Simplifying Healthcare: A Unified Platform for Members with Owen Tripp, Co-founder of Included Health

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, Saul Marquez with the Health Matters podcast. I want to welcome you to another

[00:00:13] episode here recorded in Las Vegas for Health 2023. Today I have the privilege of hosting Owen

[00:00:19] Tripp. He co-founded and grew the startup that has become Included Health, today's first integrated

[00:00:25] navigation and virtual care company. He previously co-founded and grew Reputation.com into a global

[00:00:32] leader in online reputation and privacy management, and he's done many other tech startups that have

[00:00:38] been very successful in the space. Welcome to the podcast Owen, glad to have you here.

[00:00:42] Hey Saul, good to see you. Good to see you too. Look Owen, before we kick things off and learn

[00:00:47] more about Included Health, tell me about you and what inspires your work in healthcare.

[00:00:51] Yeah, so as you noted I'm a lifelong technologist, worked in Silicon Valley in the early days of

[00:00:56] PayPal and eBay, developed those companies and started Reputation.com and the through line on

[00:01:02] those companies which helps set up Included Health is we were dealing with large sets of data to

[00:01:08] make better sense of how people could trust each other and work with each other online

[00:01:13] and it was shocking to me in 2012 when I started this company and remain shocking to me

[00:01:19] now how little the internet has done to change the way we all experience and receive care.

[00:01:25] And so I saw that as a huge opportunity, a technical challenge that I was excited by

[00:01:30] and an opportunity to do a lot of good for other people including my family members.

[00:01:34] That's great. Thanks for sharing that. Tell us about Included Health. What do you guys do?

[00:01:39] Who do you do it for and why are you different?

[00:01:41] Yeah, so we're proud to support large purchasers of healthcare so these could be

[00:01:46] large employers including 32 of the Fortune 100, large health plans who are looking to provide

[00:01:53] excellent virtual care services and navigation to their members. Why? Because we all experience a

[00:01:58] healthcare system that is otherwise fragmented, otherwise built around the bill not around the

[00:02:03] member where we are left trying to figure out where to go next and often don't know how to

[00:02:08] assist ourselves and so we've devised a set of services including virtual primary care,

[00:02:13] virtual behavioral health, virtual specialty care that all sits on top of this advocacy platform

[00:02:18] that's built around how members should traverse the system and get exactly what they need when

[00:02:23] they need it. That's fantastic. It sounds like a great ecosystem focused on the patient not the

[00:02:28] bill. I love that by the way it does get to the core of the problem and talk to us about

[00:02:33] advancements in healthcare right there. They often happen over time what do you think is

[00:02:37] the most important thing for employers to be doing now to play a part in driving that advancement?

[00:02:43] Yeah, let's stick with this member focused idea. At the end of the day, all of us sitting here

[00:02:47] recording this podcast we have all been patient or will be. We will all be caregivers to other

[00:02:53] people in our lives it's just part of the human condition and when that happens,

[00:02:58] when that moment hits, we want somebody by our side metaphorically and specifically

[00:03:05] to help us figure out where to go next and we want to get access to care that is personalized,

[00:03:09] that can be life saving, that reduces the chances that we have to stay in the system for an extended

[00:03:14] period of time. And everything we do at Included Health is built on that promise so you asked what

[00:03:19] should employers be thinking about? They're coming out of a time when they've been picking up

[00:03:24] these point solutions and creating these little petting zoos of interesting ideas in their

[00:03:28] ecosystem that are finding. Nobody really uses those things that overall engagement is low

[00:03:33] despite some really interesting ideas over the last few years. So we come to employers and employers

[00:03:38] ask us and say, how do you put all these things together? How do you have one platform, one front

[00:03:42] door that leads somewhere that helps people get the kind of care that they need? That's our

[00:03:47] prominent core. Simple unified experience to get the care you need when you need it.

[00:03:52] That's great. I appreciate that Owen. And by the way, I love your petting zoo analogy.

[00:03:57] That's essentially what it is. A lot of point solutions that are struggling to connect the dots

[00:04:03] and struggling to provide an integrated experience for consumers and how frustrating that is for both

[00:04:09] employers. And how about for carriers and health plans? Yeah, it's the same idea. The carriers

[00:04:15] and health plans are also of an age now where they're trying to mean more to their members.

[00:04:20] And honestly, that's a challenging conceit because usually the American healthcare consumer

[00:04:25] thinks of the health plan as being the department of no, the department of you're going to have to

[00:04:29] pay more. The department of yes only if you complete these five steps. And I think the best health

[00:04:34] plans in the country, our clients, our partners are rethinking that member experience too.

[00:04:39] And they're looking for a form of care that will bring them into the modern world

[00:04:43] but also raise the standard of what a great healthcare experience looks like.

[00:04:47] So in a lot of ways it's the shared goal. And of course they have an extra responsibility

[00:04:51] which is to make sure that all of this innovation leads to lower costs. Because all as much as I

[00:04:56] like the member experience and as much as I celebrate the work that we do for each other

[00:05:01] in our communities, the reality is this innovation has got to be sustainable.

