IBM Health Care Insights Could Solve Cuomo's Health Care Challenges

New York has been a hotbed of much-needed healthcare innovation with efforts such as The Statewide Health Information Network for New York (“SHIN-NY” which connects the previously silo’ed/disconnected healthcare system) and the two most comprehensive programs for digital health startups — the NY Digital Health Accelerator (9 month program with $300,000 of financial support) and StartUp Health (a 3 year academy for “healthcare transformers”). Further, there is the first crowdfunding program for health technology companies (NY-based MedStartr) and Blueprint Health for earlier stage healthtech startups. Add into this mix venerable NY-based IBM reinventing how healthcare is purchased – see IBM Unleashes “Primary Care Spring” for more.
Governors around the country are finding that healthcare spending is devastating education budgets. Not a week goes by without seeing some headline about deficits pushing municipalities to desperation or Bill Gates describing state budgets using accounting techniques that would make Enron blush.  The common culprit: healthcare costs with Medicaid being the biggest driver. New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration has made a particularly agressive move with the state’s Medicaid population being driven to Managed Care programs.