Home > Companies > C-Suite On Deck > Q&A with Kolja Eikelmann, CMO & Head of Marketing at PPG Industries

Q&A with Kolja Eikelmann, CMO & Head of Marketing at PPG Industries

MEDIA 7 | June 20, 2019

CMO & Head of Marketing at PPG Industries
Kolja Eikelmann, CMO & Head of Marketing at PPG Industries is a forward thinking and result-driven Marketing expert with 20 years of experience in the FMCG marketing industry. 

In this Q&A, Kolja shares his unique marketing experiences and gives us interesting insights about PPG Industries, a global supplier of paints, coatings, optical products, and specialty materials which is driving innovation, sustainability and color in the industry.

MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into Marketing?
KOLJA EIKELMANN: I wouldn’t be able to say when I first realised marketing was the path for me, but I think it’s been evident my whole life that I’m interested in the diversity that marketing allows. Since childhood, I have always been so fascinated with the details of a product, no matter what it is. I have an endless sense of curiosity and I think that was the major driving factor for me to enter the world of marketing.

I realised marketing might be for me when I discovered the unique opportunity it offers to be involved in all spectrums of the business; not just advertising, but also in creating solutions and analysing outcomes. The overarching goal is always to make a real difference and help people in their daily lives, and marketing allows you to both be a part of the solution as well as a witness to the outcomes.

My job with PPG is very colourful – just like my company! Within my one job title I get to explore innovation, creativity and analysis. This variety has always been appealing to me.

M7: You have an exemplary marketing experience of more than 20 years in the FMCG industry. How have the marketing dynamics changed over these years and what tactics do you feel modern marketers should adopt, to survive in this competitive world?
KE: As you would expect of any industry in the 21st century, marketing is constantly changing and increasing in complexity in this digital age. The increasing presence of digital media and the growing demand for ease-of-access online services, has resulted in the field growing broader than ever before. The possibilities now are numerous, but they are fragmented; you must be truly dedicated to the field to build the knowledge base of marketing tools required to thrive in such a climate. Ultimately, PPG wants to produce work that has the greatest impact on businesses, this was arguably easier in the past when you had a traditional, simple media mix, as opposed to now when success depends on mastering traditional media and online outlets, social media and digital advertising tools.

For example, it can be easy to spend a lot of money on Google ads that are expected to be high value, but instead, organizations might see greater return on sales if the money had been allocated to a faster and more agile response to SEO.

In marketing, it can be easy to get caught up in the creativity of the work – as that is most often our strength – but not fully immersing yourself in the analytical side of things is a mistake that is often reflected in outcomes. I would recommend that every marketer should always make sure to know their KPIs inside and out and try to get as familiar with Excel spreadsheets and analysis as they are with the creative work.

In this constantly changing modern landscape, marketing has become even more important than ever before. Specifically, in the paints and coatings industry, marketing was a late bloomer as it has been driven by shelf sales for so long. However, as an industry we are refocusing on innovation and purpose; and pushing the boundaries on what is expected from paints and coatings and what they can do. PPG aims to improve and protect the world through our products – but none of this is possible without proper marketing to support the business.


"A focus on our customers, our innovation, our people and our entrepreneurial way of working – are all elements that inspired the One PPG vision, and what most accurately represents the key to our successful way of working."

M7: Your work experience spans across highly complex matrix organizations to entrepreneurial and start-up businesses. What do you believe is your driving force behind your proven track records and achievements?
KE: I am very proud to say I have left behind a strong track record of positive differences within the companies in which I am working. Although I have worked in many different, seemingly unrelated industries, the knowledge and tools that I learnt at each step along the way continue to prove invaluable for each new challenge I face. From paints, to dairy, to cosmetics – your collective marketing knowledge spans across whichever business you are a part of. Once you’ve built up this knowledge base, the true challenge is not having the tools but knowing which tools to use and when.

I have always been most drawn to companies that challenge me to make a difference. This is how I’ve shaped my career and how I made my decisions on where to work.

