As the healthcare industry continues its transformation from the costly pay-as-you-go, fee-for-service model to paying for those services that actually make you better, all eyes are on health technologists. The transformation to “value-based care” requires a seismic shift of all market forces happening simultaneously and requiring a new level of interoperability, connectivity, scalability and usability.
These are complex technical engineering problems to solve, but solving them starts with building a strong engineering and data science team with the right mix of skills, experience and tenacity. Then, giving this dynamic team the resources, vision and clarity to create technological solutions to enable value-based care.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Built In about what we are building here at Signify Health, and how we are assembling the technology team essential to making it happen. Some may be surprised to learn that one of my biggest challenges as Chief Technology Officer is explaining the concept of “value-based care” to engineers, data scientists, developers, coders and other technologists, especially those coming to us from e-commerce, banking, consumer services and other industries.
Indeed, the shift to value-based care continues to accelerate and disrupt the ways in which we pay for and deliver care. But beyond organizing payments to align with quality, value-based care is about allowing people to get healthier, faster — and importantly, to stay healthy. It is fundamental to Signify Health’s mission to empower people to live more healthy, happy days at home. To deliver on that mission, we need to be able to access and use data to help people do more in and around the home to manage their health.
The transformative potential of our technology
Our biggest challenge in the coming year is also our biggest opportunity: How do we connect broad sets of rich healthcare data to power value-based care and drive intelligent decision-making while complying with evolving regulations? Healthcare data is complex, as many of Silicon Valley’s tech behemoths have come to know well. Capturing, making sense of, and using disparate, complex data sets within the parameters of applicable laws is truly difficult, especially for companies unfamiliar with the nuances of healthcare data.
At Signify Health, we’re able to tackle healthcare’s data challenges from a unique vantage point. Not only do we have permission to access and use large amounts of data in a compliant manner, but we also have a powerful platform that allows us to scale the technologies we’ve built and bought. Our tech chassis creates value-based care solutions by connecting people, organizations and resources. It enables health plans, hospitals and health systems, government and private sector payers, and a person’s extended clinical and social care team to work together in a coordinated and compliant way. Community partners, for example, use Signify Health products to capture social determinants of health and better understand the social-clinical environment of patients across the country. Our technology brings that data back into the healthcare system, helping to close the gaps in health equity by connecting individuals directly to the resources and providers they need, when they are needed.
These are the kinds of real-world problems our technology engineers help solve every day. They’re working in an environment where experimentation is expected and investment in technology R&D is guaranteed. As we continue to grow in 2022, our teams have the opportunity to apply state-of-the-art technologies in new ways at a company that has the reach and stability to innovate at scale — with the goal of improving the lives of millions across the U.S.
Josh Builder is Chief Technology Officer at Signify Health.