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How Smart Implants Reduce Healthcare costs

10 Jan 2026 · 2 min

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1:40

In this segment, the speaker reflects on the early missteps of a smart‑implant company that launched without a clear value proposition, targeting hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) to pay a premium for a product that ultimately saved insurers money. Recognizing that this approach was flawed, the company pivoted to a model akin to continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) firms: they propose to demonstrate concrete downstream cost savings (e.g., $10‑12k per patient) and then negotiate a revenue‑share with both hospitals and payers for a portion of those savings. The speaker emphasizes the need to integrate the product into the payer’s cost structure, positioning the implant as a cost‑avoidance tool rather than a premium add‑on, and seeks compensation based on proven savings.

Chapters

So, you know, let's, let's start with the payers. Initially, when we launched, we didn't really have a value proposition. It was like, you know, we're going to collect this data. We think someday it's going to be important. I can't tell you how. And you can imagine how well that went. So what we have been trying to do is to say, all right, look, how can we integrate into your cost structure. And I think one of the biggest learnings along the way was that we were asking the wrong people to pay for the product. So, so going to the ASC or going to the hospital and saying, hey, would you like to pay us a premium so that we can go save $10,000 for UnitedHealth? Is not, is not the world's smartest business model. And we're really more like a glucose monitoring company. We're really more like CGM where we're saying, look, You know, we don't make insulin, but we know that if we monitor your diabetics, you know, they don't, you know, they don't go to the ED, they don't do these things. We're saving you a bunch of money. And if we do that, you know, can you split some of the found money with us? So that has been how we've reached out to both hospitals now and to payers, which is to say, look, you're looking after your TK patients is actually more expensive than creating them, you know, than operating on them. And a lot of that is cost that can be, you know, that can be avoided. And so if we're able to reduce your cost by $10,000, $12,000, would you be willing, you know, to provide us compensation, some level of that as compensation for doing that work?