We recently sat down with Andy Chu to discuss how his team has so effectively incubated products that have scaled beyond the health system – the most recent example of which, Praia Health, raised a $20 million dollar series A in April.
Andy shared how his team, which sits outside of IT and operations, has the mandate to "identify whitespace" and build scalable solutions to healthcare's biggest challenges. By adopting a rigorous focus on understanding the problems faced by patients, clinicians and staff, they've launched 4 companies in just a few years, with several more in the pipeline.
Some of the most compelling insights from Andy:
- On the power of a standalone innovation team: "We're completely separate from the rest of the operations and our IT organization... That also gives us the flexibility to question how certain things and why certain things were done, and can look at the problem upside down, so to speak."
- Why he doesn't over-index on process: "For innovation we don't have that much process... It's a bit of a random walk... We have [a] general framework in terms of collecting the feedback, trying to identify the areas that we want to work in. And then after that is just a vetting process. It's a lot of dialogue, a lot of conversation."
- How an appetite for risk enables innovation: "I give a lot of credit to [the CEO] and the management team... wanting to push the envelope. There is a strong desire to invest in innovation, because we all know, you can't just cut... to a growth path."
These types of insights are rare to hear from a leader at the vanguard of healthcare transformation. Andy's passion, humility, and bias for action shine through in this conversation.
The full interview dives deeper into:
- How Andy's team chooses what to work on (and what to leave behind)
- The metrics he uses to gauge innovation success
- Providence's latest spinout focused on personalizing the digital patient experience
- How they're leveraging GPT-4 and LLMs in production to streamline clinician workflows
For anyone interested in the cutting edge of healthcare innovation, this is a must-listen conversation full of applicable insights and inspiration.
Catch the full episode here:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/29x6bEr6xWSqmgvjQgUgHu?si=67ce7dbf1f3a417e
https://podcasts.apple.com/th/podcast/product-in-healthtech/id1590043589