Live at HLTH: The Future of Venture Capital in Healthcare—featuring Dr. Vineeta Agarwala

Several years ago, leading VC Marc Andreessen proposed the notion that innovation happens through a process of unbundling and rebundling. Healthcare is no exception. Through the micro-specialization of companies, we’ve witnessed a great deal of unbundling in the industry. Now, we’ve begun the process of rebundling. So, what does this mean for the future of healthcare tech? And how do venture investors leverage this idea to decide which digital health startups deserve funding? Dr. Vineeta Agarwala is General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she leads investments for the a16z bio and health fund across digital health care delivery, biotech and life sciences tools and diagnostics. Dr. Agarwala has a special interest in companies leveraging unique datasets to improve healthcare delivery, and she serves on several healthcare portfolio company boards, including Memorial Health, Thyme Care and Waymark. On this episode, Dr.  Agarwala joins host Dr. Guatam Gulati to discuss what health payviders are doing to aggregate the best technology for specialty care and how we might integrate such specialized health tech into already complicated workflows. Dr. Agarwala shares her take on the successes and failures of digital health in the last decade, describing how healthcare tech has been transformative for certain patient populations and why she sees most remote connected wearables as a missed opportunity. Listen in to understand how the high bar for fundraising is changing the way a16z makes decisions and get Dr. Agarwala’s advice for aspiring founders in healthcare tech. Topics CoveredHow Dr. Agarwala thinks about the unbundling and rebundling of services in healthcareWhat health payviders are doing to aggregate the best possible technology across large numbers of specialty care areasHow we might integrate specialized health tech into already complicated workflows (and why it’s such a challenge)Dr. Agarwala’s take on patients, providers and payers as joint custodians of healthcare dataThe pros and cons of imposing a government tax on corporations to access healthcare dataHow digital health has been transformative for some small patient populations, health systems and provider practicesWhy Dr. Agarwala sees remote connected wearables as a failure in the absence of intelligent care managementHow the high bar for fundraising has changed the way a16z makes healthcare tech investment decisionsWhy a16z is encouraging its portfolio companies to adopt a lean business modelWhy now is a phenomenal time to start a company in the healthcare technology spaceHow Dr. Agarwala’s experience with her grandfather’s death informs her work at a16z Connect with Dr. Vineeta AgarwalaDr. Agarwala at Andreessen HorowitzDr. Agarwala on TwitterDr. Agarwala on LinkedIn  Connect with Dr. Guatam GulatiHLTHDr. Gulati on TwitterDr. Gulati on LinkedIn  ResourcesJulie Yoo at Andreesen HorowitzThyme Care