Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself?

I am a native New Yorker but living in Florida where I have been an entrepreneur for 20 years. Prior to starting HelixVM in May 2021, I owned and operated a small urgent care network.

After getting my MBA from the Ross School, I worked in management consulting and did some buy side investing and acquisitions at GE Capital. In 2000, I joined a fintech start-up called Traiana which became a Sequoia Capital portfolio company but left after 3 years to do the entrepreneur thing.

On the side, I am Married with three kids who occupy time and take my money.

Q: What are some of the challenges you see in digital health?

A. The hardest part of digital health implementation is getting tech, policies and processes working together to make people more efficient. I see so much cool technology that in a vacuum, sounds great but does very little in terms of impact for the patient or the care givers. To address this challenge, I started HelixVM, while a novel software platform, really starts with bringing these three pieces together to speed up patient care while also making it profitable for the medical provider to give the care. AI, patient-centric care, increased patient access and EMR are all the rage, but have we really done anything yet to deliver on a fraction of the promise? Delivering on that promise requires aligning care policies to business policies as well as technology and processes humans can work with.

Q. What are the opportunities you see in digital health?

A. For HelixVM, the biggest opportunity is delivering what we promise: Faster care to patients for the simplest of needs while allowing doctors to be able to do so quickly and not bogging down in much of the “prep work” that dominates the patient encounter. From 15 minutes to 3 minutes, that is our reduction in time invested for provider with patients. This allows doctors even with a poor payer demographic to profitably do the meat and potatoes medicine that patients need. By other estimates over 400MM patient encounters with providers are simple and of low acuity yet they tie up massive resources best spent on the more complex and sicker patients. HelixVM intends to solve that problem.

Q: What is your advice for anyone looking into doing digital health?

A. My advice to anyone getting into digital health is understand the economics and work environment of the caregivers. By doing so, you start to understand how your technology can solve big problems. For example, data and AI are amazing. When focused on the patient deliverable and the physician having to produce it, we pare down the data to focus it. Providers are swimming in so much data and any technology that simply puts more on their plate won’t work well. Healthcare providers, as LICENSED gatekeepers to care access have a vital say in how attractive any digital solution is for patients, public health, and payers.

Q: What is your 6-year plan?

A. To Go Public. We are growing as fast as we can. We tapped a vein in the marketplace and think we are well ahead of the competition in practical terms – technology aligned with policy, process, and people.