Talking about Keas
I’ve started a new company, Keas Inc with a partner, George Kassabgi. Since a lot of people have asked about Keas and it is too early to be giving specifics, let me talk about the vision and the culture we’re dedicated to at Keas and the people we’re looking for.
What is the Keas vision? If you are one of the many at risk of losing your health, Keas will help you keep healthy. If you’re recovering from an illness Keas will help you to recover and stay well. If you suffer from a chronic disease Keas will help you be as well as you can be. Today no one helps you. You can’t assemble your health data to get the best care possible. Even if you can, your doctors rarely help because the system doesn’t pay them to keep you healthy. You don’t have tools that work online to help in these situations, partly because insurance doesn’t pay for them. Because of these problems people suffer both personal hardship and fear and economic deprivation, sometimes irreversibly. What is more we all pay enormous medical costs for this, and there are costs to society and to the competitiveness of our companies in lost productivity. It is our mission at Keas to fix this for you. Clearly it isn’t an easy mission or a short-term one. While we think we have some great ideas about how to make this possible, we have a lot to learn in the course of this adventure.
What is our culture? We are all focused on making a great service that the customers love and that truly helps them. We want to have fun and make a difference and get it right. We want to build the service with love and care. Every day, we want to make sure that our customer experience is as good as it can be. This doesn’t mean trying to get it perfect out of the gate. Heck you don’t know until people use it. See my talk on intelligent reaction. What this does mean is pouring resources into constant improvement once the service is out of the gate and steadily learning from the usage patterns to make sure that the service quickly and surely evolves in the right direction. This requires great listening skills and great empathy and great patience and data analysis skills and, oh yes, some creative design insight. It requires the humility to realize that it isn’t your vision for how the UI should look that matters, but what actually works for the customer.
What kind of people are we hiring? We are hiring people who are really good at what they do, relaxed, persistent, pragmatic and fearless. It is important that the people who come fit this profile because in a start up everything is uncertain. You have to roll with the punches. You have to expect that your plan will change as the data starts to come in. Success in most start-ups isn’t instant. If it were easy, it would already be done. You have to keep trying. Some ideas work. Some don’t. What we’re trying to do at Keas certainly is hard. We need great people who aren’t afraid to try hard things but are willing to also look at the facts, see when something isn’t working, chalk it up to experience, and try the next hard thing. If you want predictability go to a big company.
Who are we still looking for? Engineers. We intend to keep Keas small until the ideas are proven (we’re self-funded). There is room, however, for a few engineers and for a proven development lead. In general people need to be able to get to San Francisco (we’re by Mission street and 1st Street close to everything), but we could use an engineer or two in the east coast as well or one or two willing to be there for significant periods of time. What kind of an engineer do you need to be? Well, in a word, excellent. More generally, productive, fun to work with, willing to tackle any problem, willing to work in Java or PHP or RubyOnRails, use machine learning or whatever language makes sense for the job, careful to avoid Not-Invented-Here when possible, good-humored, and burning to do something that really matters. It will be a small elite engineering team and we need it to really rock.
Why would you join? If we get this right, literally 100’s of millions of people who currently are on track to get ill or have chronic diseases and are at risk of getting still sicker will live longer and better lives because of you. In addition the ideas are genuinely interesting, hard, require thought, insight, and creativity. There is almost nothing easy in what we need to do. That means almost all of it is challenging and fun. You get to come in at the beginning of this adventure and that is always a blast. You’re going to get to work with wonderful people who care and want to make a difference. Ever since I moved into helping out in the health arena, I’ve met people I’m in awe of, people who are brilliant, caring, somehow hold down 4 jobs at once each of which would be full time for many of us, and still have happy personal lives. These people are going to love you because if this works, you’re going to be letting them run like no one else has. All you’ll have to do is work with them, listen carefully to them, and then be brilliant and quick. What more could you ask?
.
December 23, 2007 at 1:00 am
Good luck. It’s an are so bound by insurance company and legal restrictions that the patient if left out of the plan. The sicker the patient the more the systems can’t respect them as a customer. They fall outside the system and are put out on the street.
Good luck helping people avoid that eventual fate. If it work the insurnace companies will support you in that quest. The lawyers will only target you if there’s cash.
The Doctor are probably ready to address health care through more effective education and guidance since they are finding it hard to stay profitable tending to people with a lot of problems: no one will/can cover the costs.
December 24, 2007 at 5:23 am
[...] Talking about Keas « Adam Bosworth’s Weblog if you’re an engineer looking and don’t check this out, i’m confused as to why. having helped build a healthcare records app in the distant past, i can tell you that it’s a.) interesting, b.) challenging, and c.) rewarding. plus, it’s Adam Bosworth. (tags: keas adambosworth hiring startups healthcare) [...]
December 24, 2007 at 8:00 am
Adam,
Kudos, and congratulations on embarking on this bold adventure. I have faith in you guys, you’re going to make it rock. Let me know if you need any alpha/beta testers.
Dave
December 26, 2007 at 2:33 am
Adam: I am so very happy you are continuing on this important path. After seven years, I still wake up each and every morning juiced and privileged to work in healthcare (consumer) media, which is relevant and meaningful as we all try to figure out new business/service formula(s) that work for the 21st Century. I view my years at Disney and Sony as preparation. And, as Dave just said, I am available for alpha/beta testing at ANY time. We need your continued vision and leadership — and soul. Thank you, also, for staking out a qualifications base and understanding this is NOT a spint. Be well and have fun, my friend. Count me in! Renata
December 26, 2007 at 5:11 am
Addendum: Adam is OUR Craig Venter…
December 30, 2007 at 7:55 pm
As someone with a chronic illness, I’d like to put forth a request that you talk to more people with chronic illnesses.