M7: How well do you believe that a service-oriented and data-driven leadership approach along with business strategy and operational execution can lead to company growth with an upsurge in revenue/sales?
KE: I strongly believe in a service-oriented and data-driven leadership approach, as well as incorporating social and ethical capabilities. Data-driven leadership is the key to the future – in many industries – but especially in marketing. The industry today is all about knowing your KPIs and business cases, which are data rich. Working in marketing is about being able to positively impact business outcomes, and that ultimately boils down to the ability to add value for your customers and consumers. Focussing on PPG work as a service-oriented industry highlights the need for data availability – both in that of the business and that of our customers – to be able to best consult and serve. Knowing your data is the key currency for success in the 21st century.

Data analysis can provide us with information such as click through rates and viewership. We are able to access tools now that, if used right, can prove invaluable to achieving successful outcomes. Being able to use this information to your advantage will allow you to instantly see whether your data retrieval is successful. Every business case and KPI that you set out to tackle can then be achieved using the data to measure sales growth.

M7: PPG Industries has been included in the list of American Fortune 500 companies. What do you think has made it possible to build a fortune for PPG industries?
KE: PPG has a strong culture of building the business across SBUs through investment, innovation and acquisition. We are one of the leading and largest paints and coatings companies in the world. This status is maintained by PPG’s culture of investing in R&D and constantly challenging the boundaries and expectations of the coatings world.

The opportunity to build our position as a market leader in many countries around the world is only possible through our global network and international approach. For example, our Alison Park facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a major hub of innovation for PPG – but work that is done there is often inspired by an idea from Europe, that itself was driven by a customer need from Asia. To stay on the frontlines we can’t sit still and be complacent. Our recent acquisition of Hemmelrath and a new plant in Tianjin, China is evidence of our strategy to expand our foothold, our abilities to deliver for customers and our capacity for innovation to maintain our position as a market leader.

PPG has many moving parts which all function in different areas of the world across different business units, but our central goal is to add customer value. A focus on our customers, our innovation, our people and our entrepreneurial way of working – are all elements that inspired the One PPG vision, and what most accurately represents the key to our successful way of working.


"Data-driven leadership is the key to the future – in many industries – but especially in marketing."


M7: How is PPG Industries’ tagline ‘WE PROTECT AND BEAUTIFY THE WORLD’ serving its purpose of enhancing the world through its paints and coating solutions?
KE: PPG is in every part of daily life – even if you don’t realise it. You touch and feel PPG in your living environment practically 24/7: from your car to an airplane, to your refrigerator, to your laptop or even your soda can. This tagline reflects how PPG’s paints and coatings cover every part of life. PPG products provide the expected functionality of adding a colour or coating to an object, but even more than that, PPG products enhance the longevity of an item and increase its appeal. Whether it is an electronics coating that makes a laptop feel smooth to the touch, or a coating that protects the body of an airplane from overheating in the sun. PPG’s mission is not to provide what is expected, but to offer innovative solutions to questions no one expected an answer for.

Environmental impact is one of the greatest concerns of the 21st century, for both our customers and us as manufacturers. As a business founded on mass production, it is our responsibility – and therefore our challenge – to be as positive a force as possible in the fight against climate change. This is why so many of our modern products are developed to align to both PPG’s mission of protecting the world and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals: boat coatings that reduce friction and therefore reduce fuel consumption, aircraft windows that don’t need frames to reduce plane weight to help minimise carbon emissions, electric vehicle battery coatings that enable cars to travel for significantly longer periods of time per charge, increasing the viability of electric vehicles on roads. We are innovating with purpose – for the public, for our customers, for consumers and for our own PPG people.
The world cannot function without paints and coatings in our everyday life, and that’s why PPG’s tagline is so powerful. If we are going to continue to be a worldwide presence, we want to be sure we are making the world a more beautiful place in the most long-term, stable way possible.

