Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Substantial and Sustainable – 2 Words That Medtech Companies Should Get Used To

Episode Date: February 5, 2013

As the world of healthcare continues to change and evolve, hospitals and healthcare providers are facing a major dilemma. There will continue to be an increasing number of patients that need healthcare. But, the reimbursement for healthcare services will continue to decline. In other words, there will be more customers checking out, but less money...[read more]Related ArticlesSocial Media Best Practices for Marketing Medical DevicesAre Medical Device Models the Key to Building a Lean Medtech Startup?Can Nurep Solve the Inefficiency Problem in Medical Device Sales? 

Welcome to MedSider, where you can learn from a mix of experienced medical device and med tech experts. These proven mentors will show you how to master the med tech space on your own terms without going to school. Now, here's your host, Scott Nelson. As the world of health care continues to change and evolve, hospitals and health care providers are facing a major dilemma. There will continue to be an increasing number of patients that need health care, but the reimbursement for health care services will continue to decline. In other words, there will be more customers checking out, but less money coming through the cash register. Therefore, healthcare providers will be looking for solutions that are both substantial and sustainable.

Message to Medical Device Professionals. Do your products and solutions pass this S&S test? In this interview, Lars Thornting and Randall Rickner further explain the challenges that healthcare providers are facing and what type of solutions they are looking for. Lars is the VP of Marketing for Intraline while Randall is the VP of Advanced Analytics. Here are some of the points we're going to cover. What are the biggest challenges that healthcare providers are facing right now? Cost versus quality?

What's more important and can you avoid the trade-off? How does Intraline help health care providers control costs and improve the delivery of care? The impact of advanced analytics and intelligent care design on the delivery of care and cost containment. advice from Lars and Randall on how med tech companies can best part it with providers in the new era of healthcare. Of course, we'll cover even more interesting insights in this interview, but before we dig in, you need to listen to this very brief message from our sponsor. Opportunities to network, access to specialized groups, meaningful discussion and debate, sound interesting? Then you should check out the medical devices group on LinkedIn. It's the industry's only spam-free, curated form for intelligent conversations with medical devices.

thought leaders. Not only that, but it's the single largest medical group on all of LinkedIn. Medical device professionals worldwide are invited to join the Medical Devices Group to help build their personal and corporate brands. Check it out. MedicalDevicesgroup.net. Again, that's medical devices group.net. Okay, for you ambitious MedTech and Medical Devicedoers, here's your program. Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of Medsider. This is your host, Scott Nelson, and MedSider, for those of you listening for the first time, is the program where you can learn from proven med tech and medical device experts. And on today's program, we've got two guests, the first one being Lars Thorning, who's

the VP of Marketing and Public Affairs for Intraline. And then our second guest is Randall Rickner, who's a repeat performer, I guess for lack of a better description, and Randall is the executive VP of advanced analytics for Intraline. and that's a recent change on Randall's behalf, and we'll certainly discuss that point. So without further ado, welcome to call, Lars and Randall. Thank you. Thank you. All right, let's start off.

I'm going to give you both the opportunity to briefly introduce yourself as well as, Lars, you can cover, give us a brief introduction to Intraline, and then Randall, maybe you can speak to Neocure and then the recent integration of Intraline and Neocure. Sure. Sounds good. Go ahead, Lars. Yeah, so Scott, Interline was formed here very recently on December 31st of last year, so we were a very young company. Our company that has come together as various healthcare entrepreneurs across the healthcare spectrum that are all of us very engaged in trying to make conditions better for health care in general

and for hospitals particularly. So what you'll find on the team at Interlina, folks that including myself, if I can be so in discreet, have been making a mark in the healthcare industry very recently through the work we've done with Stryker's sustainability solutions formally as sent, the first reprocessing company in the United States that ended up having a major impact in the industry and still does. Saying goodbye to that challenge and taking on a new one. obvious to those of us that less striker sustainability solutions that we wanted to focus on another area in healthcare where there's a great need to look at how do we reduce inefficiencies

