EP262: The Ease of Doing Business, With Brian Van Winkle and Rishab Shah From Johns Hopkins Medicine and Working With NODE.Health

In this episode, Stacey Richter talks with Brian Van Winkle and Rishab Shah from Johns Hopkins Medicine's Sibley Innovation Hub about the ease of doing business with health systems, and their work with NODE.Health.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

✅ Why the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business model inspired a health care equivalent

✅ Why health systems that are easy to work with attract the best entrepreneurs and start-ups

✅ The seven success factors an organization needs to improve its ease of doing business

✅ Why provider organizations can't be great at inventing everything themselves

✅ What it takes for health systems to become great aggregators of outside innovation

WHY THIS MATTERS

Brian Van Winkle and Rishab Shah argue that health systems face the same dynamic the World Bank identified among countries: organizations that are easy to do business with attract the talent and innovation that make everyone around them better off. Their Ease of Doing Business Initiative, built under NODE.Health with participation from a dozen or more leading health systems, ranks organizations across seven categories — from customer support and governance to data security and industry perception — to help hospitals see where friction is holding back the outside innovation they need.

=== LINKS ===

🔗 Show Notes with all mentioned links: Episode Page

🔗 Healthcare Industry Acronyms and Terms

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00:00 Introduction.

03:46 Focusing on "outside-in" innovation.

04:09 The downside to hospitals and health systems not being easy to work with.

05:17 "You have to acknowledge that we're in a crisis state."—Brian

06:56 "Are we putting ourselves at a disadvantage by not … being easy to interface with?"—Rishab

08:25 Why hospitals might not be so easy to work with right now.

09:11 The correlation between a partnership strategy and health outcomes and metrics that matter.

09:42 The gap between health care players' workload and collaboration.

12:04 "Who is putting the focus on the requirements?"—Rishab

12:44 What the Ease of Doing Business Initiative is.

14:56 The opportunity for entrepreneurs to be involved in this process.

16:07 Ecosystem-based work groups.

17:22 "What box do you exist in?"—Brian

18:29 The seven success factors an organization needs to be good at to improve their ease of business.

18:53 Customer support and governance.

19:02 Contracting and legal.

19:11 Patient safety and clinical research.

19:21 Integration and technology.

19:27 Data security and availability.

19:32 Commercialization support.

19:39 Industry perceptions.

21:04 How health care systems view their own ease of doing business.

25:20 The intent of the Ease of Doing Business Initiative.

28:39 Outside innovation vs comprehensive innovation strategies.