M7: You have taken transformational business initiatives to foster incremental business changes and drive cultural change throughout the organization especially in dynamic business sectors. What are some of the advantages of taking such timely measures?
KE: As part of the global shift towards greater digitization, businesses have the opportunity to drive cultural change. Digital transformation is a key component, especially as peoples' buying habits are evolving and changing how they purchase products. This is acutely felt in Europe, with its variety of different countries, cultures and languages. From a marketing standpoint, the industry is offering incremental business changes in this new culture of on-demand. In the age of Amazon and digital transformation, people want easier and faster solutions from the paints and coatings industry. Customers want to get the job done as quickly and as easily as possible with support from the supplier. As a result, PPG is innovating to be more agile and fast, by developing architectural paints that take less time to dry or offering customers a more on-demand paint matching experience.


"A successful campaign is one tailored to the needs, style and audience of the customer."

M7: You have an amazing experience of working with top leading companies like Nestle, L’Oreal and currently PPG Industries, how influential was your role in transforming marketing tactics for these organizations?
KE: My roles in these organizations were really diverse. For L’Oréal, I was more into sales and worked within category management. This later proved very influential for my future marketing career as it introduced me to the integration between marketing and sales in helping to serve customers in the best way possible. Integrated communication between marketing and sales is an essential tool in connecting both ends with the business purpose while still staying customer focused. You need to drive your campaigns forward and also sell your products in a much more complex way that is completely focused on the customer’s view. In order to do this, you need to know what is best for the customer when you place your products within a category role. This requires a lot of analytical skills to convince a customer what is best for them. You need to oversee the whole thing and act almost as both an internal and external consultant for your company. This whole picture view of the marketing process really influenced my journey and helped me strengthen my skillset for my future roles, such as when I was head of digital for Nestle.

When it comes to marketing, you can’t just pick the most creative, 360 media campaign available and offer it to the client. A successful campaign is one tailored to the needs, style and audience of the customer. To be best at what we do, it is essential to build an in-depth understanding of your customer’s view and what is best for them. This experience came with me into my work for PPG in using this knowledge to establish myself in a more leading role. At PPG I am also the communicator in the company and need to understand everyone’s view and connect with all the different departments. I am not only the marketer in my department but I’m also responsible for looking at the whole value chain within this digital leading role. PPG has experienced double-digit growth in the past two years in both B2B and B2C and this success is down to how closely we collaborate here.

M7: Kolja, what is your super power?
KE: I would say my super power is a combination of my visual and analytical skills, articulated through my courageous and enthusiastic mindset. Being able to both develop a specialized skill set and confidently acknowledge my areas of expertise and strength makes for a very beneficial cocktail to drive progress. Having empathy and other social skills are important to exert a positive influence within my team at PPG. However, these qualities should also be backed by facts – knowledge, experience and history -- which is a combination I have not seen in many people. Being self-confident and believing in my strengths is a powerful tool in business, and something that has greatly helped me along the way.

M7: Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?
KE: I’m really driven by being up to date and well informed in as many areas as possible, and I would advise my younger self to do the exact same. I’ve always been a very curious person, but I would tell my younger self to be even more so and to take in as much information as possible. In this fast-moving world, that is just getting faster as we become more digital, there is always something new to learn or discover. If you remain stuck in one point of view or one way of thinking, you are already behind the curve. Stay flexible, stay interested and always remain in a constant state of learning.

ABOUT PPG INDUSTRIES

PPG: WE PROTECT AND BEAUTIFY THE WORLD™
At PPG (NYSE:PPG), we work every day to develop and deliver the paints, coatings and materials that our customers have trusted for more than 135 years. Through dedication and creativity, we solve our customers’ biggest challenges, collaborating closely to find the right path forward. With headquarters in Pittsburgh, we operate and innovate in more than 70 countries and reported net sales of $15.4 billion in 2018. We serve customers in construction, consumer products, industrial and transportation markets and aftermarkets. To learn more, visit www.ppg.com.

More C-Suite on deck

Q&A with Matthew Sappern, CEO at PeriGen

Media 7 | September 30, 2021

Matthew Sappern, CEO at PeriGen, had served as a corporate officer for Eclipsys Corporation before and during its merger with Allscripts. Leading up to the merger, Sappern served as Eclipsys Senior Vice President of Professional Services, responsible for the company’s $100M consulting, implementation and training P&L. Sappern joined Eclipsys in January 2003, as VP of product development in the software engineering division. Over a time of three years, he came to run 75 percent of the development operation and oversaw the delivery of three critical enterprise software releases in record time for the company.