and create better opportunities for hospitals and healthcare providers in doing what they ought to be doing, namely delivering the best care possible to our patient population. We're going to get, I'm sure, more into this later on, but we honed in on major joint replacement as a key area and Incheline was sort of borne out of the thought that we could make an impact there. So Randall and others joined us and we formed Inchaline at the end of the year last year. In terms of my own background, other than having worked at establishing and building the first reprocessing, the first very successful and the biggest reprocessing company in industry, I've spent time as a pharma consultant in academia prior to that.

Randall, your background is a lot more impressive than that, so I need that. You just go in the space. Thank you, Lars. Well, yes, I started Neocure in 2006 from my previous role as Vice President of Boston Scientific. Our focus at Neocure was really to help new technologies and help technologies to understand the reimbursement and payment platform and opportunities and challenges in the United States looking at payment policy

and where we could maximize price for technologies, how to present the value argument most effectively. And within that role, we built a very strong data analytics capability based on hospital data, cost data, using a large number of survey data bases to actually really help our clients to understand, you know, provider economics and hospital economics and where and how our technology really made an impact. When interline executives approached us, it was a very interesting concept that they had seen our data

and we're very impressed by that and looking at how we could provide the analytics platform for this new company, which would be involved in analytics as well as intelligent care design and also a physician assistant component to that. It was appealing to me from our background to be able to apply our analytics in a new way and a service delivery model for hospitals

to really look at, the impact of how you could change the dynamic of care using our analytic solutions. So for us, it was a great opportunity to work with some seasoned professionals. And also looking at how the payment models are all changing, where the hospitals are really going to have to be equipped to make a lot of hard decisions, and we can provide a lot of that information to them. Gotcha. I love the idea that data and analytics.

focus because I think Lars, if I remember correctly, doing some of this research for this interview, I think you were quoted as saying consultants, I've got it in front of me here, consultants leave this big fat report and two weeks later, everything is back to normal. I thought that was a great quote because that's so, you know, I'm, I've never, you know, operate under a consultant, a consultant capacity, you know, within this space, but that, that quote rang true for me. And I would imagine, it's probably safe to say that using data and in analytics, helps you kind of bring life to some of the processes and systems you're recommending hospitals utilized, correct? Hey, Scott, we went, I want to jump in there real fast.

We spent a lot of time over the last year or so going out there and talking with hospitals, talking with providers, and asking what are some of the pain points that you have right now. We all know the challenges, and I'm sure we'll get back to that, Scott, But they all come back to us with the same kind of answer. And they're saying, we're fed up with consultants that come in here, and they have some fantastic ideas, some great concepts that we know are relevant to us. But the impact does not stay with us. And it's not substantial enough for us to make a real difference.

Hospitals are facing very real problems about the bottom line that looks increasingly red and the lack of ability to control all the things that goes into creating that bottom. line. So we have focused on from the beginning when designing this business to look at what can be a substantial and sustainable solution to hospitals. So those are keywords for us. And it's based on these conversations. We went on a tour, Scott, basically, and we listened to, so what are the key king points here? And Randall, you can pick this one up because I know you will. One issue for hospitals is the issue of big data, right? There's just, there's, there's two. much of it. There's a lot of it. There's a lot of data in the healthcare sector. The hospitals have

a lot of data, but they don't have a great way of utilizing it to make the types of decisions that they have to make today, which are almost entirely about how to recreate efficiencies within this double pinch of increasing patient numbers and reduced reimbursement. So that's what Dental has charged on right now with her team, how to solve the problem with big data. And on a backdrop, again, of hospitals having these. to meet challenges. And we want to make it real. We don't want to make it a fancy consulting deal with a nice bow on it.

