATTER to give physicians and entrepreneurs a two-way pipeline. With the AMA Interaction Studio at MATTER, physicians can connect directly with the innovators behind tomorrow’s health tech, and entrepreneurs can tap the minds of people who care for patients every day.
Physician input sparks inspiring conversation
Most recently, the AMA’s Council on Medical Education went to MATTER to meet with a few entrepreneurs and hear about the future of health tech.
Carol Berkowitz, MD, council member and executive vice chair of the department of pediatrics at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center, said the visit was “eye-opening” for her.
“It was an opportunity to get a view into the entrepreneurial approach to improving the quality of health care delivery,” Dr. Berkowitz said. “Interacting with MATTER provides an excellent opportunity for the AMA to remain on the forefront of new and creative approaches to improve the quality of care.”
Council members offered their expertise to Carrie Mendoza, MD, an emergency physician who developed a platform that allows emergency room patients and physicians to communicate by text message. Her tool allows emergency physicians to quickly text patients waiting in emergency rooms with updates on lab results or X-rays or just to let them know that a physician is on the way.
“Who doesn’t wonder why things are taking so long?” Dr. Berkowitz said of the platform.
“It’s a patient satisfier,” Dr. Mendoza said. “And the residents I work with, it’s second nature for them. They’re digital natives.”
She’s currently using the tech at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago and said she hopes to one day make it easy for physicians to achieve continuing medical education credit by using her tool. Council members weighed in on the tool and asked questions that Dr. Mendoza can consider for future iterations—for example, can patients text physicians, or is it one-way? Currently, patients can respond, but Dr. Mendoza said they rarely do.
The conversations were “informative and inspiring, and should be continued,” said Jacqueline Bello, MD, council member and director of neuroradiology at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Keeping physicians central to these discussions is satisfying from two very different perspectives—preserving our autonomy in influencing the technology that will define how we deliver the best care, and enjoying the excitement of discovering and developing the unknown. This is a great opportunity to map the course and enjoy the ride.”
Mapping the course together
“Physician and medical student input in new health technologies is key to maintaining physician, and ultimately patient, satisfaction” said Beth Griffiths, a council member and fourth-year medical student at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. Griffiths points to physicians’ current frustrations with electronic medical records as an example of what happens when physicians aren’t part of the health tech development process.
“I hope we can now start to see better use of health technologies with the consultation of physicians,” she said. “I hope that the AMA’s involvement with MATTER allows for this two-way communication between health tech companies and physicians.”
“At the end of the day, health care gets delivered from a physician to a patient,” said Jonathan Weiss, MD, a health care entrepreneur and operator. Dr. Weiss’ company, HealthEngine, is a MATTER partner. “Everything else should be a support structure. Leaving the prime decision-maker, the trusted choice partner of the patient, out of anything dealing with medical care… it’s like leaving a chef out of the design of the menu.”
This thinking reflects the AMA’s pushes in other areas, such as its Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative. By sponsoring 11 innovative projects with partner medical schools, the AMA is helping develop new educational models that can eventually be adapted by other schools, triggering wide-scale change in how tomorrow’s physicians are taught.
This means schools will adopt creative solutions focused on teamwork, policy, cost and patient safety to reflect how physicians will care for patients in the future. It means they will train students to adapt to rapid changes in technology, in dissemination of information and data and in personalized care delivery. And it means that partnerships like the one with MATTER can help propel these changes.
“In the sphere of medical education, AMA’s transformative initiative is fueled by original thinking and palpable energy, similar to what ‘matters’ at MATTER,” said Dr. Bello.
It’s also the basis of the AMA’s work in Professional Satisfaction and Practice Sustainability, an AMA initiative that is helping physicians successfully navigate the current—and future—health care environment by promoting sustainable practices that can result in improved health outcomes for patients and greater professional satisfaction for physicians.
Read more about how physicians are taking the lead in health tech at AMA Wire®.
