Primary care physicians are the healthcare providers trained to be the comprehensive, preventative first point of contact with the healthcare system in a patient’s journey. These physicians typically include everything from general care to health promotion, counseling, education, and diagnosis and treatment of both acute and chronic conditions. Unfortunately, AAMC predicts a shortage of between twenty to sixty thousand primary care physicians by 2023 that’s expecting to continue to grow as our population ages, limiting access for many and increasing the burden on the physicians we currently have. Some of these challenges may be alleviated through new innovations, from telemedicine to digital scribes, such as DeepScribe, to monitoring through wearables and at home lab tests, like TestCard. Additionally, primary care practices could benefit from technologies that help streamline pre-consultation such as Better Consult which captures pre-consultation data. Patient communication companies such as WELL Health and patient journey platforms like Luma Health continue to provide value to partners in this space and beyond. TMC Innovation is looking for promising startup companies that have solutions to empower our primary care providers.
Texas Medical Center Innovation has opened applications for TMCx, a medical device and digital health accelerator focused on building clinical partnerships. Through TMCx, companies access clinical champions and stakeholders across the TMC campus. Participating companies develop relationships with health systems toward development of a pilot, clinical study, or joint development agreement. Discover more and apply here.
Written in collaboration with Anna Vu.