Today we bring you our interview with Rick Valencia from Qualcomm Life, where he serves as a Senior Vice President & General Manager.
As the founder and leader of Qualcomm Life, Rick directs Qualcomm’s product and technology strategy in the wireless health market. He also has a hand in driving wireless health innovation outside the company through Qualcomm Life’s strategic partnerships with entities such as Rock Health, Wireless-Life Science Alliance and the USC Center for Body Computing, and through oversight of the $100 million Qualcomm Life Fund. Rick is an active member of ACHE, HIMSS and mHIMSS.
Rick is a native San Diegan and committed to the community. He uses his business building know-how to help fellow entrepreneurs launch meaningful and enduring technology companies as a mentor at the Founder Institute and a member of the Executive Committee of the San Diego MIT Enterprise Forum. He is a former chairman and long-time board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County and actively supports Rady Children’s Hospital and the Pediatric Diabetes Research Center at UCSD.
Here’s how our interview went…
Where do you see Qualcomm Life fitting in the mHealth eco-system?
The home is the fastest growing health care setting in the U.S with more than 35 million Americans discharged annually. Therefore, the biggest opportunity to revolutionize care and to bend the health care spending curve and restore quality of life for patients lies outside the hospital. Advancements in electronic health records and health information exchanges have led to a number of improvements in our health care system and have undoubtedly made it more connected. However, health care is still disconnected, comprised of proprietary, closed systems that are not accessible. With that in mind, Qualcomm Life is driving the mHealth ecosystem with innovative technologies powered by Qualcomm and its mobile legacy to improve interoperability between all devices. We are currently building the largest mHealth ecosystem with over 500 customers and collaborators including Cerner, AMC Health, Roche and Walgreens. With these key medical device and service collaborators we have the ability to reach a large number of chronic disease patients who need care the most. Qualcomm Life is collaborating with medical device companies to enable wireless data transmission and health care service companies and providers to enable care coordination and remote patient monitoring through a scalable infrastructure to manage patient interactions and improve quality of care. With a focus on helping patients make the transition from hospital to home, we are bridging the gap between patients and HCPs to better manage health and improve outcomes, anytime, anywhere.
What’s your business model?
Qualcomm Life is a Business 2 Business company, selling our platforms primarily to leaders in medtech and pharma and to provider organizations. While we can’t share specifics on pricing, we can share that we have a monthly service fee for the 2net Platform and a fee per patient per month for the HealthyCircles Platform.
Can you share some numbers? How many users do you have? On 2net? Other services?
We cannot comment on specific users, but we can comment on the size of our ecosystem – with about 500 ecosystem members comprised of medtech companies, pharmaceuticals and provider organizations, Qualcomm Life has the largest connected health ecosystem in the world.
Where do you see Qualcomm Life going from here?
Qualcomm Life sees connected health care just becoming health care. Mobile and wireless technologies will become pervasive throughout health care, and we see Qualcomm Life powering these connections and supplying the connective tissue of the industry.
Where do you see the mHealth industry going?
There will continue to be an industry shift towards the development of mHealth devices and monitoring solutions for individuals with chronic diseases; the people who need care the most. Care will be managed through informed interventions by health care providers based on information collected by secure, medical grade wireless solutions. The health care industry faces the increasing challenge of managing at-risk populations and the need for continuous care has never been more critical. 19.6 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are rehospitalized within 30 days of discharge and $33.6 billion is lost in productivity attributed to employees caring for aged dependents. By enabling care teams to make decisions in real-time by changing treatment plans, assisting with medication adherence and tracking patients’ vital statistics at home, we can better manage at-risk populations and hopefully improve outcomes.
How long are we from seeing modern mHealth technologies going mainstream?
We are already seeing mHealth technologies going mainstream. Our collaboration with Walgreens is a great example of a scalable mHealth collaboration bringing connected health devices and a service to the masses. Walgreens has selected Qualcomm Life as their connectivity solution provider for their mobile and web applications and Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices in 2015 – enabling medical device connectivity and care coordination. Qualcomm Life’s 2net Platform will provide secure, seamless and wireless transmission of biometric data from connected medical devices to patient care teams (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, family care givers). This will enable remote patient monitoring of medication adherence, and better Transitional Care Management and Chronic Care Management for Walgreens consumers. Walgreens has over 82 Million Balance Rewards users.