Episode 32: Kevin Houlihan from Propeller Health on Tuning up the Care for COPD and Asthma Patients

Kevin Houlihan is the Director of Client Experience at Propeller Health, a Madison, Wisconsin based respiratory health management technology company. Propeller Health has an FDA cleared platform for passive collection of information related to inhaled medications use paired with software interfaces and analytics. Prior to joining Propeller Health Kevin spent time bringing productivity to mobile tools in the configured building products software space. Kevin also spent several years at Dassault Systemes Solidworks focused on 3D mechanical design software. Kevin earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and an M.B.A. also from UW Madison. Kevin enjoys downhill skiing and has been active in competitive racing and coaching for many years. You can find out more about Propeller Health at http://propellerhealth.com, and connect via email at [email protected]. You can follow Propeller Health on Twitter @PropellerHealth and on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/PropellerHealth. You can follow Kevin on twitter @Houlihan_Kevin 00:00 Kevin talks the origin of Propeller Health. 2:35 Where Propeller Health is today. 3:45 How Kevin wound up at Propeller Health. 5:00 How prevalent asthma and COPD are, yet remain two of the most overlooked and thus most expensive chronic diseases within healthcare. 7:15 "If we're not helping patients understand how to use their medication, that's a huge roadblock to patient outcomes." 8:25 "People start down this path, and it gets worse and worse and worse, and they just learn to live with that." 9:30 What the target of evidence-based medicine is for asthma. 10:20 The types of medication used to treat asthma or COPD 11:10 How Propeller can track patient medication use, and the goal Propeller Health shoots for using this data. 13:00 "The most expensive care is the kind that's given at the wrong time." 14:45 The lack of tools that Care Teams need to treat the right problems, and the issue of patients who don't track their progress because it's too time consuming. 17:11 How the Propeller Health App can track, remind, interact, and connect patients and their family members and providers. 18:30 The meta-data that the Propeller Health App tracks along with user data, in order to see a bigger picture and improve patient quality of life. 20:20 Propeller Health is also able to use this data to find correlations between environment and broad increases in asthma triggers. 22:10 How Propeller Health App reminders work. 24:55 "The goal for us is to stay quiet until we have some significant insight to give you that you can do something with." 25:23 "The goal is to reduce the burden of managing and having your asthma or COPD." 31:00 Who hires Propeller Health. 35:00 What Kevin thinks one critical success factor is for improving patient outcomes. 38:00 Check out propellerhealth.com for more information and to reach Kevin.