Mark Cuban has had a bumpy relationship with the healthcare community, but his approach seems to be evolving with a recent step into the world of healthcare venture capital.
According to Inc., the Shark Tank host is the latest to note the issues with healthcare’s middlemen, and has decided to do something about the problem by specifically targeting pharmacies. Cuban describes his vision as a world without the Main Street staple of modern healthcare delivery, predicting that “over the next 15 to 20 years, medicine will be so personalized there will be no drugstores.”
Cuban instead hopes to see a future in which diagnoses are facilitated by technology that performs certain functions (such as analyzing a patient’s sweat or tracking their breathing or heart rate) and then tailors a treatment specifically to the patient’s needs. To pull this off, he’s been building up investments in innovative healthcare technology companies.
Cuban specifically sees sensors used in wearables as the next wave of healthcare tech because they free users from the burden of manual data entry. He’s not stopping there, though — he’s also investing in the hardware companies that turn smartphones into pocket physicians. Some of his investments in this sector include a cervical cancer screening tool (MobileODT and Biomeme) which bills itself as able to perform genetic testing for specific diseases in under an hour.
Industry Support
Perhaps surprisingly, traditional pharmacies as well as supporters of the “sharing economy” are on board with the idea of healthcare venture capital supporting more automation.
CVS Health’s chief marketing officer Norman de Greve noted at a panel on the future of branding in New York that the company has already entered the world of telemedicine through a service that facilitates video chats between doctors and patients to discuss their symptoms and treatment. On the same panel, Lyft’s chief marketing officer discussed their potential entry into the space as a concierge service that would facilitate pickup and drop-off for non-emergency medical appointments.
Advancements in telemedicine offer benefits for patients, caregivers and doctors. Learn more about how telemedicine is changing pharmaceutical research.
