A Letter from Camp: What We Learned at the 2024 Vive Collective Summit
by Hillary Frank, Chief Platform Officer
The s’mores were gourmet, the tents refined and the connections made were incredibly meaningful. The Vive Collective 2024 Summit held on Governors Island in New York City created some very happy glampers.
Governors Island was the perfect location for our 3rd annual summit. With spectacular views of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, we plugged into NYC’s incredible digital health ecosystem. It’s a nice metaphor for what our annual Summits are all about. They’re a chance to step away from the day-to-day hustle and take a broader view of things as a collective digital health community.
Our highly curated, bespoke summits bring leaders across the digital health ecosystem together for insightful conversations on hot topics within the industry. The Summit supports Vive's goal of delivering value to our portfolios and ecosystem through genuine connections and also distinguishes Vive for its culture of intentional relationship building.
As with any campout, there were a lot of stories told: some encouraging, some challenging, but all valuable and insightful about the opportunities ahead in digital health innovation. Here are some takeaways from the workshops:
2024 Market Conditions
Fewer and smaller deals – not really a new theme by 2024. Key takeaways regarding 2024 market conditions included:
The tightening of the VC belt that started in 2022 is expected to persist this year due to a tighter market, rising healthcare costs, cautious investors, and a focus on clear ROI (4 to 1).
Health systems have slim margins and no budgets for multimillion-dollar deals.
“Unlabeled” rounds, or extensions from previous investors, accounted for half the deals in Q1 2024.
Delivering on the Promise of Hybrid Care
For all the complaining about long waits and years-old magazines in the waiting rooms, it turns out patients would still rather see their clinicians in person than online. Telehealth experienced a surge during Covid-19 but the buzz around telehealth has cooled. Some striking points that jumped out included:
Primary care telehealth may not self-sustain at scale, and it's crucial to balance virtual care with in-person care.
Hybrid care models, like those used by Oshi Health and Handspring Health, could be the future.
It’s important to straddle the fee-for-service and value-based care models. Right now, it can’t be one or the other.
Helping Employers Control Costs
Several eye-opening points from this workshop include:
Employers are grappling with the rising cost of health insurance premiums, exacerbated by new developments in healthcare such as GLP-1 agonists and gene therapy. Despite raising premiums and reducing benefits packages, the situation is reaching a breaking point.
Employers and health plans face the challenge of paying for expensive new therapies and medications, such as gene therapies, which can cost millions of dollars annually.
Employers are implementing Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements (ICHRAs) to help employees buy their own healthcare plans.
Deploying AI within the Healthcare Ecosystem, Lessons Learned
AI is revolutionizing healthcare in various ways, both intentional and unforeseen. Its integration has been largely without patient input, leading to concerns about its potential. Panelists suggested that:
Patients need to trust AI for its full potential to scale.
The industry needs specific health AI governance or increased tech governance to address liability, safety, and efficacy.
Over the next 12 months, AI is predicted to make operational leaps, change the makeup of engineering teams, and potentially increase or decrease provider burnout depending on the allocation of extra time for patient care.
Fireside Chat: NYC Innovation Efforts
Innovation in government institutions is crucial for the country's public health sector. Divya Pathak and Mamta Parakh, who have the daunting task of bringing innovation to the enormous New York City public health system, shared these key challenges:
Building a shared language for cross-disciplinary expertise
Overcoming reduced project speed
Limited state funding
Scaling the workforce
Public-private partnerships could be the key, as governments have the data startups need and startups have the innovation and tech governments need.
Conclusion
Our Summit attendees returned home with an even broader perspective and connections to some of the smartest and most innovative people from every corner of the healthcare ecosystem. It’s through intentional, authentic experiences like these Summits that we build and sustain a strong entrepreneurial community that will transform healthcare for the good of everyone.
Check out more from our Summit below:
Interested in participating in the Vive Collective Summit? Email Hillary Frank at Hillary@vivecollective.com