To register for the October health tech executive event please contact Alice Turinas
Location map for where to park:
Parking map (with path to Roundtable building location)
Strategic Counsel for Cloud Based Technology Companies & Expansion
To register for the October health tech executive event please contact Alice Turinas
Location map for where to park:
Parking map (with path to Roundtable building location)
A recent report from Deloitte, described by The Wall Street Journal, predicts mergers and acquisitions will accelerate in 2017, following an uptick in Q4 2016. Among principal reasons are acquisition of technology and convergence across healthcare, life sciences and pharma.
The report covers a 2016 year-end survey of 1,000 corporate executives and private equity investors and ties an interest in acquiring technology assets to industry consolidation. This has been the experience of one of our clients, acquired for its technology in November in the highly fragmented digital health industry.
Assuming a convergence in healthcare, life sciences and pharma and anticipated regulatory change, each identified in the report as a factor, owners of independent digital health companies may see increased opportunities to exit.
Other technology focused businesses may also benefit from more opportunities.
Has the time finally come for the Internet of Things to significantly impact health care? At long last, it seems to be so.
The first factor that has helped make widespread IOT adoption more of a reality is technological advances. Increased broadband access, speed, and wireless spectrum make it possible to transfer the enormous amount of data produced by continuous monitoring. Decreased cost and miniaturization of sensors allows manufacturers to make usable and affordable products. Better video resolution and computer processing have improved the quality and value of data collected and of course, widespread digital adoption has made broad adoption realistic.
In additional to technological advances, changes in payment structures and incentives within the healthcare system have created a system that favors telemedicine and the IOT going forward. Now that physicians can be reimbursed for remote treatments there is less reason to drag a patient into the office. In so many instances, remote monitoring will work just as well (or even better), save time and resources, and be more convenient for the patient. An increasing focus on reimbursement for results also incentivizes healthcare practitioners to invest in some of the remote record gathering and treatment methods that might not have been cost effective in the past.
What’s So Great about IOT?
Why is it that healthcare providers are so excited about IOT? First and foremost, the continuous flow of data makes it much more likely that medicine can be predictive, rather than reactive. The potential to prevent illness as opposed to simply treating it is enormous. While you might visit your doctor once a year, there is a lot happening in the body the other 364 days of the year. With a continuous flow of data, you and your physician will be able to know when something is happening in your body, regardless of whether it happens while you are in your doctor’s office, at work, or sitting on your own living room sofa.
In addition, continuous data, properly analyzed will enable doctors to see patterns not only across populations but for a particular individual. Doctors will be able to monitor the efficacy of medication not just by checking whether you say you feel better a week later, but by monitoring whether you are getting better on a day by day or hour by hour basis. Your healthcare provider will be able to track your body’s reaction to medicine in real time and in certain cases, adjust dosages or change medication more rapidly. You and your doctor will also have a better ability to monitor the impact of your environment on your health and personalize your treatment accordingly. Pre-IOT, your doctor might advise you to keep your stress levels down. With continuous monitoring, both patient and doctor can begin to understand what the stressors are for a particular patient and ideally, use that knowledge to make changes for better health outcomes.
The additional beauty of the IOT is that things get a lot easier for patient and clinician alike. No need to keep a log of your blood pressure. No need for the nurse to come in and take your temperature. This information can go directly from your body to your electronic health record. No forgetting. No mistakes. No extra time required.
What Can Manufacturers Do To Move Things Along?
So we know the technology is there. Payors, clinicians, and patients are eager for adoption. What can manufacturer do to speed things along? For a while there, everyone was focused on all the fancy things devices could do and all the piles of data that could be collected. It was all very cool, but not very helpful. What the healthcare industry really needs is devices that solve problems, that provide meaningful insights, that save money, that save time, and most importantly, that improve health. Solution for the manufacturer? Make it simple, make it safe and secure and above all, make it useful.
With well over 300 million potential consumers and numerous global companies, it is no wonder that companies operating outside the US are eager to enter US markets. Following are five good reasons to make the creation of a US subsidiary your company’s first step.
Limited Liability
One of the biggest reasons to form a US subsidiary is to ensure limited liability for employees and executives. In general, when a US company takes on debts, its creditors only have access to company assets to cover those debts. The individual assets of employees or executives cannot be reached by company creditors. Because US companies may be unwilling to enter into contracts with foreign entities, absent a US entity, your corporate executives may be forced to sign contracts (such as office leases) in their individual capacity. What that means, is that should the company be unable to pay its bills, creditors could attempt to recover from the personal assets of the individual who signed the agreement.
Tax Efficiencies
The United States currently has the dubious distinction of having the highest tax rate of all major economies and the third highest general top marginal corporate income tax rate in the world (exceeded only by Chad and the United Arab Emirates). For a US subsidiary of a foreign parent, proper tax planning could result in some portion of the company’s revenues being allocated to the home country. Depending on factors that will include the tax rate of the home country and the amount of revenue generated by the business, this could result in dramatic savings. [Read more…]
You may have heard that credit card processing in the United States will be changing as of October 15, 2015 as chip and pin credit card technology enters the mainstream. However, for many, the details are fuzzy. The following are questions posed by our clients about this new weapon in the fight against credit card fraud.
Credit card fraud has reached epic proportions in the United States. It’s almost impossible to read the paper without learning of a new breach. To make matters worse, while the US accounts for one quarter of global credit card use, half of the credit card fraud occurs in this country. Many attribute this to the fact that unlike Europe, Canada, Latin America and the Carribean, we have not yet moved from magnetic swipe cards to the more secure Chip & Pin technology.
Chip and Pin Credit Cards , or EMV (named after Eurpopay, MasterCard and Visa, the originators of the standard), was first introduced in Europe in 1999. These credit cards contain a computer chip embedded in the card which is read at the point of sale.
Magnetic swipe cards contain unchanging data. Whoever has access to that data can replicate the original card and make unauthorized purchases at point of sale. In contrast, the chip embedded in an EMV card creates a new, unique code for each transaction. This means that stolen information from one transaction cannot be used a second time when a counterfeit card is presented at the point of sale. [Read more…]
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