The Manager's View

It doesn’t appear that government intervention will solve the issue of providing affordable health care. Indeed, Medicare coverage is likely to diminish at a time health care cost is increasing. Further, it appears the efforts to cover the uninsured will only increase the overall health care costs. Nor does it appear that advances in technology and medicine are providing health care that is more affordable. The medical community continues to march forward in its ability to cure the most deadly diseases and rebuild the most broken human bodies. For individuals to benefit from the advances in drugs, surgical techniques and other medical advances requires a good deal of money or the very best insurance (also a good deal of money).   There is a chance that new entrants in the health care market space will find ways to reduce costs and provide quality health care. These entrants will likely be disruptive innovators and enter the market by serving...

One of my earlier blog posts discussed the steps in setting up a new business. The first step was to identify the job to be done for the customer. The steps following were very straightforward and methodical. You can read this post at http://gwrresearch.blogspot.com/2013/01/six-steps-for-starting-new-business.html . I have recently been involved in two start-ups that may prove as useful examples for a less structured, more evolutionary approach. The first is a collaboration between Rice University, MD Anderson Cancer Center and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. The job to be done is to create and commercialize devices for delivery of health care at a distance. The focus is on cancer prevention and care. The organization is known as the eHealth Research Institute. As it turns out, the steps following the identification of the job to be done and the development of a vision statement may be more evolutionary than taking clearly identified metho...

Often there is such a focus on running a business, closing a deal or reaching an objective that attention is given to immediate outcomes. The result of this sort of intense focus may cause a manager to miss important cues that affect the bigger picture. I have a friend that has been very successful in the business world. He and I have started several businesses together and enjoyed some success. I have learned however to not only listen to his words but to try to understand the true nature of his intentions.   I have learned for example that when he is asked to participate in a business venture and he acts very interested and responds to the request for participation by saying “Let me study this” or “We’ll see”, he means “No”. This may be a desire to be pleasant and courteous rather than giving a clear answer. I find this to be true in many business encounters. I have been in countless sales calls where the potential client gave what could be considered buy...

I was invited to help with this project about a year ago. Dr. Robert Satcher a surgeon at MD Anderson and former astronaut spearheaded the project along with Jan Odegard of Rice University and Sharon Pepper of MD Anderson. After a year this project has come together. This is an opportunity for the creation of new devices to deliver healthcare and provide healthcare for populations that are currently underserved. Houston, we have an opportunity. The electronic Health Research Institute (eHRI) was created by formal agreement on April 11, 2013 as a research collaborative between the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University, and the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. The aim of the eHRI is to be a  catalyst for the advancement, integration, translation and acceleration of research and technology to support and enable distance delivery of healthcare , with ...