We want to make it substantial and sustainable for hospitals. That's our ambition. Sure. That was the real beauty of this for me, was that essentially putting the analytics function to work, that you actually are a partner with your hospital over time to really look at the episode of care. We're ideally suited for that with our analytic capability.

to be able to look at the continuum of care from the community practice for the PCP to the referral to the base procedure to post-discharged care. As you know, all the payment frameworks are changing that are episodic in nature. The ACO kind of thing is looking at that overall payment construct and hospitals are going to be very challenged. They have a lot of data available to them, but being able to connect the dots, to be able to look at that continuum and to actually be able to assign credit to a change in an outcome that is related to a intervention, such as we are going to be doing in orthopedic delivery is something we can do with these three companies combined. And it's pretty exciting. So it's a tactical and practical application.

it's not just doing analysis of data. Sure, sure. Makes a ton of sense. And if you're listening to this, you're thinking, okay, this all sounds good, but how is it impacting me if I'm in the medical device space? And the reason I wanted to have you guys on is because, I mean, you're servicing hospitals, and we're certainly going to get into more of the challenges that you're seeing, you know, at the hospital level.

But if you're in medical devices anymore, you realize that, you realize that, you're, you know, it's an incredibly competitive space. Your margins are most likely shrinking. You really, really need to learn how to partner, learn how to partner with these hospitals, your customers, especially as more hospitals acquire physician practices. You better understand your customers what they're facing and how you can best, you know, help them and partner with them moving forward

other than just simply reducing price. So I'm excited to kind of cover that in a little bit more detail. But, but Lars, let's start out with some of the challenges, the problems that that you see hospitals are facing in today's environment. You touched on one of those in big data. But let's cover some of the other challenges and then also then talk a little bit about the unique service offerings that, you know, the intraline provides. So big data, do you, on that note, you already mentioned that challenge.

But in regards to big data, is it just simply too much information or is it how do we apply all of this information in order to help reduce costs and improve quality care? You know, I think, I think, Scott, that the issue of data pertains to how does the hospital answer to the challenges that they're faced with right now. Fundamentally, though, the wake-up call for hospitals and providers is that they're seeing these two developments that are putting them in a pinch. So we all know that reimbursement is going down, and the hospitals are experiencing this in individual treatment areas.

and they're seeing that they can just not keep going along doing the same things as they have been doing. Their systems are not built for it at the same time. From the other side comes increased enrollment in federal health care programs and increasing patient population in general. That's certainly the case in major joint replacement. And between these two things, more customers coming to the shop and less money coming in, from reimbursement sources to cover it is revealing, I think, to hospitals and providers

that their systems are not optimized for delivering these services in an efficient manner. And I'm not saying anything other than what the hospital would say themselves. So the real problem for them, and they'll provide great colors of that as well they did, they have been when we're talking with them about it, is that they're sort of siloed in the way that they look at how do we bring patients through these processes in an efficient and in high quality manner?

And there's no, there's a lack of transparency and there's a lack of control of that process. So what the hospitals are looking for to get to what you're asking about is how do we leverage information about what takes place? In other words, what devices are being used? How are we incurring costs? Where is it that quality is being impacted? that all that data, which exists in overabundance at the hospital, how do we organize and utilize that in an efficient manner, which is not very academic, by the way, Scott,

is just a matter of making sure that data is being used for the specific purpose of making decisions and not just sort of sitting there or being available without the purpose of optimizing existing processes. And that's, I think, in a short way, what the problem is is experienced by hospitals and also the role in data in terms of answering that challenge or solving that problem. Got it.

Does it make sense? No, it does. And I love your analogy of more customers coming to the shop, but a decreased amount of money coming into the cash register, I guess I'm kind of paraphrasing there a little bit. But that's a great analogy. Were you going to add something there, Randall? No, just that manufacturers are going to be really challenged. There's no question about it to differentiate.

you know, their product in this environment. And, you know, again, the one that can really show that it's going to make an impact somewhere on cost and quality, those are the ones that are going to win, as usual. So even in this model, I think the distinction that we have is the first, you know, the first assist that are actually going to be staffing the procedures. So that's going to be important to have that kind of opportunity, again, to show how the technology can work or not in an improved manner with the right people within the perioperative event, too.

