Dave Chase

Dave is the CEO/founder of Avado, a Patient Portal & Relationship Management system. Avado was founded on the premise that it will be virtually impossible to succeed in the new healthcare reimbursement models without recognizing that for 3/4 of healthcare spend (chronic disease), it’s the individual who controls decisions that drive outcomes. Avado gives the individual (aka “patient”) a seat at the care team table rather than being an afterthought as outlined in a TechCrunch piece entitled “Patients are More Than a Vessel for Billing Codes.”

During Dave’s time as an Accenture management consultant and leading Microsoft’s Health business, he reviewed or implemented over 100 healthIT systems at providers ranging from small rural settings to large, inner-city hospitals. Prior to co-founding Avado, Dave spent several years working in a variety of startups in acting executive/founder roles for market-leading digital media & SaaS companies. During that time, Dave honed his digital marketing skills while developing low cost customer acquisition models.

Dave’s entrepreneurial roots go back to building up a lawn mowing business in junior high to helping pay his way through college leading ski trips to Whistler. During college, Dave was a PAC-10 800 meter competitor. After college, he’s competed in multi-sport events including running, biking, Nordic skiing, Alpine skiing, canoeing and portages. Juggling multiple sports during multi-sport endurance events and the half sprint/marathon nature of the 800 are strikingly similar to the challenge of being a startup leader.

You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave.

February 26th, 2013

Federal Government Makes Silo-Busting, Startup-Unleashing Healthcare Move

Unleash ventures

Editor’s note: Dave Chase is the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal and relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist.

For the first time, the federal government has provided large financial incentives to share one’s health data between authorized healthcare providers and with patient themselves to facilitate patient engagement. In the past, there was a… → Read More

November 4th, 2012

Healthcare Finally Moving Past Wang-Like Legacy Systems

Rock Health Report on Digital Funding Q3

Healthcare has long been a technology paradox. There have been few places further out on the cutting edge of technology than biotech and medical devices. In contrast, healthIT has been in a time warp (see Why It’s Good News HealthIT is So Bad). Nearly 20 years after the advent of the web, the dominant healthIT vendors have thrived on a business model and technology architecture that harkens back… → Read More

June 25th, 2012

Torrid Rate of Growth for Digital Health Funding

Rock Health Report on Digital Health Funding

After investments in digital health doubled from 2009 to 2011, the torrid pace of growth has continued in the first half of 2012. Rock Health’s founder Halle Tecco stated why they released a report at this time. “The impetus of this report was the notable growth in venture funding of digital health–so much so that we are seeing 65% more investments than the same time last year. As we strive to… → Read More

June 24th, 2012

Supreme Court Decision On Obamacare Has Little Relevance To Healthcare Disrupters

Supreme Court

When I’m not writing for TechCrunch, my “day job” is working with healthcare providers the disruptive innovators who are reinventing healthcare and slaying the healthcare cost beast as a byproduct. In some cases, these are entrepreneurs. In most other cases, they are pioneers within existing healthcare providers fighting to make changes within otherwise slow-moving organizations. → Read More

June 22nd, 2012

Pharma’s Huge Threat (and Opportunity): mRx

Happtique mRx

It was only a matter of time before healthcare providers would start prescribing mHealth apps as soon as they proved to be as or more effective than prescription drugs. Happtique, a mobile health application store and app management solution startup will launch a trial of mRx. They claim this is the first program to enable doctors to prescribe mHealth apps to patients. mHealth pioneers are calling… → Read More

June 4th, 2012

Mr. Obama, Tear Down This Wall(ed Garden)

Reagan Berlin Wall

Today, I participated in a meeting at the White House described as an “expert roundtable on patient access to health data” hosted by Todd Park (Chief Technology Officer of the United States), Farzad Mostashari (the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology), Leon Rodriguez (Office of Civil Rights) and Peter Levin (CTO Veterans Administration).

Being at the White House within a… → Read More

May 6th, 2012

Strategic Healthcare Investors’ Investment Thesis

IBM - Healthcare costs

This is the second part in a two-part series on strategic investors in healthcare.

Healthcare IT departments have focused much of their attention on the $19 billion portion of the stimulus bill that is providing billions of subsidies for the adoption of electronic health records. While this is logical given the available money, it is paying for health IT systems optimized for the “do more, bill… → Read More

May 2nd, 2012

Community Hospital Joins Wave Of New Strategic Venture Funds To Drive Disruptive Innovation

Rex Health Ventures

This first part of a two-part series on strategic investors in healthcare focuses on the expansion of the venture business beyond traditional venture and large strategic investors. In the second part, I will outline the backdrop for the investment thesis that strategic healthcare investors are using to guide their capital allocation.

Healthcare providers are finding their “play it safe”… → Read More

April 15th, 2012

Government Poised To Provide A Huge Boost To Healthtech Startups

Regina Holliday - Meaningful Use

Currently, the federal government is poised to level the playing field for healthtech startups. An unprecedented wave of innovative healthtech startups has been developing over the last few years. You can see them at conferences such as Health 2.0TechCrunch Disrupt, TEDMED and demo day events that Blueprint Health, Healthbox, Rock Health and StartUp Health host. Nonetheless, the health sector… → Read More

March 29th, 2012

Patients Are More Than A Vessel For Billing Codes

Patient as Billing Code Vessel

It will be virtually impossible to succeed in the new reimbursement model without recognizing what has long been said, but little done about it — “the most important member of the care team is the patient.”

