Joe Kvedar, VP of Connected Health, Partners HealthCare, Chapter 1

It started 20 years ago with a vision to leverage technology to improve access to care and efficiency. But instead of the iPhones and FitBits that are driving care today, it was a camera the size of a shoebox that offered game-changing potential. Today, Partners HealthCare Connected Health continues to push the envelope by transforming healthcare through tools like remote monitoring and virtual care. In this interview, Joe Kvedar, MD, talks about how the organization has evolved to meet the changing needs of patients and providers, why telemedicine is finally rising to the top, and the problem with statistics around patient engagement. He also discusses what encourages him most as a physician, and how CIOs can navigate this brave new world.

Chapter 1



* Shared vision for Connected Health

* Value propositions: access & efficiency

* “That’s what got me excited.”

* Working with pharma & tech — “We haven’t had as much success collaborating with payers or other health systems.”

* Connected Health Fellows Program & Innovators Challenge

* Being “the glue” for innovators

* Focus on remote monitoring



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Bold Statements

My mentor at that time, John Glaser, saw the future in the same way that I did. He said, ‘I can’t imagine that this isn’t going to be important in care delivery.’ We were both off by at least a decade, as it turned out, but we had that same passion that connected health was going to be important for future care delivery.

We tend to be very patient-focused in our thoughts and in our approach. Connected health is a broad term. There’s a lot of connected health that is focused on improving doctors’ workflow, improving doctors’ efficiency, and improving doctors’ ability to get things done, but we’re much more focused on the patient side.

When I started we were the only act in town, so we didn’t really need to worry about who was in charge and how to coordinate; but nowadays, both AMCs have robust programs. There are lots of innovators doing good work. My job has changed in the sense that I’ve got to try to be glue in an environment where people naturally want to take their own destiny.

Connected Health has two value propositions. One is access and the other is efficiency, and how you view using this set of technologies in the world of shared risk versus a world of fee-for-service is an important differentiator.

Gamble:  I think the best place to get started is by getting some background about Partners Connected Health — how and why it was formed and really what the primary goal is.

Kvedar:  It’s been an interesting journey. It’s been a 20-plus-year journey now. If you can take yourself back to the earlier nineties, I am a dermatologist by training and I was at a time in my career then when I was looking for something new. My chair was giving me all kinds of projects, because he was a good mentor and wanted to help me find something that I was passionate about.

One of them was teledermatology, which at the time meant, could we use this new contraption called a digital camera to take images that were suitable and of diagnostic quality that you might be able to make a decision about a patient without the patient traveling. That was the concept.

We were looking at that, and to give some historical perspective, it was a less than one megapixel camera. It cost $12,000, and was about the size of a shoebox. The world has changed a lot in 20 years, but the insight which really led me on this career path was that you could open the opportunity for two kinds of value — access and efficiency — if you remove the constraints that you have to travel somewhere and meet in person to get healthcare done. That’s really what got me excited.