So the combination of the two is going to be win-win. Got it. And when you look at those two components, cost and quality, and then using hopefully data and analytics to help to help learn, you know, create more efficiencies, I guess, and understand what's going on to help fix some of these problems. Is one, do you think, more important than the other, in terms of the view of the hospital, cost versus quality? That's a very good question. Again, because of the payment model now, that it's a risk-sharing model,

that there's going to be a greater emphasis on quality metrics and how those are captured and which ones are going to be driving the payment opportunities. And it's going to be a shared model between the provider, the payer, and the physician. So that dynamic is going to clearly be driven by quality outcomes. There's no question about that in my mind. But which quality metric is going to be

the most important in the orthopedic space and for those procedures and how, again, the products that are used during that procedure are going to be important as well as the follow-up and the other variables that all contribute to a quality patient outcome. So, Scott, let me supplement there a little bit. At sort of a different level here, you're putting it to the test here, Crosswood versus quality. I think the real situation for hospitals as well, for American healthcare in general is that we never want to be in a situation where we

sacrifice quality for the ability to treat the numbers of patients, right? So that's the challenge for health care is the challenge for hospitals. They don't want to stop admitting patients in the front door, and they also don't want to sacrifice quality. So how do we achieve both at the same time? How do we achieve volume and how do you sustain quality? It sounds like a trade-off, but the fact is neither the hospital nor a health care system in general to ever have to make that choice.

Sure. So that's where the key, so how do you avoid that trade-off? Do you avoid that trade-off by looking at where do you have inefficiencies in the delivery system? And is there a way on a global scale, given what Randall is talking about in terms of different new reimbursement practices as well as new hospital models, including ACOs and increasing decision-owned situations with hospitals, how do you accomplish that? right and it's so it's a political discussion it's a very real thing for the hospital

it's a very real thing for the surgeon but i also think it's a very real thing for all of us that are part of american health care we don't want to make that trade off so yeah so the injection point for us all to discuss is are there inefficiencies in the system and it's such how can we identify them and remedy them and then in front of a very practical note we've tried to be very practical about it in terms of designing the offering that intraline is coming out what Reynolds has already spoken to, you know, what, some of the components of our solution to that, to that, that catch-22, how that looks. Yeah.

No, I think, go ahead. I'm sorry. The, to summarize very briefly the intra-line model that we haven't really articulated yet, the first is the analytics platform. The second is what's called intelligent care design, which is a human factors engineering, really looking at how the patient moves through the system and capturing you know, sort of also some inefficiencies associated with that. The third, you know, element of this is the intraoperative first assist staff

that would be working with the hospital as well. And then, you know, the analytics platform sort of wraps around all this to capture those things along the way. But the intelligent care design, this is a, you know, looking at, you know, six things can sometimes be overused, but it's that same kind of process of really looking at, you know, efficiencies of movement of patients, again, through the system and where those are most easily impacted for change. Right. And I'd like, I'd like you to go into those three kind of categories that you just mentioned, the advanced analytics, intelligent care design, and the, kind of the

surgical first assistant, I think, is what you call. I want to get into that, but I love the idea that you brought, Lars, that you brought up, the tradeoff cost versus quality, because the bottom line is, in a sense, the entire, you know, American, everyone who considers, who calls themselves, you know, American citizen or lives the United States understands, most likely understands the fact that we've got a health care system that's broken. It's too, I mean, it's, everything costs way, way too much money. But at the, the same time if you have a family member that you know get sick or needs need some sort of surgery or some sort of procedure you don't want quality to be um to kind of take a take a

second role or second place next to next to cost at that particular hospital at that particular clinic so it's a great point and i love the fact that you brought that up and so and this is this provides a perfect transition into what you just mentioned randall and that if i'm a hospital if i'm sitting in front of, you know, if you're presenting to me at the hospital level, I understand, okay, we've got these issues, cost and quality. And we don't want to make the trade-off here at ABC Hospital. What do you suggest? And so help me, help the audience understand those three different service, those three different service lines that Intraline offers. And if you could provide an example of each of those, that'd be great.

