GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet, spends little time focusing on direct patient care or purely technological healthcare solutions, instead concentrating on hospital infrastructure and intersections with pharma, GV venture partner Ben Robbins, MD, told the American Journal of Managed Care in an interview published July 11.
"The issue is just that, when there's technology solutions, it's often just really hard to get providers to understand the technology, to use the technology," Dr. Robbins told the publication. "They're often really busy, they have sort of bad experiences with legacy software. So we spend most of our time looking at the intersection of technology and services."
In researching where to invest money, GV's healthcare team talks to academics at places like Johns Hopkins University about, say, home healthcare, learning which at-home services are most effective, have good returns on investment and overlap, Dr. Robbins said.
GV also has to be nimble because a lot of venture capital deals are competitive and happen fast, he said.