No one disputes that the U.S. healthcare system is a mess that has been deteriorating for decades. Many argue that increasing legislation and regulation will worsen the problem, others argue it’s the best solution.
LAVA Healthcare is an ongoing conversation about how we might fix the mess applying innovation across a wide range of dimensions – including technology, business models, patient involvement, offshore outsourcing, and training programs.
The main goal is to foster innovation, grow to the point where we might influence public policy, and allow our community to gain new knowledge and inspiration, as well as make valuable new business relationships and re-establish old ones.
Who should participate? Everyone interested in the U.S. healthcare system – such as technologists, life-sciences professionals and vendors, medical practitioners, healthcare providers, policy makers, and consultants of all types.
Operations
LAVA Healthcare is an interest group of the Los Angeles Venture Association (LAVA). It operates with monthly meetings, this blog, and a LinkedIn group.
Each meeting consists of two parts:
- A lengthy discussion of a “big picture” topic. There are no panelists or talking heads at the front of the room. The moderator proposes a topic and the group discusses it: Is it a large problem? A small problem? A problem at all? Why is it a problem? What can be done about it? The conversation is directed and textured by the experience and knowledge of every member of the audience who poses questions, tells stories, and proposes answers.
- Presentations by one or more innovators who believe their ideas will have significant effects on the cost and quality of our healthcare system. Following a short presentation by each innovator, the audience criticizes, applauds, grinds, brainstorms, embellishes, refines, and pokes holes into the idea.
Each meeting is governed by five simple rules:
- Have fun, explore new and old ideas, make new friends and reconnect with old ones
- Nothing is off topic ‒ as long as it’s about healthcare
- No talking-head lectures: Everyone is a “panelist”
- No preset course: The group leads the conversation
- Self-promotions and sermons instantly loose the floor at moderator's sole discretion
Meetings are on the fourth Friday of the month 7:00am-9:00am. Venues rotate around metropolitan Los Angeles. They are free to currently paid LAVA members. Non-members who are guests of a member attend free when they are registered by the member at the time the member registers online. Non-members who are not guests of a member can register online for $25. Please note that past attendance to LAVA events or being in LAVA's mailing list doesn't automatically make you a member of LAVA.
Join our LinkedIn group to keep updated on future meetings, and posts and discussions by our community.
This blog recaps the outcomes of previous meetings.
About Richard Koffler, chair of LAVA Healthcare
Richard has been a C-level executive for over 25 years, successfully launching and nurturing technology ventures. He has an extensive background in healthcare information systems, and is currently incubating two ventures, one in healthcare information systems (VAL9000 Inc.) and the other in medical diagnostic ultrasound (Viderics Inc.)
Richard is a founding member of the Tech CEO Network, and is on the executive committee of the Los Angeles network of the Tech Coast Angels. He is past-president of both the Los Angeles Venture Association and the Technology Council of Southern California, and currently serves on the advisory boards of the California Emerging Technology Fund and the Wells Fargo Center for Small Business and Entrepreneurship at California State University, Northridge. He is also a board member of El Centro Latino for Literacy. He holds computer science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley.
