In this episode of the Chilcast, John Moore interviews Steve Kraus (Partner) and Sofia Guerra (Vice President) at Bessemer Venture Partners' (BVP) Cambridge, MA, office, about how venture capital firms perceive the value and impact of health technologies.

Key topics discussed:

• BVP takes a "bilingual" approach with expertise in both healthcare and technology to identify innovative opportunities. With healthcare being far behind other industries in digitization and consumerization, they're able to apply expertise and insights from other enterprise technology adoption to healthcare.
• Major challenges facing healthcare technology companies include long sales cycles, fragmentation into niche solutions, and financing risk. However, there is strong talent for building cutting-edge health products now.
• To drive adoption, developers need to first create end user love. Know who your users are going to be, what they really want from a solution, and then deliver on that.  
• In healthcare, it's critical to show both clinical outcomes and financial ROI. Appeal to key decision makers - CTOs, CMIOs, CIOs.  
• Major societal healthcare challenge is marginal outcomes at too high costs, largely due to the fee-for-service payment system. Value-based care helps address this, but we're still figuring out what this means from both an economic and regulatory standpoint.
• Consumer engagement remains a huge unmet need. Giving consumers choice drives efficiency and quality as it has in other industries.
• Disruptors like Amazon and Microsoft will have impact by focusing on their core competencies in areas like consumer experience and AI automation.
• The market downturn will persist through 2023 into 2024 but strong companies will emerge from the noise during this period as the broader markets rebound. Continued innovation opportunities will also arise from new regulations and the evolving needs of a changing market.