So Scott, the most immediate impact that a hospital will see right now from intra-line services is what Randall mentioned before, namely our surgical first assist program or our intraoperative support program. Through this program, we offer the hospital the ability to take their surgical first assist off their payroll, take them off the cost sheet. we'll hire them on will train them we'll make them equipped to uh... perform better value uh... within the improper episode as rannel was illustrating before and i mean the backdrop from this and this is unfortunately not a very clean situation

there are tons of different types of practices among hospitals depending on state depending on what type of hospital in terms of how they're using surgical first assists but the bottom line is that the surgical first assist is the surgeon's right hand helper during the intraoperative episode where Clinical quality is insured as well as where procurement decisions are made, utilization decisions are made.

So by inserting intra-line surgical first assists, there are four different types of effects that the hospital can experience immediately out of the gate today, and that is number one, more consistent quality of the clinical support provided because of highly strained surgical first assist that come in and can deliver this quality to the same level every time. Number two is lower administration hassle and cost for the hospitals because they no longer higher, they no longer have those SSAs, those surgical first assist on staff. That is entirely our issue. Number three is increased throughput.

So we can actually document that using our surgical first assist reduces the time it takes to go through a surgery procedure in major joint. and that increased throughput addresses exactly what we're just talking about, namely increased number of patients. How can you handle that with only so many resources? And then finally, the fourth thing is more appropriate utilization decisions about implant type size disposables involved in the surgery and so forth. So those four things are the effects of utilizing intra-line surgical first assist,

and it's a very direct impact that our program will, offers. The advanced analytics and intelligent care to sign solutions that we're offering as well, as you will appreciate, Scott, this is a very new company, so we're still developing those resources, but what we know we can act to the surgical first assist model is the ability through analytics to have the hospitals better understand how and why they're using their resources so that they can go in and pinpoint. This is why we can create improvements. the intelligent care design model, as Randall was describing before, is essentially a matter of mapping out the intraoperative process at first,

but eventually the entire episode of care for major joints and later on other things, to look at how to we optimize the process in terms of human interactions, interactions between humans and to help care use of physical space and so forth. Got it. And so the surgical first assist, these are people in the operating room. Are they nurses, medical assistance, you know, physicians' assistants? Do they fall under a certain umbrella in terms of their licensure?

They typically certifies physician assistants. But they can have other educational and degree backgrounds as well. I mean, some of them are physicians themselves. But it's a well-known function. So in the interoperative space, you have the surgeon and you have the scrub tick, but you usually have the surgical first assist that plays a major role in assisting the surgeon clinically during the joint implant, but also in terms of everything else that goes into that process, such as utilization decisions

and so forth. Got it. Okay. And so from the hospital perspective, they're saying, okay, we've got existing staff on board already that's in the, you know, that's in the OR with our surgeons. doing these joint cases or helping with these joint cases. Why would they consider the intraline surgical first assist? Is it because the intraline surgical first assist?

It's kind of a hard word. That's kind of say that three times in a row. I'm not sure I'd be able to do that. Is it because the interline surgical first assists are so specialized and they understand, you know, intelligent care design, analytics, etc.? So again, Scott, unfortunately, it gets a little bit complicated to discuss what the situation is at hospitals right now,

because some hospitals use these, a lot others use them less frequently. For some hospitals, it's a matter of utilizing the surgeon's physician assistants that that surgeon is also using in clinic and taking them with them into the surgery space. So they're just not trained at the same level and utilized exclusively for the intraoperative space. So it's a less specialized type of function. So what we're trying to say is if you specialize this function, if you create the right level of education about things, then you get that higher and more consistent level of quality, and you get the ability for the hospital to make sure that there are no inefficiencies created in that space.

