HITLAB Team • January 18, 2024
This week’s “In the Spotlight” features Helene Rutledge, President and COO of BirthVue as well as Co-Founder and Advisor, Mend Labs, a digital healthcare company combining clinical nutrition with doctor-developed orthopedic care plans. Helene is a serial Founder, C-Suite innovator, and change agent as well as an award-winning product developer and subject matter expert in Innovation.
With an extensive career in the pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare industries, Helene has a proven track record of leading innovation, growth, and sustainability across diverse and global teams and organizations. She is passionate about creating and delivering science-based solutions that improve the quality of life for people and the planet.
At Mend Labs, she created the Upgraid by Mend digital program for orthopedic surgery and successfully closed Series-A financing, based on this application and future adjacencies. Prior to Mend, Helene co-founded Upgraid, a preventative nutrition company that merged with Mend. There, she formulated science-based products and conceived the concept of combining clinical nutrition with digital health care plans. Previously, one of her favorite roles was leading Global Open Innovation at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, where she was first introduced to Digital Health as the GSK liaison to MIT Media Labs.
Helene has completed classes in Digital Healthcare at Columbia Business School and earned an Executive MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Chemistry from Manhattan College, where she has returned as an adjunct professor and to coach teams of entrepreneurs.
Helene has been a Breakthrough One Global Fellow for 6 months now. We recently had a chat with her about her role in the digital health eco-system and insight on the industry and where it is heading.
Q. What do you see as the biggest challenge(s) for digital health implementation?
A. Challenge # 1. “Who pays?” The biggest challenge is creating a business case that identifies who pays for the solution and is seen to fairly meet the needs of all the stakeholders.
Challenge #2.” Why should I change?” “This challenge is around resistance to change: implementation strategy needs to show ‘what’s in it for them’ to show the value and find change agents to advocate for adoption.”
Challenge 3.. “Prove to me it works.” “Defining what success looks like is critical to designing KPIs to assess the implementation. Documenting the results leads to improved trust and ability to optimize for continuous improvement.”
Q. What are the biggest opportunities in digital health?
A. “Telemedicine offers improved quality of life for nurses and other HC professionals with lower cost, decentralized care. Increased agency for patients with access and visibility to their data/records; understanding of personal risk factors to guide behavior change for a preventative lifestyle. “
“Big data and AI offer the potential for predictive analytics from population health trends to extrapolate to individuals. Data support to pay for prevention through Value Based Healthcare.”
Q. What advice do you have for anyone looking to get into digital health?
A. #1 “Keep learning, the field is changing rapidly.
#2. “Don’t oversimplify – the devil is in the details – there are many areas that are deceptively simple on the surface but actually unbelievably complex and full of exceptions. Insurance reimbursement and Electronic Healthcare records are two of the watch out areas.”
#3 “Leverage communities like HITLAB for expertise and best practices.”
Q. What is your 5-year plan?
A. “I am working with BirthVue as we scale and I plan to continue advising start-ups and participating in communities like CancerX, DiMe and HITLAB. I also plan to add to my knowledge in innovation and new technologies, present at conferences, create content and mentor college teams.”
Check out her interview from November on our Women’s Health Tech Wednesday series:
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