The Evolution of Healthcare: Howard Rosen's Impact on Digital Communication

How are you guys doing? My name is Howard Rosen. I’m the CEO of Nova Insights. The quick background is I was educated as an MBA, and trained to run a Fortune 500 company. I was shocked and dismayed on graduation day that you didn’t start running a Fortune 500 company right away. So naturally, I had to do something with my time. So of course, I spent about 20 years producing film and television. In doing so, I came across an idea of how on a communication platform, based on some continued medical education parts we were working on. I came across this idea that I thought about in terms of better communication for patients and providers, which led me to get to Health IT, which is 15 years now, and which built a company and a platform, basically a cloud-based communication platform, which I now hold eight patents. During COVID, I thought enough founding,

That company led a succession kick-in, and I’ve created Nova Insights, which is a consultancy specializing in digital transformation and solutions architecture in the healthcare space.

Well, sure, really the brand is, it’s sort of trying to say thinking out of the box. Let’s say it’s thinking without the box in terms of coming up with ideas and perspectives I’ve done for myself, but for clients in terms of how you innovate within given parameters, but outside of the norm. The mathematics of what justifies what I do is that 80% of innovation in any industry comes from outside that industry.

And so I sort of brand myself as the guy who sort of has that purview outside the traditional industry, in this case, healthcare to create and provide innovation for my clients.

It’s technically it’s been healthcare systems on clinical groups and providers. So I’ve worked from home, I’ve worked in the private sector and the public sector as civilian and military. So I’ve worked in the VA Department of defense as well as large healthcare, a lot of behavioral health predominantly.

It’s looking at how you take what exists, innovation. Of course, you’re hearing AI everywhere, but it’s really how you take a means of automating and taking rule sets and take away the more automated processes that are very automatic, use systems to manage that using robotic process automation, and allow providers, nurses, clinicians, techs work at the top of their license.

So really using technology to make things easier for the technical, for the clinical side to allow them to provide better care. At the same time, allow patients to provide more insights on themselves, so you actually get more precise care for their needs and not just a generic, here’s a pamphlet.

Well, it’s funny, the original concept came to me, again, we’re still doing film and television, as I mentioned earlier when I expanded the company into the area of education and training. One of my first clients was in the pharmaceutical space working on diabetes. And so this is 2005. And I sort of saw lots of solutions that were used, but hardly being used like 18% of people are managing their diseases.

So being a card-carrying, arrogant producer, I kind of went, well dudes, all you got to do is come up with a solution that ties to people’s lifestyle and they’ll be more interested in engaging and managing their lifestyle as opposed to solutions that push them away from what they used to do. And thought nothing of it. Six months later, I was working with Universal McCann on a brand-new cell phone. This is probably before your time, but it was the first clamshell called the StarTac for Motorola. And I worked on the promotional campaigns for that and talking to the engineers, they’re saying, no, this is 2000.

You’re not gonna believe this, but one day we’re gonna have computer programs on a telephone. And we’re all going, nah, you gotta be crazy, no one’s gonna want to do that. And I said the first one’s gonna be the weather. I go, you’re not gonna tell the weather of the phone, you’re crazy. And, that evening, working on both the diabetes project and the cell phone, I kind of went to myself, you know, maybe there’s a way of using cell phones to manage diseases. And that led to my odyssey.

This is about 15, almost 20 years now, I guess. , it was 2005 when I first came up with the idea, as I mentioned, since then I’ve been awarded eight patents on these progressive ideas. That went from cell phones to being very much cloud-based. The concept behind that is, is take away the barriers of communication. So fundamentally, instead of telling people how they wanna communicate, let them choose how they wanna communicate what’s most comfortable for them. So the solution or the platform I developed at the time,

This allowed patients to choose whatever device they wanted. So it could be a cell phone, it could be a tablet, it could be a computer, it could be a landline. And similarly how they wanted to communicate. So we text, email, interactive voice, like WhatsApp. And it happened instantaneously without an app whatsoever. So it’s all instantaneous.
And then, and where’s your, where’s your, is your target audience in the United States mostly? Okay.

It’s been fundamentally the US. Some in Canada, we’re talking in Europe now, but fundamentally it’s been the United States. And so since then, since the succession of that company, I’m still on the board of the company, but I’m now on my consultancy expanding dramatically in terms of that concept of putting on steroids, depending on the client, or working with the client evolving new areas.

It’s a lot of thought leadership in terms of doing several keynote speeches throughout the year. I do a lot of, there’s a lot of podcasts that I’m invited to speak on. So the keynotes are either virtual or in real time. And I do a lot of, I’m asked to do a lot of writing. I’ve written several articles in Forbes in this particular area.

Well, the plan ahead is to continue what I’m doing, but I’ve got something in the skunk works right now, basically creating more of a virtual healthcare stack, so I’m taking everything that I’ve done and making it into a modular system so that a health system can pick and choose what they need when they need it, and at the same time be as engaging for the patient and the clinician. Because fundamental to all this is humanizing the experience. So it’s not just bolting a technology on, it’s doing it so it provides value.

to what the clinician needs, the provider needs, and the patient needs, and they all have different needs. So it’s creating a system that sort of has that breadth, but at the same time has the same simplicity.

And as you know, simplicity takes a long time. It’s easy to be complicated.

I think a big difference frankly is for lack of a term, trench warfare. So I sort of started as a solopreneur and an entrepreneur and built a company. So I’m working with clients from the ground up and have a team that has a breadth of experience, having worked at both the clinical side, but also the technology side at the same time, have experience outside of that, have experience in entertainment, have experience in the communication world. So you bring a lot of pieces of a puzzle together.

and not creating just a generic response and generically dealing with things. It’s having not only here’s a great idea, but experience in managing those kinds of ideas and not being afraid to try something new.

Exactly. And understanding when speaking to the clients with a gentle touch to understand that when they come to you and say, this is what I need, the first thing I know is if that’s what they say they need, that’s the last thing that they need. But it’s a buzzword they picked up. So it’s working with them. Well, exactly. So it’s working with them to sort of help educate the client as well as to zeroing in on.

I think more than anything else is not to be afraid of trying something different. There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of fear factor. There’s a lot of fear factor in doing things. But it’s kind of like if you got an idea and you want to try something and someone says no, no doesn’t mean no. No means they haven’t tried it or they don’t think it’s not going to work. That doesn’t mean it won’t work. And at the same time, just because you think something will work, don’t think it automatically will. Fundamentally, check with your prospective customers and clients.

They always do focus groups of one sort or the other to make sure you’re on the track, that you’re solving a problem that needs to be solved, but needs to be solved now. It could be they need it to be solved, but it may not be, it’s not a priority, it’s 10 on their list. So you wanna make sure you’re zeroing in on what they need and what they need now.

I’ve been at HIMSS several times, the American Telemedicine Association. I’ve spoken at Capitol Hill several times before congressional groups in the whole area of telehealth and health IT.

Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. It’s a great discussion. Thank you.