Okay, okay. Yeah, no, that does. So, for example, if a hospital didn't have, or maybe it was somewhat inconsistent in regards to whether or not they included surgical first assists in their joint cases currently, they could consider bringing on the intra-line team in order to help establish whether or not, you know, maybe there's things that their surgeons are doing within the case that could be improved upon in terms of quality, or maybe there's just different inefficiencies in the case that are leading to increased costs, that kind of thing? Am I going down the right path there?

You are, and some of these things we're still learning how to precisely deliver solutions on. What remains, though, Scott, is that the surgeon is the one that needs to make the decision in these situations. So this is not about reducing the ability of the surgeon to make the right clinical choice in any given situation. That needs to preside with the surgeon. The surgeon will first assist, though, why right now is a somewhat inconsistent player in that space, making consistent what that person can provide and also helping the surgeon, empowering the surgeon, if you will, And here's our decision making, we think will create some major improvements. Gotcha. Okay.

No, that makes sense. And then, Randall, you mentioned this earlier, and you did as well, the idea of intelligent care design and kind of tracking a patient through the system. Is there something common that you see where there's a lot of inefficiencies within the hospital level or within the health care system in terms of, that kind of that idea of care design? Is there something, I mean, do you see certain trends that a lot of, you know, where a lot of hospitals are missing the mark or a lot of, you know,

health systems are missing the mark? Well, I think it's, everyone recognizes, you know, the way to look at process improvement in some sense within the hospital environment. And we're, the fact that we're narrowing our focus on one therapeutic area and one sort category of patients moving through the system. It's going to clearly provide some obvious fixes in the system, I think, fairly rapidly. And the fact that we're partnering with the hospital, that they really, this is not, is again, going back to that old, in the beginning of the conversation about a consulting model,

this is not that we're really going to be a service partner with them within sharing the risk and being there with them over time. And I think Friday was at a meeting with hospital finance people, and they were talking about how this one coding type of requirement was required in over. They tracked it to 37 different times for a two-day hospital stay where this had to be replicated over and over again. It was completely and utterly redundant. It's a simple example.

but looking even about how the history of physical is conducted, how that patient is then efficiently moved to the OR suite, what, you know, based on their clinical parameters and this kind of thing, is there some way to make that more efficiently happen? And this is what these people are expert at that is part of our team. They've been doing this for many years in emergency rooms and looking at efficiencies there, and they are now applying all those skills to the orthopedic event in the hospital.

And combined with the physician assistants in our analytics function, we'll be able to talk to the patients on the patient level to get information on their satisfaction and outcomes, as well as efficiently moving them through and then having the physician assistant in the operative suite with the surgeon. So all that combined is a very attractive model to a hospital to look at how they can improve their services. Right, right. And it's easy to use the word, you know, partner with the hospital, but in a sense, and without knowing a ton about Intraline,

it really does seem like it's very much a partnership sort of role because it's not like you're presenting this, you know, this, you know, 30-some-odd page report on how to best, you know, reduce costs and improve quality. and then it's like, here you go, and you're off to another hospital to help them try to do the same thing. There's definitely a lot of service lines where you're actually playing an active role in seeing that throughput. Right. And that's the idea, Scott. No reports, no products, just solutions. Sure. Yep.

