The Role of Medtech/Digital Health in Addressing Health Access Challenges for Underserved Healthcare Settings Worldwide

Executive Summary

Through day-to-day interactions with our Fund I portfolio, we have come to find that most of our companies regard their MedTech/Digital Health solutions as broadly applicable to Underserved Populations/Healthcare Settings, regardless of geography.FN1 We use the occasion of this White Paper to explain our thesis that Underserved Healthcare Settings can in fact be found worldwide. To make this case, we provide a surprising case study: Underserved Healthcare Settings and Populations in the US. Although the US has some of the most advanced healthcare facilities, services, products, clinicians, and other healthcare personnel of any country in the world, there remain important pockets of Underserved Americans and Healthcare Settings. US Underserved Healthcare Settings (and the Underserved Populations that reside in these Settings) are the principal focus of our Report.

As readers begin to digest details in this White Paper, it is our hope that they will grow to understand that Underserved US Healthcare Settings have categories of health access, quality, and outcome challenges that share similarities with LMIC settings as well (although LMIC challenges typically manifest with greater severity and create significantly greater deprivation). We draw out these access, quality, and outcome challenges in our case study, primarily to make the point that common access challenges may be assisted by common MedTech/Digital Health solutions – innovations we began to invest in with Fund I, and will continue to advance with Fund II.

Here’s how this Report proceeds to explain our ongoing Fund I/Fund II thesis:

1. In reliance on “Key Terms/Concepts,” Section II provides:

• in Section A, a brief introduction and overview of US Underserved Populations and Settings;
• in Section B, a broad overview of rural geographies, their demographic trends, and Health Disparities;
• in Section C, a similar form of summary for Underserved urban settings (principally inner cities, characterized by greater poverty and often minority residents as well);
• and then finally, in Section D, a discussion of how Health Disparities translate for certain subpopulations (i.e., black, disabled, military veterans, and Native American populations).FN2

2. Building off Section II’s discussion of US Underserved Populations and Healthcare Settings, in Section III, we describe the range of principal healthcare access challenges affecting rural and poor urban settings in America. These Underserved Settings suffer a wide array of access challenges and related unmet needs. The downstream access challenges we discuss in Section III, fall into three categories:

• Healthcare infrastructural deficits and challenges. For example:

a. healthcare personnel shortages (including access challenges with respect to primary care physicians; specialist physicians; nurses and nursing support services; and behavioral health professionals); and

b. challenges relating to healthcare facilities (e.g., access challenges with respect to family medicine clinics/practices; hospital care; testing sites; and pharmacies);

• Population-centered challenges. For example:

c. quality of care challenges;

d. affordability challenges (e.g., for healthcare and medications); and

e. health literacy, language barriers, and cultural impediments;

• And finally, deficits in Facilitating Technologies (including facilitating products and services). For example:

f. challenges relating to government insurance (applicable to most Underserved Populations in the US); and

g. digital access challenges.

As we have sought to do with the 50+ White Papers we have prepared to date on LMIC access challenges, all of these US-based access challenges are discussed with evidence-based, population-specific detail.

3. Section IV brings home one of the themes advanced by our White Paper: the surprising similarity between broad categories of health access challenges in LMICs and US Underserved Healthcare Settings.

4. Finally, having established the broad commonalities of health access challenges between LMICs and Underserved US Populations and Healthcare Settings (Section II, III, and IV), in Sections V and VI, we discuss types of MedTech/eHealth solutions that we have identified – using NCD management as examples – that would help address common access challenges in LMICs and other Underserved Populations and Healthcare Settings around the world, including in the US.

Please contact us at c.haynes@teamfundhealth.org if you are interested in procuring this book.

Footnotes

FN1 All capitalized terms are defined in the Key Terms/Concepts introduction to this Report.

FN2 Health Disparities among Underserved Populations are important to understand for full context of what is meant to be Underserved by America’s healthcare systems. However, our Fund investments focus on Underserved Settings, with the understanding that populations residing in these Settings benefit from our portfolio solutions to reduce their healthcare access challenges.