By Sara Miller, NoCamels -
A Tel Aviv startup is applying the practices of Israeli healthcare to the US, with the objective of reducing poor cohesion within the American system, making it more accessible and bringing down costs for users.
A lack of universal healthcare in the US, unlike most of the world, means that Americans must themselves navigate between healthcare providers such as doctors and hospitals, and the insurance companies who take care of the medical costs of its payees.
And because each US healthcare provider and insurance company exists as its own entity, getting treatment involves dealing with both sides of the equation, often with poor communication of pertinent medical information stored digitally through electronic medical records (EMRs).
Vim says it is bringing an end to this muddled, inefficient and expensive system, with a software platform that sits atop and integrates with the plethora of digital systems in use in the US.
“We take the learnings and understandings of the Israeli healthcare system and try to apply them on just a bigger scale, based on the challenges that you have in the US,” Vim co-founder and CTO Asaf David tells NoCamels.
In Israel, there is a choice of four health maintenance organizations (HMOs), which are jointly funded by the government and by citizens through a healthcare tax. The four each offer their members complete healthcare provision, with a unified digital system that has comprehensive medical records for every patient available at every healthcare facility in that HMO.
When a primary care physician (PCP) joins one of the four Israeli HMOs, David says, they receive everything they need in terms of electronic systems. They simply log in and are ready to see patients.
“I can go to Maccabi,” he says, referring to one of the four Israeli HMOs. “I go to my doctor, I give him my card, he swipes the card, and he sees everything that I’ve done. Because everything I do is through Maccabi.”
In the US, however, the physician must choose from an array of IT infrastructure, including how to store EMRs, which adds to the cost of already expensive healthcare.
“You have hundreds of systems,” he says. “Some of them were built in the 90s, some would have five or 10 customers. It’s very hard to really maintain an IT system based on that.”
Furthermore, he says, a physician in Israel normally sees patients just from one HMO. In the US, however, a PCP can see dozens of different patients with different plans and different coverage for different things, making it very hard to understand what kinds of treatment the patient can be offered and for how much.
Vim Connect is designed to recreate the Israeli system, bringing together providers and insurers in one electronic platform – facilitating treatments, referrals and payments at point of care.
David explains that healthcare is incredibly expensive in the US, accounting for almost 20 percent of the national GDP. In fact, he says, healthcare costs are the number one cause of bankruptcies in the US.
“What we wanted to do is reduce the cost of care in the US,” he says.
The startup, which also has offices in California, was set up in 2015 by David and CEO Oron Afek, and today has 150 people on staff, split between Tel Aviv and California.
The pair were looking for a way to translate skills they previously acquired in the high-sector – for David this includes setting up a short-lived digital bank was the first of its kind in Israel – to a new venture.
David says he found the experience he gained during his service in the Israel Defense Forces also helped when venturing into the US healthcare market, in particular his time unifying disparate networks and systems within the army, which he says were tangled like spaghetti.
“US healthcare is very similar to that,” he says. “I never thought I’d need to use the same skills for anything else in my career.”
Indeed, when he explored the complexities of the American healthcare system, he realized that they could develop a platform that would help bridge the gap between provider and payer.
Funding for the company came from their own pockets, but by the second year, it was already making a profit.
“We got to a place where we were making enough money to pay two salaries, and the company grew,” David recalls.
Since then, however, Vim has raised around $100 million in investment, with Walgreens, the second-largest pharmacy chain in the US, among its backers.
Today, the Vim Connect platform is used by seven of the 10 largest American health insurance companies, including United Healthcare, Elevance Health and Blue Cross Blue Shield.
And on the other side of the equation, David says, there are more than 2,000 American healthcare practices connected to the Vim platform, catering to more than 20,000 physicians and covering tens of millions of EMRs.
And according to David, working in the world of American healthcare helped him to realize how well the Israeli system functions.
“We always complain about the Israeli healthcare system,” he says. “But then I started to learn about the US healthcare market, and I understood how much we should appreciate what we have here.”