I think you’ll find it a mind expanding experience. Such people don’t really have an interest in external (non medical) sources that want to help you be as healthy as you can be.
Surprisingly, the topics and ideas that draw the most attention are:
1. The eight hour day, a nurturing lifestyle attached to just one job. A healthy mindset that promotes satisfaction at 5:00 p.m. rather than 5:00 a.m.
2. Compassionate health care systems (as example, a MS clinic in Seattle that is designed to treat the illness knowing full well they will not profit from it).
3. Web 2.0 feeds that deliver specific information without the myriad problems of finding the needle in the haystack.
4. Hotspot research issues like stem cell research and AIDS. Not because it will make us better in our lifetime, but because people will be better off after our lifetime.
5. Society’s perception of illness. We have to live in this world too.
Just as shoppers at the grocery store determine the price of mayonaise, people with chronic disease find value at various points along their treatment path. Some are tangible, most are the intangibles.
January 7, 2008 at 6:37 am
Adam - It’s a privilege to know you. This is all extraordinary and I look forward to the future with optimism. Count me in as well. Matthew
January 17, 2008 at 7:55 am
This sounds like a really exciting project and way for you to use your talents for some tremendous social good.
It’s no big secret just how messed up the U.S. healthcare system is.
And it’s hard to imagine a world without WebMD. So many people now to turn to it so supplement limited formal health care resources.
There DEFINITELY is a need for even more credible, content rich tools and Web sites to help people stay healthy and battle chronic diseases.
Plus so many aging baby boomers are Web savvy now.
I remember taking a Health Economics class back in college in the early 90’s. It’s amazing how many of the professor’s scary predictions came true. (The World would be a better place if he were wrong.)
You’re definitely onto something.
Good luck!
January 24, 2008 at 7:43 am
I had the pleasure of meeting you and hearing you speak at the Connecting Americans to Their Healthcare conference (Markle Foundation) in 2006. I’m pleased to see that you are still focusing your efforts on the core ideas posed in your speech. Good luck with everything, Adam. I look forward to watching your progress.
January 24, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Adam,
Ive heard and read so much about your remarkable work. In 98/99 we were way ahead of our time in eprescribing winning msft industry solutions awards at HIMMS yada yada.. The laws in the MMA should help, but nothing will help more than the consumer driven model as the reluctance we saw at the provider level was astonishing, no disgusting. The pbms are our friends and very powerful. if possible, your direct contact info for an opinion on my togetherhealth.com initiative would be awesome. best of luck,
rg
January 25, 2008 at 11:02 am
Adam, I work in a hospital setting and would be interested to speak with you about what we are trying to do here. The goal is to get patient data created at the hospital and physician offices to the patient via an electronic means (website). We have the data to be sent, but having a solution in the market is where we falter. If this is your area, let me know so we may exchange thoughts. Our though is it’s the patient data so why can’t we just give it to them? Why do they have to wait for physcians and why do they have to rely on them to hold it within their walls if it’s the patients data?
January 28, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hi Adam,
I have always admired you and the writings on your blog.
Best of luck in the new endeavor.
Thanks,
Radha.
February 5, 2008 at 2:45 am
The problems created by the myth that we have a health care ’system’ are legion. The toxic, inverted demand/suppy dynamic has successfully poisoned itself, but the new retail health care marketplace has not yet fully defined itself. New initiatives (carol.com, redbrickhealth.com, revolutionhealth, etc.) are taking shape in response to the indistinct opportunity, but the trends converge on a future that badly needs new and innovative solutions.
As someone who has worked ‘in the belly of the beast’ it’s not hard to understand that health plans are not going to be the source of creative solutions. At the same time, providers are trained in cultures that are not based on business disciplines. The hybrid survivors of business and health plan experience are seeding a new wave of experiments that are at least innovative, if not promising.
Ultimately, in my view, the issue of risk must be re-framed. It’s possible to know enough now about an individual that “perfectly managed risk” means that individual coverage products are possible–just not practical. So how new risk pools are constructed, and how individuals move between those pools, will probably be a critical dynamic in any solution.
I’m not an engineer, but engaged more on the consumer product side. Good luck; it should be an interesting journey.
February 5, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Hey, I really dig your blog. Keep it up!
April 3, 2008 at 5:37 am
Adam,
It was very interesting reading your blog…. and I am even more impressed that you have started a company to address the “REAL” healthcare issues. We all know what a mess the system is already and it’s only going to get messier for all of us.
I have been in healthcare for the last 7 years building Physician Portals and Hospital Dashoards. AS you said the focus needs to shift to the end user - the Patient. Myself and couple of Engineers have built a beta product that will aid the end user (patient!)
All this talk about EHR and PHR and RHIO’s and interoperability. We also know that currently there is no front runner in this space…. the googles, the microsofts, the oracles have jumped into this. We will wait and see what they can come up with.
My prediction is a startup company, someone who will listen to the patients, and brilliantly (extremely simple yet superbly effective) develop a system wil be the front runner.
GO Adam and all the best. Hopefully when we get our product (a patient portal) developed, perhaps we can chat and see if there are any synergies. Jason (jan 25 blog) what is your contact number. I did love to chat with you.
Chat soon
Suresh\603-930-9451