Dive Brief:
- Outcome Health has tapped Nandini Ramani to be chief engineering officer. She previously served as vice president of engineering at Twitter.
- Ramani will be responsible for scaling and strengthening the firm’s technology platform and customized tablets for improving how patients engage with providers.
- “Excellence in engineering is foundational to our ability to scale across consultation rooms around the world as we further our mission of activating better health decisions to improve patient outcomes,” Outcome Health President Shradha Agarwal said in a press release announcing the hire.
Dive Insight:
At Outcome, Ramani will be carving out a new position. The digital health startup raised $500 million in May during its first funding round, bringing its valuation to $5 billion. Its touch screens and tablets are marketed to doctors’ waiting rooms, offices and treatment centers.
At the time of the funding round, Outcome said it would use the financing to boost its share of partnerships from 20% of U.S. providers to 70% by 2020. The large investment and quality of investors, which included Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund, CapitalG, underscore the interest in patient-centric solutions to improve patient engagement and patient experience.
As digital technologies continue to advance, more companies are pivoting from direct-to-consumer sales to the clinical provider space. Opportunities abound in population health, data analytics, remote monitoring and more. According to a 2016 American Medical Association survey, 85% of physicians associated digital tools with better patient care. However, physician distrust around digital solutions has slowed adoption of digital products.
To scale up in the provider space, tech companies need to demonstrate clinical efficacy, usability, workflow integration and economic value, Alex Ding, a diagnostic and interventional radiologist based in the San Francisco Bay area, told Healthcare Dive recently.
“Seamless clinical workflow integration is critical to the long-term success of a technology,” he said in an interview. “This is often the hardest piece for a new technology company to realize, understand and implement.”
Ramani’s expertise includes hardware and software, as well as international expansion — all of which will be important in helping Outcome Health scale up its business.