Erin Lee, Babylon Health, on leveraging AI to break geographic silos
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In this episode, we connect with Erin Lee, the VP of Global Operations and Managing Director of Babylon (U.S.). Babylon is a London-based telehealth startup leveraging AI to provide quality and affordable primary care around the world. Babylon has operations globally, including in the U.S., Canada, UK, Rwanda, and several countries within Asia and the Middle East and plans to continue expanding internationally. Since its founding in 2013, Babylon has raised $635M in funding to date from investors such as Centene, VNV Global, and Google DeepMind. Most recently, Babylon rallied $100M in Series C funding in September 2020.
Key topics of discussion:
Babylon’s mission is to make healthcare more accessible and affordable globally. It seeks to do this by combining cutting-edge AI with best-in-class clinical care to reduce excess administrative costs and enhance practitioners’ ability to administer quality care. Babylon aims to create a global healthcare platform that combines learnings from its international operations with local knowledge to enhance patient care.
Babylon utilizes a capitated care model to manage holistic patient care. By delivering proactive healthcare over sickcare, Babylon utilizes its global knowledge and understanding of all of the external risk factors that can impact a person’s health, such as their environment and unmet social needs, to treat the whole person.
The impact of COVID and the rise in digital health providers will ultimately benefit the consumer. Through the increase of choice and the growth of digital healthcare, consumers will have expanded access to care.
Start to 14:37: Babylon’s mission and path to building international scale
On the founding inspiration for Babylon: Ali Parsa, the founder of Babylon, was interested in improving what happens before and after the hospital visit through a highly accessible, digital-first primary care solution to keep people well, and help care for them when they’re sick.
On the shift to telehealth: Babylon seeks to combine AI and best-in-class clinical expertise to improve the quality and accessibility of care. To do this, Babylon delivers care through the smart devices (e.g. cell phones) patients already own while automating routine tasks such as scheduling to ease the burden on providers and improve their ability to deliver care to patients. The AI Babylon utilizes also helps flag potential health issues to allow preventative care.
On the mass adoption of telehealth: Many consumers are digitally native and familiar with online services such as Amazon, Netflix, and Google, so there was already a population of early adopters for telehealth. On the clinical side, the biggest concern amongst providers was preserving quality of care through a virtual medium. This has been a challenge that Babylon tackles with its strong clinical quality outcomes.
On maintaining quality outcomes: Babylon scores fairly high relative to peers on clinical quality metrics, but has received some criticism about some of its clinical programs such as GP at Hand in the UK. To address the criticism, Babylon focuses on a consumer-centric model and continues to incorporate patient feedback to improve its operations through creating more ways to engage with consumers.
On creating a global healthcare platform: The core pathways, especially in primary care, are similar internationally. People also get sick in similar ways, and many treatments for specific conditions are comparable internationally. Babylon is notable from other healthcare providers in its approach to creating a global playbook that cross-pollinates insights across its worldwide operations. For example, Babylon recently applied learnings from managing a patient population in Rwanda to inform engagement with patients in Missouri.
“People are more alike than we want to believe, and that’s absolutely true of healthcare. People get sick in the same ways… a globalized model for healthcare is ripe for scale.”
14:37 to 29:16: Shifting care models, COVID, and the impact on consumers
On the shift away from fee-for-service: Babylon is among a set of providers exploring different care models in the U.S. Early on, Ali Parsa recognized the conventional fee-for-service care model falls short of driving meaningful change in the longitudinal patient experience. In the UK, Babylon uses a capitated model, meaning they are paid a single amount per patient for managing the complete patient journey. In the U.S, Babylon similarly takes on the risk for managing the end-to-end patient journey by working with local providers and delivering digital-first primary care and other services. Patients are also assigned a care coordinator and other resources as needed to round out holistic patient care.
On bringing payers along the journey: Payers have also been thinking about how to improve the quality of care. Babylon has been able to cite its experiences in the NHS to gain payer buy-in. Specifically, Babylon demonstrates tangible savings in downstream costs while managing holistic patient care in the NHS. Payers have also been a strong partner in helping Babylon understand their local populations and models of care.
Bringing access in the U.S.: Babylon began its U.S. operations focused on the Medicaid population. It has partnered with various payers and providers to improve the care journey of Medicaid-eligible patients. Starting in Missouri, Babylon is testing its digital-first approach in creating a care continuum adapted to local conditions while leveraging learnings from its global operations.
Impact of COVID on Babylon’s U.S. operations: COVID supported Babylon’s U.S. expansion through the relaxation of cross-state regulations that previously limited care provision across states. The push for telemedicine also helped consumers and the government be more open to digital healthcare delivery that tends to be less expensive than in-person care. The expansion of digital care delivery has also enabled Babylon to test various distribution channels to invest in ongoing improvements to connect with consumers.
On reforming the U.S. healthcare system: The Biden presidency may help test the American assumption that healthcare is a privilege not a right. Medicare for All, improved accessibility, and an outcomes-driven framework that leverages international findings will dramatically improve the experience for the U.S. consumer.
Consumers will benefit: Opening up a broader supply network to consumers and giving individuals more choices are changes COVID has brought on that will benefit consumers. COVID also highlighted the role socioeconomic factors have in exacerbating acute health conditions. Socioeconomically disadvantaged communities were hit harder by COVID, and there was a push to engage these communities by utilizing digital methods that may continue improving patient engagement in complex populations.
“Healthcare is hard and there’s value in focus. Babylon took a broad approach first, but we would benefit if we look for similarities instead of endorsing the idea of American exceptionalism. And then we can double down on solving America-specific problems.”
“This isn’t a winner-take-all market. The healthcare experience in the U.S. is broken. I hope the relaxation of some regulations will result in a rising tide lifting all boats with the consumer winning in the end.”
29:16 to End: Professional and leadership advice
On living abroad: Travel and international exposure have been important in Erin’s life. She initially thought she would work in the U.S. but noticed many top leaders at previous employers did stints in Europe. Since working in Europe, Erin recognizes global work experience has helped make her a stronger leader by expanding her perspective and challenging her to work across diverse teams.
How to lead across international teams: Diverse teams make Babylon strong. Diversity spans all dimensions, from demographic characteristics to thinking styles and personality traits. These aspects may then drive innovation within the organization. The key to ensuring team cohesion is finding goals to align on. Grit, perseverance, intellect, and emotional intelligence are critical for the job.
“If you hire exceptional people, they overcome your limitations as a manager.”
On professional guiding principles: Luck and finding a mentor who recognizes your true potential has been a huge unlock for Erin. In addition, it is important to work for a company that makes products or services you love.
Traits of strong leaders: Accessible, accountable, authentic, and human — these are traits to look for in leaders. Erin identifies qualities she admires in leaders and incorporates these in her own life.
No expiration date: Erin spent a lot of her early career optimizing for ambition. She was trying to be strategic about the roles, and titles she sought because she thought it would make her ‘successful’ faster.
“I think there’s pressure [to go fast] in the Valley but I would say slow down and enjoy the ride. It’s good to figure out what you don’t like to do in addition to what you like to do. Figure out what you’re good at and figure out how to do more of that.”
For career opportunities at Babylon, please visit https://www.babylonhealth.com/us/careers.