Health Ovate Boston – Danny Sands M.D, M.P.H

Society for participatory medicine was created in 2009, to really push this idea, this concept of participatory medicine. So if you look at healthcare today as it is commonly practiced, healthcare is more of a spectators sport. The patients are disengaged, they go in to see a doctor like me, and they say doctor I am sick! Fix me!
That’s s like a Car wash, it’s a Car Wash Model of Health Care where what happens is I am the car going through the car wash and getting health sprinkled on me. That model doesn’t work if we are going to create a healthcare system that achieves the Triple Aim or another Quadruple Aim.
• Improving the experience of the Healthcare
• Improving the quality of outcomes
• Keeping costs down.
We got to think differently about it. What we need to think about healthcare as a participatory sport, not a spectators sport. Healthcare should be a collaboration. So Doug if you are my patient, rather than thinking about healthcare as a service industry. You are my patient, you and I should be collaborating around your health, keeping you healthy, making you well when you are sick. There has to be a partnership. Because I can suggest things to you, I can tell you what’s going on with you, what you need to do but unless you are engaged in that you are asking questions, you are doing the plan that we agree on, together by the way then nothing is really going to happen.
A lot of that takes place out of the doctor’s office, you spend most of your life out of the doctor’s office so you need to do things that promote health and wellness in between this. This is what participatory healthcare is all about.
It’s about transparency, it’s about decision making, and it’s about thinking differently about healthcare. And that leads naturally into what I am doing to rest of my life
In addition to public speaking and variety of other things and working with the society I am a Primary Care Physician but that’s only part time. I am the Chief Medical Officer of two early stage companies and both of them have to do in some way with patient engagement.
Doug: I want to reinforce that you are an incredible physician and a leading expert and a sought out expert speaker in health, in fitness and in life and you are making a huge difference wherever you go. And I know you work with a couple of really cool companies like Conversa Health. Could you share what Conversa is doing? You figured out how to engage each person individually and that’s your secret sauce.
It’s really important. I think communication is a fundamental piece of it. Communication and Collaboration.
Kinergy Health is focussed on helping patients and both formal and informal caregivers be more engaged in their health. So it’s a platform for collaboration around the patient’s health. You think about the patient portal, many people have access to it now. Patient Portal is one healthcare institution and you’re connected to that institution and that’s it. You can’t invite other people into that conversation. That conversation that you have, the dialogue is between you and your doctor in that facility. With Kinergy, you, the patient, or if you are the caregiver for the patient YOU OWN THIS PLATFORM. You own this, sponsored by the healthcare system and you have now a place to aggregate in all your health information from all different sources and collaborate around your health, invite people into and so on…We also provide a Kinergy Care Navigator to help you manage your information and advocate for yourself. That’s Kinergy health
The other company is called Conversa Health. I am the Chief Medical Officer of that company. Our slogan is “HEALTH HAPPENS BETWEEN VISITS” We believe healthcare should too. And really that’s it.
The healthcare system that we have was created, the way we practice a century ago. And that that we had the epidemic of acute conditions. And we created a visit based system to deal with that epidemic of acute conditions.
Today we are in epidemic of Chronic Diseases. We need a different model for taking care of healthcare. So the visit based model doesn’t really work for this kind of longitudinal care. So we are advocating is highly tailored highly customized frequent light touches using technology in lieu of expensive visits. We have incredible technology behind it, we have lot of medical knowledge behind it. So it’s very exciting as well…

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