And Lars, you, I mean, with your experience with Stryker's sustainability solutions, I mean, you've in a sense been doing this for quite some time because you're, I mean, when did strike require Ascent? End of year 2009. Okay. And you started, you helped build Ascent, correct? I did not help personally build Ascent. I was part of the executive team for the last few years up to the acquisition by strike. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

But I guess, you know, my point being that you have a, you know, you have a, you know, you. have a history of kind of doing this with a scent and then Stryker and helping helping hospitals reduce costs. Our heritage, Scott, is exactly that, which is what I was trying to get at at the beginning. We're healthcare entrepreneurs that are looking at how can we make healthcare function better by challenging some of the assumptions that are out there. And I think that just bringing that back to the Mettech industry and others as well, this is a situation where nobody

that plays a role in health care can get away with business as usual. And I think the way that we're seeing ourselves are as enablers of that particular development. Randall and her team, as well as the folks that are involved in intelligence care to sign and the surgical first assist, folks are part of this, I think,

broader team now they're joining together. and saying, okay, how can we continue the track of really disrupting practices in health care and enabling hospitals and other key providers in terms of, you know, getting to the next step. It goes from METTech companies as well, and you know that it's got better than anybody, that they also cannot survive with business as usual. They also have to, just like the surgeons are today, the orthopedic surgeons are going to have, they're looking at themselves right now. They're asking, so how am I going to do this in the future?

hospitals are looking at, okay, we can't keep doing things like we have. How are we changing things? And med tech companies are faced with the same kind of challenge. Yep, yep, there's no doubt. And I keep sort of repeating this, but I love the idea that it's just, it's not what you guys are doing. It's not just kind of fluffy. I think you guys have your, well, you've got graduate work in your past. My point being that it's not fluffy MBA type of stuff.

It's actually very practical, very tactical sort of things that you're bringing in the table. So, no, that's great stuff. We've talked about a lot and kind of reaching towards a conclusion here. One, is there something that we haven't discussed that you'd like to cover? And then two, you know, looking two, three, four, five years into the future, what do you see this going as quality

becomes much more important in terms of hospitals getting paid and physicians getting paid what do you see over the course of the next several years in health care? Go ahead, Lars, go ahead. No, no, you go, Rachel.

No, I think to us this is an essential time for us to be playing at the table together with our hospital and payer and physician partners and the patients as well. I mean, so everybody play a part in what's going to happen next. Things are being, you know, by 2014, there's going to be a whole change in how, you know, required changes in data capture.

We're going to go through ICT10. There's all kinds of things that are going to be happening soon. And this is the time to finally make the right reforms. that we need for delivery of care based on the right principles, which is about quality care and sharing risk to obtain a positive patient outcome. And for me, this is very exciting. And I think we're starting with orthopedics, but I think it's very clear that we can replicate this model in other therapeutic areas, you know, starting with cardiology next to.

So there's, you know, everyone is going to have to play a part in thinking about how to deliver, care more efficiently. And this is the time. So, yeah, and go ahead, Lars. Well, it's hard to add to that, but Scott is that, you know, within the two to three-year timeframe, the Intraline is going to become a major player as an enabler in this transitioning process that both hospitals and surgeons are going to have to go through. And I suspect that as net tech companies and group purchasing organizations and others also start

taking the steps towards real reform, we're all going to be talking about how to enhance efficiencies and how to focus more appropriately on the quality of care as it happens while it's being delivered, that will become a vehicle for that discourse. going forward and a big part of the solution. Right. Yeah, there's no doubt that you're sort of, you're at the, you know, intro line is, what it appears is at kind of the beginning of this wave here. And it really, I mean, it really comes to a point when you hear, you know,

like Omar, the CEO of Medtronic, Omar Ishrak. I mean, he seems very, very vocal about Medtronic's take on partnering with, you know, with payers, for example, on medical device development, for example. I mean, that could be an idea worth exploring as well. But I love the fact that you're so focused on not only just increasing efficiencies and reducing costs, but also helping to improve the quality of care as well. So let's go ahead and leave, I mean, if you have nothing else to add, we'll go ahead and leave it at that.