Having implemented or reviewed over 100 health IT systems, there is one common purpose at the core of the architecture of these systems — how to get as big a bill out as quickly as… → Read More

March 19th, 2012

Dumb Employers, Lucky Startups And An Untapped Reservoir

Reservoir

A group of women is re-entering the workforce today and reshaping how products are made across key tech sectors like health & wellness, commerce and social products. Not only do they have the experience of raising families, but they’ve been business and technology leaders earlier in life. They’re becoming founders and leaders at startups and in the very companies they’ve been buying products… → Read More

March 16th, 2012

Aetna: The Company Scaring Its Competition And Delighting Startups

Health Insurance - Whose Path Will You Follow

Whither health insurance? A former medical advisor to the Obama Administration who happens to be the brother of former Presidential Chief of Staff predicted in the New York Times that by 2020 health insurance companies will be extinct. Nearly two years ago, I penned a piece entitled Health Insurance’s Bunker Buster. It outlined two key reasons that health insurance — as we have known it the last… → Read More

March 6th, 2012

Khan Academy Inspires Flip of Doctor-Patient Relationship Model

Salman Khan

Education and healthcare are typically held up as the industries least affected by the technology revolution, however this has begun to change. From Bill Gates to millions of students and parents, the Khan Academy has impressed many of us and inspired teachers to flip the classroom lecture/homework model on its head as described in the video below. Similarly, doctors are now recognizing similar… → Read More

February 28th, 2012

To Meme, Or Not to Meme, That Is The (Startup) Question

Hubspot

Smart B2B companies have long known that winning big was predicated on redefining the rules of competition to your advantage over incumbent vendors. A more difficult question is whether you want to own a meme. In other words, do you want to define a new categorical term. Microsoft did that to great effect when they created the office suite category. More recently, Salesforce.com did something… → Read More

February 26th, 2012

What Pharma Can Learn From the Railroads and IBM

Train wreck

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal & relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist. Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture’s healthcare practice and founder of Microsoft’s Health platform business. You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave. Pharmaceutical companies are in trouble… → Read More

February 15th, 2012

Communication is the Most Important Medical Instrument

Control & Acuity Diagram

“A good scalpel makes a better surgeon. Good communication makes a better doctor.” The future of medicine in the U.S. is clear. The days of the “do more, bill more” model of reimbursement are numbered as it has produced one of the most inefficient healthcare systems in the world. While there are many unknowns regarding the future model, one thing is crystal clear — highly effective… → Read More

February 6th, 2012

WWJD? The CEO Every Healthcare Leader Should Learn From

Innovator's Prescription

As healthcare goes through massive changes, health system CEOs would be well advised to study what newspaper industry leaders did (or perhaps more appropriately, didn’t do) when faced with a similar situation. In the late 90′s, the following dynamics were present:

Owning printing presses was a de facto barrier to entry allowing newspapers unfettered dominance.
Newspaper companies bought up… → Read More

February 2nd, 2012

Why It’s Good News HealthIT is So Bad

HealthIT is bad

I know of no industry where technology is as despised as it is in healthcare. It’s telling that it took government money to incentivize healthcare providers to finally do what virtually every other industry has done — apply information technology to streamline processes. “Established technology is being given a federally funded new lease on life,” athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush said. “Traditional… → Read More

January 24th, 2012

The Rise of Nimble Medicine

Innovator's Prescription - New Wave of Disruptive Models in Healthcare

In the New Yorker, Dr. Atul Gawande outlined how, at the turn of the 20th century, more than forty per cent of household income went to paying for food and food production consumed nearly half the workforce. Starting in Texas, a wide array of new methods of food production were tested. Long story short, food now accounts for 8% of household budgets and 2% of the workforce. As a wide array of small… → Read More

January 17th, 2012

Money Ball for Medicine – Business Models for Healthcare

Moneyball Poster

Entrepreneurial epiphanies surface in random places. For Eric Page, it was watching Brad Pitt’s latest movie, Moneyball. The epiphany caused him to shift Amplify Health’s business model from a provider of technology to a heavy user of technology. While there is a wave of disruptive technology in healthtech, as interesting is the wave of disruptive innovation on the care delivery side of… → Read More

January 5th, 2012

Report Highlights Huge Gender Disparity in Healthcare Leadership

RockHealth - Women in Health Report

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal & relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist. Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture’s healthcare practice and founder of Microsoft’s Health business. You can follow him on Twitter@chasedave.

I can’t think of a product or service that both… → Read More

January 4th, 2012

Healthcare Field of Dreams In Idaho: Health System Opens Innovation Center

image

Fifteen years ago the Internet was revolutionizing global communications and computing so companies were looking for the most advanced markets to test their technologies. Locales such as Korea and Singapore portended the future. Today, no less than reinvention of healthcare is taking place. A key question is which locales will provide a similar testbed for healthtech. It’s not always the obvious… → Read More

December 28th, 2011

DIY Health Reform: Employers Solving Healthcare Crisis One Onsite Clinic At A Time

DIY

In several of my past pieces, I have written about the importance of a disruptive model of care and payment called Direct Primary Care (DPC) such as The Most Important Organization In Silicon Valley That No One Has Heard About. As the DPC models scale, they become a great option for individuals and small business. However, larger organizations have another option at their disposal that I’m as… → Read More