[00:05:05] And some of the work that we're talking about here at this conference,

[00:05:07] some of the work that our clients have already shared from stage yesterday,

[00:05:10] points to a very clear fact which is that all of this kind of care that I'm describing to you

[00:05:15] actually reduce total cost of care in some cases by five to 10%.

[00:05:19] And that's remarkable. I think there are a few other companies that can stand here

[00:05:23] with that body of work and that body of data to say, actually this stuff really matters.

[00:05:27] Yeah. And I really appreciate the focus on that cost reduction. When we look at the impact of

[00:05:32] these technologies it is outcomes but also the cost. So really appreciate you highlighting

[00:05:37] that one. Where is the greatest opportunity for the next generation of healthcare leaders

[00:05:41] to focus their efforts? I love that question because I get very inspired by the people

[00:05:46] who I see here before I stepped into your booth here in Las Vegas. I ran into an old colleague

[00:05:51] who's doing amazing work. There are so many people around here today and yesterday that have

[00:05:56] inspired me with their work. And what I would say about, say to all of those healthcare leaders is

[00:06:01] none of this is going to happen overnight and you have to think about doing everything at scale.

[00:06:06] And I don't think it's an overstatement and not too dramatic to say that actually all

[00:06:11] of our lives depend on this innovation really breaking through and that requires sticking at

[00:06:15] it over a period of years by never losing sight of what that member requires, by carefully building

[00:06:21] your technology so you honor the privacy and security needs of those members by doing it in

[00:06:26] a way that can feel personalized and scalable. That's the message that I would send to leaders

[00:06:31] and look let's be honest it's been a tough market for some of those digital health innovators.

[00:06:35] It's been a big change over the last year. Companies that are of included health size

[00:06:42] really matter I think more than ever. It's not just us but we are one of the companies that has

[00:06:47] gotten to a level of scale that I think a lot of other private companies hope to obtain. And so

[00:06:51] to all those other leaders I would say stick at it this is possible for all of us and I think

[00:06:56] it's the disruption and innovation that our market really desperately needs.

[00:07:00] Thank you for that Owen and it is those that have been successful at integration

[00:07:06] and I think you guys are an example of one of those companies that now the partnerships should

[00:07:13] continue or begin right if they haven't. And so for everybody listening to this looking for

[00:07:17] opportunities to partner to help bring forth a more integrated solution I think definitely take

[00:07:24] a look at the work that included health is doing. You've written about EQ and AI

[00:07:30] and I find that concept fascinating as we face that many technologists are saying that the

[00:07:34] biggest revolution of our time when it comes to AI. So bring this to life for me what is EQ and AI?

[00:07:41] Yeah it's a simple idea which basically says that AI I am and have been frankly have dedicated

[00:07:47] much of my technology career to data science machine learning and now AI through line of

[00:07:52] similar and highly related technologies. So I'm a big believer in those things and I also know

[00:07:57] from my direct experience in taking care of millions of patients with our company over

[00:08:01] the last few years that when somebody is injured, anxious, feeling unwell that they want the best

[00:08:10] possible diagnosis and treatment plan and they want to know that another human cares about

[00:08:17] them getting the result that they need. It's not a either or it's an and so this

[00:08:22] notion of EQ in AI is I think is beautiful prayer for the future which is to say

[00:08:26] let's use AI for all that's possible. Let's figure out the most complex diagnoses

[00:08:30] let's create speed in people getting to care. Let's give people access to data and insight

[00:08:35] that they might otherwise have not gotten we should root for all those things and

[00:08:39] we have to make sure that human compassion and human attention remains part of the process and

[00:08:43] I'm very hopeful about that because if you arm a great physician a great care coordinator

[00:08:48] with the level of insight that these AI and large language models and other technologies can

[00:08:53] allow and you let that person be the best human they can be. Wow what a sort of

[00:08:58] wonderful recipe for what the future of healthcare ought to look like. Yeah I appreciate that Owen and

[00:09:02] at the end of the day it is about feeling cared for and and having a relationship with somebody

[00:09:07] that does care for you and that is looking forward to that outcome with you and doing

[00:09:13] in that scale is hard and thanks to companies like yours it's possible now. Look this has been

[00:09:18] a fascinating discussion I've really enjoyed but the topics we've covered for everybody

[00:09:23] listening at the end of the day health matters and the way that we do something about it is take

[00:09:28] action so what call the action would you leave the listeners with. Yeah I'm going to encourage all

[00:09:33] of your listeners because we are all patients to go get access to primary care that is

[00:09:39] integrated with mental health this is a very simple prescription but I hope that we will

[00:09:44] all go follow it because investing in ourselves in an integrated way behavioral health and

[00:09:49] physical health will set up the next 10 20 30 40 50 years of our life and a much better way make that

[00:09:57] investment in yourself do it today. Love it Owen love how you keep it so simple folks do it today

[00:10:03] in the show notes you'll find ways to get in touch with Owen and his team at Included Health

[00:10:08] make sure you check them out Owen any other closing thoughts or ways that the listeners

[00:10:12] could follow you? No we want to hear from people who are part of this mission and and

[00:10:16] thanks for talking a little bit today about Included Health there's so much more we want to say

[00:10:19] I'll just have to look forward to seeing you here next year. Looking forward to it Owen thanks for

[00:10:22] being with us. You got it.

[00:10:46] you