But if, for those listening that want to learn more about Intraline and what you folks bring in the table, where would you direct them? They should go to our website. www.Infeline.com. Gotcha. That's I-N-T-R-A-L-I-G-N.com. Correct? Yes, correct. Got it.

And this is kind of a side note. But for those listening that want to, you two have incredibly impressive backgrounds. You've been involved in healthcare for such a long time. But for those listening that wanted maybe just get a better idea of, you know, because most of my audience listening is, you know, are people, you know, actively involved in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, medical the vice world. But for those listening that want to get a better idea, maybe a little sampling of want to learn more about health care, about, you know, like you mentioned, and, you know, intelligent care design, the idea of, you know, where a patient goes from beginning to end,

that kind of thing. Is there, are there any resources that either of you would recommend? Oh, geez. Specifically for intelligent care design, Scott? Well, just anything in general, you know, that, you know, for those listening that, and the reason I ask that question is, you know, 10 plus years ago when I first got into the device space, you know, resources or even even just learning more about service offerings that, you know, a company like Intraline offers, that would have been extremely helpful to be, you know, as, you know, as a, you know, as a sales and marketing role within a medical device company, just learn more about what a hospital goes through and, and what, you know, that, what, you know, that, what, you know, that, what, you know, that, what. what the patient life cycle looks like within a healthcare system, that kind of thing. So I'm not sure if anything comes to mind, but I just thought I'd throw that question out. So, Scott, I think the reason why we're at a disadvantage here is that the pieces that we have put together to form this particular solution are at the forefront of what is being done in healthcare.

So there are very few documented resource banks out there that can inform anybody specifically about combined humans. factor and Six Sigma process development processes. It's, we're trying to look at a sector that is dissatisfied with solutions that they have been served up. And in terms of a resource bank, that's when a resource bank will show you, right, those things that have been provided for health care in the past.

And so that's why we're a little bit at a disadvantage. I can encourage anybody listening, though, to look at when you're finding resources that's speaking. about process improvement as well as utilization of analytics and support in the operating room, keep asking the same question. Are you getting substantial

and sustainable results from this? In other words, stealing your words, Scott, is there any flux in this? Right? Yeah. And it says your sources based on that.

Got it. And I have to say, I'm going to give a really, really walkish answer. First, I think health fair is still sort of that bellwether of what everyone relies on in terms of a monthly publication or whatever that keeps you, you know, one step above

of what the people that are managing the purse strings read every day and rely on. The other is HFMA is also very good, you know, which is a health care financing management association. It gives you the trends and issues associated with hospital management. But then the last is the New York Times and, you know, the Wall Street Journal. It's just, you know, just reading and pulling it all together and constantly thinking about where things are moving. I mean, that's what it is.

And, you know, those are the places I rely on all the time. And what was the first one you mentioned, Randall? Health affairs? Health affairs. Health affairs. Oh, health affairs. Got it. I thought you said health fairs.

I got it. Got it. Got it. Cool. No, that's good. That's good stuff. And Lars, to your point, I mean, it speaks to the idea that Intraline and you guys are, like I said before, kind of on the front side of this wave because the fact that there isn't really a whole lot of data. Maybe that's an idea for you guys to have like an exam, you know, a resource bank of case studies as Interline grows. Yeah. You know, down the road. I imagine that you'd have some pretty remarkable case studies to put together. But let's go ahead and end it there. I can't thank you enough for coming on.

And for those listening, they didn't catch it the first time. Intraline.com, I-N-T-R-A-L-I-G-N.com. You can go learn more about this young company that's doing some interesting things in the world of health care. Lars and Randall, thanks again for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Scott. And I'll have you hold on the line there.

But that's it for now, folks. And again, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, uh, remember that you can catch all of these medsider interviews on iTunes as well or stitch your radio. Um, just do a search for medsider and those will, uh, those two options will come up. So anyway, thanks, uh, thanks so much for, uh, for your listening attention until the next episode of medsider. Everyone, take care.