http://www.healthways.com || http://www.healthways.com.au
Christian Sellars from MSD put on a terrific dinner in Crows Nest, inviting a group of interesting people to come meet with his team, with no agenda:
- Dr Paul Nicolarakis, former advisor to the Health Minister
- Dr Linda Swan, CEO Healthways
- Ian Corless, Business Development & Program Manager, Wentwest
- Dr Kevin Cheng, Project Lead Diabetes Care Project
- Dr Stephen Barnett, GP & University of Wollongong
- Warren Brooks, Customer Centricity Lead
- Brendan Price, Pricing Manager
- Wayne Sparks, I.T. Director
- Greg Lyubomirsky, Director, New Commercial Initiatives
- Christian Sellars, Director, Access
MSD are doing interesting things in health. In Christian’s words, they are trying to uncouple their future from pills.
After some chair swapping, I managed to sit across from Linda Swan from Healthways. It was terrific. She’s a Stephen Leeder disciple, spent time at MSD, would have been an actuary if she didn’t do medicine, and has been on a search that sounds similar to mine.
Healthways do data-driven, full-body, full-community wellness.
They’re getting $100M multi-years contracts from PHIs.
Amazingly, they’ve incorporated social determinants of health into their framework.
And even more amazingly, they’ve been given Iowa to make healthier.
They terraform communities – the whole lot.
Linda believes their most powerful intervention is a 20min evidence-based phone questionnaire administered to patients on returning home, similar to what Shane Solomon was rolling out at the HKHA. But they also supplant junk food sponsorship of sport and lobby for improvements to footpaths etc.
Just terrific. We’re catching up for coffee in January.