Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

Bruce Doeg is Co-Chair of Baker Donelson‘s Privacy and Technology Center of Excellence where he focuses his practice on technology and in particular digital health. He represents tech companies, health systems, medical device, and other companies that purchase tech, as well as private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms that invest in health tech. Doeg is also Vice Chair of the Launch Tennessee Board of Directors.

He attended the recent ViVE Conference in Nashville where Doeg had a chance to look at the numerous tech offerings, listen to the array of impressive speakers, and mostly, talk to the many participants in the health tech ecosystem. He came away with these conclusions that he was willing to share with our readers.

1. Healthcare runs on technology and people. Technology moves extremely fast. Healthcare organizations tend to move extremely slowly. We are witnessing an amazing collision of opportunity and reality.
2. The landscape is crowded, noisy, and complicated. There were 8,000+ attendees at ViVE this year. Exhibitors packed the floor of the Music City Convention Center, showcasing a dazzling array of technologies, while experts, consultants, accountants, lawyers, and a vast array of service providers all vied for attention. For four straight days, six stages were packed with back-to-back discussions and insights from a “who’s who” in the industry. You needed an AI program just to navigate the list of topics. Everyone professed to have the answer or the key insight. Somewhere in this cacophony were solutions that could significantly improve health care. How can you cut through the noise? Every organization needs a strategy and a plan to execute.
3. The key is to listen to the providers. Provider acceptance remains the key to adoption and use of most health technology. They are the choke point. They are the reality check. But they are also overwhelmed by the choices (e.g., there are over 9,500 companies offering Gen AI solutions), have limited budgets and bandwidth, significant federal and state regulatory hurdles and are operating with legacy equipment.
4. The providers were very direct about what they need and want. Providers continue to implore vendors to listen and to own a particular problem that is high on their priority list rather than develop technology solutions in search of a problem to solve. Providers want high-impact, low-cost solutions. They also want partners who will still be around next year.
5. Providers are super concerned with the burnout of their people. The hope is that tech can help. The providers loved AI as a scribe, which gives doctors back time and allows them to spend more time focusing on the patient. For that reason, providers were also excited about ambient technology, which captures and summarizes conversations in a room. Cleveland Clinic tested 5 different vendors before settling on one solution. Providers are concerned with political change and uncertainty with regulators and regulations. In the words of one speaker, “All roads lead through CMS.” What happens at CMS (not to mention ASTP, FDA and DOJ) matters.
6. AI was everywhere. While there is hope, there was less confidence that AI is ready for care delivery at scale yet. When visualizing the future, there continues to be a lot of excitement about technology (such as wearables) that could allow for earlier health warnings and more immediate action. There was also excitement about the potential of data visualization and AI that improves real-time financial management. And, somewhere down the road, providers know that they will be deploying agentic AI solutions in providing healthcare.
7. While many brilliant and helpful technologies are coming online, no tech vendor has all the solutions. Providers have to deal with a cluster of vendors that often number in the 100s or even 1,000s. This means operational issues, data and cyber issues, liability questions, risk allocation and additional headaches for the providers who have to monitor the whole ecosystem of vendors. Providers would love a single point of contact. This creates a huge advantage for the bigger incumbent tech vendors, who can take some of that burden off the providers. As a result, most of the players in health tech are supporting other players in health tech, rather than dealing with providers and patients directly. This is important when considering investment and suggests a lot of opportunity for M&A and consolidation.
8. There are lots of evolving business models. Home health and rural health got a lot of airtime and attention. There were also a lot of unexpected players like AARP (including a category known as Age Tech) and Best Buy (supporting home health solutions).
9. Cybersecurity remained a dominant theme and cyber vendors occupied much of the exhibit space. A speaker from the FBI noted that most threats come from groups or nation-states outside of the U.S. Cyber criminals seek ransom for denial of service and use stolen health data to submit false insurance claims. The complex network of vendors (discussed above) is the weak link, with the majority of cyber incidents resulting from a  breach outside of the provider. The mention of the Change Healthcare breach still brought collective shivers to the room. Yet, the reality is that innovation comes with risk. There was a lot of discussion on how best to balance cyber protection and innovation.
10. Interestingly, there was surprisingly little discussion of payment and reimbursement. It felt like folks were waiting to see what was changing with the new administration. There is much hope for outcome-based billing, but also a lot of discussion as to how to measure the success of elements like AI and other technology that prevent health issues (rather than treating them in a measurable office visit).
11. Many speakers noted that “healthcare is a uniquely human experience.” Yet, there were very few presentations from the patient perspective. One speaker noted that 60 percent of patients are terrified of AI and stressed the importance of keeping “the human in the loop.” Others noted the patient challenges in managing the many technologies and the need to present data in a way that is understandable and actionable.
12. The investor meeting spaces were packed. Somewhere at ViVE was the next multi-billion-dollar company. The challenge is cutting through the noise and complexity. There are a lot of issues that PE and VC firms are grappling with as they make health tech investment decisions. Besides the efficacy of the technology and the capability of the management team, investors also need to weigh the challenges of selling to overwhelmed providers, the likelihood of adoption by doctors and staff, cyber risks, AI risks, uncertain payment (and other political) risks, the evolving regulatory and liability environments, increasing competition, and ever-changing business models. It is no wonder that the many investor cocktail receptions were also packed.
13. After four days, I was both exhausted and excited. This is what change looks like. It is messy. Potential crashes against reality. There will be winners and losers. The energy is intense. The need is great. The landscape is complex. The future is bright.

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