Why 4 health systems are collaborating on digital innovation

A new innovation consortium featuring four major health systems plans to focus on the digital side of healthcare.

Longitude Health launched in October, bringing together Renton, Wash.-based Providence, Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health, Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System, and Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Novant Health to collaborate on healthcare innovation.

The group's initial three focuses will be cell and gene therapy, value-based care, and enhancing patient satisfaction with billing. But Longitude Health leaders say future initiatives could involve health IT and cybersecurity.

"This next generation of artificial intelligence, digital consumer engagement, new apps — all of that is on the table," Longitude Health CEO Paul Mango told Becker's. "Some of our members are doing it pretty well today. So that might be one of those things where we just build upon what they're already doing.

"But most of the digital and IT stuff is highly scalable, it's expensive, it's difficult to attract talent to health systems, but we believe we can attract it to Longitude Health, which is much more of an entrepreneurial environment."

Longitude Health was founded as a way to scale innovation while avoiding the antitrust challenges of executing extraregional mergers.

"These new capabilities are going to be pretty expensive," Mr. Mango said. "What if we all share in the expense of developing them? If they are tech-enabled or easily scaled capabilities, we can all benefit from using them, share the cost and provide shared input into the design. Then we can all use it at a much lower cost than each of us trying to do it on our own."

Longitude Health is hiring CEOs for its first three businesses, and could unveil its coming innovation priorities in the second half of 2025.

"The next waves will obviously have an increasing amount of focus on technology," said Longitude Health CFO Brett Moraski. "They can really harness what each of them are doing and not just create the next version of something, but really be future forward." 

Of the first three focus areas, one that is ripe for digital technology is patient billing. Mr. Mango explained: "When someone says, before the procedure is performed, 'You're going to have $500 out of pocket,' and then after it's $1,300 and they don't know why it's changed, and then it's difficult and awkward to pay, we want to make that experience a very unambiguous and frictionless transaction."

That could be done "by using the latest fintech and also getting payers and providers to collaborate in a way where they can agree on a sum that is an out-of-pocket obligation once, before the procedure is performed, and it doesn't change," he said.

The four health systems, which represent approximately $50 billion in annual revenue, will coinvest in the development of new solutions rather than just scaling what already exists. "What you won't see us doing is saying, 'Okay, let's just take all of our Epic IT systems and create one company out of it, or one help desk — that's not what we're about," Mr. Mango said. "They wanted to create an environment where entrepreneurs can thrive and cultivate early-stage business ideas and build them into something special."

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