Cat George

IF you are like me, health insurance technology is not an industry you are familiar with — or even knew existed. We’re not talking about claims agencies (i.e. the pain-in-the-ass 113 steps, people and regulations you need to do after an appointment to get your claim submitted). Rather, health technology companies catering to the insurance industry — like the startup Abartys Health — leverage the power of aggregating patient data to create software for insurance companies to better assess risk and understand their clients. Not only is this a smarter, more reliable and more effective way to make the antiquated insurance process all the better, but the convenience in and of itself is enough to get patients, doctors, and insurance companies excited. That’s a sentence I’ve never said nor ever thought I ever would.

This health insurance company get patients, doctors, and insurance companies excited. That’s a sentence I’ve never thought I’d say.

The number of people uninsured in the United States has fallen to 11% (which still comprises over 35M people) and the efficacy of platforms like Abartys Health is empowering insurance companies by creating better efficiency and lower costs to insurers freeing up so much of the time predominantly spent in day-to-day operations that these platforms are taking care of. For the 89% of insured people in the United States, not to mention the doctors and insurance companies integral to the process of being insured, the streamlined convenience of the platform makes everyone more likely to use insurance and more likely to use it successfully. If you are like me, at one point in your life you have been so fed up with insurance that either you decided to completely ignore it and drop the process and/or you’ve had an unpleasant, confusing experience that leaves you unsure of where you stand or what happened. Considering the especially imperative and personal nature of health care in our lives and that being able to afford healthcare is largely (if not nearly solely) linked to insurance (despite what a clusterf*ck it is), it’s incredibly important that companies like Abartys are improving the usage rights and efficiency so coverage is more effective. Abartys Health is the living bridge that seamlessly connects across patients, data, doctors, and insurance providers — except they are a super bridge, providing accelerated streamlining abilities across communications and convenience. They become the specialized hub connecting the spokes of these 3 cyclical, critical components that comprise healthcare efficacy in cases of insurance.

17.8% of the GDP of the United States was spent on healthcare last year –

That’s equivalent to $3.2 trillion dollars.

So how does someone stumble across such a niche field of disrupting health insurance by leveraging emerging technology? The team has a variety of backgrounds – one of the co-founders is a technologist enthusiastic about health trends and had the foresight that there is a rapidly emerging health landscape driven by the next generation of technology. This in conjunction with the experience of another co-founder who was an expert in health insurance, health care policy, and with over 13 years of experience in the field made them a dream team to tackle this niche with their unique experiences and knowledge. The Abartys Health team at large is versatile, experienced one – comprised of data scientists, engineers, health care professionals, technologists, computer scientists, biostatisticians, mathematicians, economists, compliance experts, lawyers, and beyond.  So what’s the secret that makes this platform provide patients, doctors, and providers with a process that takes radically less time and provides exponentially more accurate results? Streamlining communication. Part of me wonders if this secret sauce is actually what the world needs now more than ever, how many problems could be solved if we all were able to communicate effectively, quickly and accurately? Despite the fact that there is a changing healthcare landscape with the shaky changing status of Obamacare and transition to a new presidency, this company stands out from the crowd and the unpredictable trends of the healthcare landscape. Though the health tech, health insurance, and health care market can be “noisy” with seemingly similar services and companies (especially to us non-expert health insurance people), Abartys is solving this problem, unlike any other startup. But they aren’t stopping there. They are gearing up to launch a first of its kind service never done before at the end of this year. A freemium model that will help patients themselves have access to their health data and empower them to be aware of their risk for developing health conditions.

[tweetthis]How many problems could be solved if we all were able to communicate effectively, quickly and accurately?[/tweetthis]

Abartys vision is to create a healthcare republic centralized around one thing: transparency. Considering 17.8% of the GDP of the United States was spent on healthcare last year totaling 3.2 trillion dollars. The kicker? Nearly 1/3 of this was wasted on unnecessary services such as administrative costs and fraud. We need a clean system and the only way to get there is to eliminate the chaos that coincides with human error and interaction by leveraging the transformative technology of our present to drive our future. We can cut these costs by streamlining communication through a technological medium.  But this is just the beginning for Abartys Health. There is an exponential power potential of technology over the next 10 years for driving resolutions to our biggest problems, one of the most colossal being healthcare. Putting to use artificial intelligence, data collection, and streamlined processes may be the ingredients that make up some magic. But this isn’t going to happen overnight as we are currently in the adjustment and resolution stage of health and technology.

Abartys vision is to create a healthcare republic centralized around one thing: transparency. Tweet This Quote

What’s the biggest challenge that’s holding us back on this front?

Particularly in the healthcare field? According to the team, it’s the unwillingness for the antiquated healthcare industry to adapt to new ways of doing business and change their ways. Implementing new and shiny (albeit extremely effective) technical tools is a scary and slow action in their minds. This is only exponentially aggravated when you go down a level into the subcategory of health care: insurance. That said, the sales for Abartys isn’t an issue with their value propositions that include business analytics, centralization of data, removing complexity and best of all, being the one-stop-shop where all of this happens in one place, eradicating the myriad of interweaving systems and processes that tangle up getting things done. Currently, their customers are predominantly in Puerto Rico and Latin America, but they are ready to emerge into the US market and make their debut. If you are a well-connected partner who has some strategic connections in LATAM, US or PR, get involved. Partners who can help scale, fund and have distribution companies (like large insurance companies) are the ideal prospective partners. If you’re like me, and this isn’t you, be one of the first adopters of their B2C launching model that empowers patients to have access to their healthcare data and anticipate their health care needs now and into the future. You can contact them at www.abartyshealth.com.com via info@abartyshealth.com — they’re excited to hear from you =).

Want to get involved? Here’s how.

1. Share strategic partner connections
2.  Sign up as a beta user for their bleeding edge B2c model launching this fall.

Abartys Health is the living bridge that seamlessly connects across patients, data, doctors, and insurance providers.

As always, I love to end my jam sessions with amazing entrepreneurs with a final question — what key resource, inspiration or lesson have you learned that has been transformative to you as an entrepreneur?

Here are 15 pieces of advice for fellow entrepreneurs:

1. Participate in an accelerator.
2. Jump every bridge on the entrepreneurial path.
3. Learn to decipher everyone’s projections from their own fears from what is actual criticism. Learn to endure judgment from others and be able to decipher people projecting their fears on you from actual criticism.
4. For everyone starting out, no one makes it immediately. But this isn’t for the faint of heart.
5. Surround yourself with people you admire.
6. Care less about what people think of you.
7. Read, learn, travel, self-educate.
8. Learning to be critically introspective.
9. Changing my mindset.
10. Gaining confidence in my ability to survive.
11. Learning to be happy with less. (money, time, resources)
12. Enduring judgment from others.
13. Understanding that delayed gratification is crucial to long-term success.
14. It is not easy to start a business; I don’t think you can imagine how hard it is until you jump that bridge.
15. I truly believe that reaction determines a person. That means that external factors are not within our control; the way you react to those factors determine who you are.