Q&A Series, Question 3:

What are the 2-3 main problems BurstIQ seeks to solve in the healthcare world?

BurstIQ was founded to address three fundamental problems in healthcare.

First, health data lives in silos, with little or no integration to other data sources. This is problematic for a number of reasons. It makes it difficult for providers to make fully informed care decisions, since they have no visibility into encounters that occurred outside their network. Insurance plans are implementing financial penalties on providers for unnecessary readmissions, but the provider may not be aware of readmissions that occur outside their network. And not having a comprehensive view of a person makes it tough to create personalized, highly effective products, services and treatments.

Second, while security and privacy regulations such as HIPAA are very important for ensuring people’s privacy, they make it extremely hard to combine and share data between people and organizations who need it or would greatly benefit from it. This makes it challenging for commercial and academic researchers to find the right research participants for their studies, for digital health companies to leverage data to improve the effectiveness of their products, and for employers to offer more personalized, more effective wellness plans. 

And most importantly, we as individuals often have limited access to our own data. Even when we do have access through personal health records (PHRs) or patient portals, it is often difficult to understand, and sharing it often requires multiple layers of paperwork and administrative overhead.