Leveraging Bedside Awareness to Transform Healthcare Experiences: An Interview with Sharon Gabrielson
Sharon Gabrielson, the Board Chair of Practicewise, an Independent Director of MTF Biologics and a member of LiveLong.Life’s Advisory Board, recently spoke with LiveLong.Life.
She talked about why she is motivated to ensure health-tech companies’ success internationally—as a means to address inequities in healthcare, to optimize outcomes, and to increase patients’ and providers’ satisfaction.
We are delighted to share the interview with you.
You have had a very distinguished career in health. What motivated you to move from nursing into healthcare operations, and now health tech?
I started as a bedside nurse—had a passion for wanting to help people. Growing up, I read stories about Clara Barton and the Red Cross. Nursing was the only profession I was ever interested in. While working at patients’ bedsides, I gained a valuable perspective as part of the care team and a larger organization. My view became more and more comprehensive. I felt that my insights and understanding could be used to improve the healthcare paradigm.
I felt like I could really add value. So, I went back and got my master’s in healthcare administration and a master’s in management and then moved into healthcare management roles. I spent 20 years of my career doing that. When I became a decision-maker, I was looking at everything from service-line planning (i.e., facets of healthcare operations—cardiology, neurosurgery, psychiatry and psychology, and the like) to outcomes. Guiding the organization through strategic planning, I wanted to optimize its effectiveness and ultimately saw how, on a larger scale, the kinds of actions we were taking could improve the health of our society.
Also, as I got more involved, I realized that there’s more to health than the absence of disease, which was where my nursing had been focused. I really started to consider wellness throughout the continuum of an individual’s lifespan, and how important all those stages are in maintaining wellness—and how important that is to the wellness of society as a whole.
What inspired you to focus on healthcare internationally?
The ecosystem of wellness is so complex. We were focused on acute and chronic-condition management. At the time, there wasn’t as much emphasis on the impact of cultural norms and society on health, largely due to limited knowledge. As our focus expanded to a broader wellness agenda, I became more engaged in global health and wellness. We began sharing knowledge and best practices internationally to improve health and wellness worldwide.
I began seeing the importance of taking a more of a holistic view—all the components that make up the health and wellness system—as I moved through my career. When someone fell sick, that is when we went into action. But that wasn’t enough. The patient, the payer, the community, the employer, pharma, technology companies—every aspect of care becomes such an integral part of improving outcomes, of lowering the cost, of improving satisfaction not only of the patient but the care team, too. It’s going to take all the healthcare ecosystem players working together for us to achieve what we say we want to achieve: the healthiest populations.
Cultural norms, society, play a role in health. … Every aspect of healthcare—the patient, the payer, the community, pharma, technology companies—contributes to achieving the healthiest populations possible.
You have scaled many health companies during your career. Please share what you see as success factors, particularly for foreign companies entering the U.S. market.
We were slow to adopt healthcare technology in the U.S. As I looked at the growth of the global healthcare tech industry, I noticed that there were countries that were well ahead of us, and that we [in the States] were pretty insulated.
As I saw it, technology could really help with efficiency, with optimizing the resources we have. Many of the things that constrained us technologically were easier to overcome in developing countries because there was little historical healthcare-technology infrastructure. At that time in the U.S., our data was all on servers, making the transition to the cloud slower here. I had an “a-ha” moment. By incorporating advanced health tech, including international technology, we seized the opportunity to make a significant leap forward, rather than settling for incremental changes.
The historical healthcare infrastructure in the U.S. held us back from quickly incorporating technology in the industry.
Many international companies struggle to navigate the complexities of the U.S. healthcare market and culture. I saw an opportunity to be a catalyst in helping international health tech companies better understand how health and wellness are delivered in the U.S. This led me to a new priority: dedicating my time, talent, and resources to making a meaningful impact on the world.
What motivated you to help build health tech companies?
It was the growth and maturity of my understanding that took me from a very focused component of the healthcare ecosystem to wanting to be part of a bigger solution.
One person can do so much to make healthcare more equitable and to improve societies, but groups coming together, individuals, organizations coming together, is what it takes to move mountains. That’s what we need to do: move a mountain.
There is significant focus now on health outcomes and the role that healthcare inequity plays worldwide on those who can afford services and those who can’t. Technology can help us break down the walls to ensure equity among populations across the globe, so that we can address the challenges of improving the health and wellness of populations.
It was the growth and maturity of my understanding that took me from a very focused component of the healthcare ecosystem to wanting to be part of a bigger solution.
What stands out in helping companies move beyond their home markets?
Taking a healthcare product or service beyond where it was developed is very complex. Many companies don’t do a deep-dive analysis of the culture, the societal norms, the political, environmental, and other aspects of the new country. Taking a product or service that’s been successful in one market or geographic location does not just mean transporting the item to the next location.
Markets differ; even within countries, there are differences. If companies don’t take the time to do that due diligence—if they don’t analyze whether their product or service is a good fit, or what needs to be changed to ensure success—then there’s going to be a struggle. Many companies have failed as a result of not adjusting to different market conditions; they can’t scale globally because they take a one-size-fits-all approach.
Let me give you an example of a joint venture I was part of in China. We came from the U.S. with clinical protocols, patient educational materials, clinical decision-support applications, and diagnostic capabilities—many of which did not fit when we tried to take them to that market.
The Chinese population at that time was very distrustful of the physicians, the nurses, and the care team. Health care had been government-run; privatization was just starting to occur. Our understanding of the business model was off.
Companies need to ask who has the decision-making authority, what’s the government structure, what’s the political environment like, what’s the economic environment like—and who’s paying the bills? In the U.S., we have private insurance and government insurance, so if you are seeking to come here with a healthcare product or service and are looking to get reimbursement, you have to understand the business model here. Employers play a huge role in determining the coverage that is included in employee-sponsored health plans.
The complex business model that we have in the U.S. can be very challenging for international companies.
I see a lot of companies coming from Europe or even Canada, which have single-payer systems, into the U.S. without that understanding.
Companies that have been the most successful coming into the U.S. or going elsewhere are those in which the management is open to learning from our subject-matter knowledge and expertise. Those that aren’t as open, and those that feel they have all the answers, struggle or take more time learning and understanding the market through a trial-and-error experience vs. being able to hit the ground running.
You recently joined LLL Advisory Board. What attracted you to this new calling?
When I finished my 20-year healthcare career in Global Business Solutions, which was the for-profit arm of the Mayo Clinic, and took the clinic’s products and services out to the commercial market, I saw the importance of thinking beyond the historical perspective of clinical-care delivery.
When I spoke to Elena, the Founder and CEO of LLL, and heard about the mission to start moving the mountain—advising health tech innovators seeking to improve health, wellness, and people’s experience with the industry—I decided we were a good fit. I could bring knowledge to the table from an advisory perspective.
I always tell people that I’ve had an enviable career, and it wasn’t a traditional path. That’s my value proposition—where I bring value to the table for companies that want to grow and scale.