Health tech correspondent
Mohana Ravindranath is a health tech reporter for STAT News especially interested in separate out hype from reality in health care and highlighting ways tech both helps and hinders underserved groups.
A van ride through LA with a street medicine team gives a reporter a whole new sense of the health challenges facing low-income patients.
The challenge: Proving that health tech companies can make a viable business out of reaching low-income people who also face social challenges.
The patients who need these potentially lifesaving services the most can’t always get them.
But the people in these prominent positions — and the ones hiring them — say they’re still defining the role, and in some cases, fighting for buy-in and resources from others in their organizations.
While the market is crowded with companies claiming their products meaningfully improve health — especially for underserved groups — there is still no standard slate of metrics to evaluate them.
Health plans trying to reach low-income and underserved customers say they’re being stymied by a decades-old federal rule limiting texting — and they’re framing it as a health equity issue in their bid to change it.
Many of the companies raising millions to make health more like the consumer experience are selling a vision that largely excludes the country’s neediest groups.