Read More

Q&A with Anna Baecklund, CTO & Founder at Oppioo

Media 7 | September 21, 2021

Anna Baecklund, CTO & Founder at Oppioo, is a Data Scientist Leader, A skilled communicator capable of explaining complex issues with clarity to diverse audiences. With MSc in engineering physics, Anna is responsible for leading innovation using data science including the development of new insights, advanced modelling techniques, and AI capabilities. With Oppio, An AI companion app, she aims to motivate cancer patients who want to speed up and improve their rehab.

Read More

Q&A with Bill Gianoukos, CEO at Goodpath

Media 7 | September 14, 2021

Bill Gianoukos, Co-founder and CEO of Goodpath, started Goodpath in 2018 with a mission to improve the ‘Quality Of Life’ for those suffering from chronic conditions. He is also a Mentor at Techstars, and an Investor at Wappier: Intelligent Revenue Management.

Read More

Q&A with Matthew Sappern, CEO at PeriGen

Media 7 | September 30, 2021

Matthew Sappern, CEO at PeriGen, had served as a corporate officer for Eclipsys Corporation before and during its merger with Allscripts. Leading up to the merger, Sappern served as Eclipsys Senior Vice President of Professional Services, responsible for the company’s $100M consulting, implementation and training P&L. Sappern joined Eclipsys in January 2003, as VP of product development in the software engineering division. Over a time of three years, he came to run 75 percent of the development operation and oversaw the delivery of three critical enterprise software releases in record time for the company.

Read More

Q&A with Anna Baecklund, CTO & Founder at Oppioo

Media 7 | September 21, 2021

Anna Baecklund, CTO & Founder at Oppioo, is a Data Scientist Leader, A skilled communicator capable of explaining complex issues with clarity to diverse audiences. With MSc in engineering physics, Anna is responsible for leading innovation using data science including the development of new insights, advanced modelling techniques, and AI capabilities. With Oppio, An AI companion app, she aims to motivate cancer patients who want to speed up and improve their rehab.

Read More

Q&A with Bill Gianoukos, CEO at Goodpath

Media 7 | September 14, 2021

Bill Gianoukos, Co-founder and CEO of Goodpath, started Goodpath in 2018 with a mission to improve the ‘Quality Of Life’ for those suffering from chronic conditions. He is also a Mentor at Techstars, and an Investor at Wappier: Intelligent Revenue Management.

Read More

Related News

HEALTHCARE ANALYTICS

Tomorrow Health Cements its Focus as the Premier Partner for Home-based Care Providers by Closing its Medical Supply Business

PRNewswire | May 29, 2023

Tomorrow Health, an innovator in home-based care, announced that it has closed its first-party home medical equipment (HME) supply business to remove barriers and unlock new opportunities for its network of home-based care providers. Tomorrow Health serves as a partner for home-based care needs to leading suppliers, including AdaptHealth, Apria, Home Care Delivered, Lincare, and Rotech Healthcare, providing each with holistic technology solutions that streamlines end-to-end workflows and enables unparalleled operational efficiency at scale. Tomorrow Health's vision has always been to restore the home as the primary point of care. Initially, it sought to achieve this vision by operating its own home medical equipment (HME) supplier business. A more powerful opportunity to shift care to the home quickly revealed itself: the transformation of the end-to-end process of how HME is ordered, processed, and delivered to patients at scale. Tomorrow Health evolved, building a market-leading connective technology and service layer that coordinates care seamlessly across payers, referring providers, patients and home-based care suppliers. The company's unique approach, built on its prior learnings as an HME supplier business, has delivered technology that supercharges home-based care provider growth via high-quality, cost-effective care. With its technology seeing rapid adoption and impact, Tomorrow Health has formally closed its HME supplier business. Tomorrow Health's decision to concentrate its focus on technology for supplier partners comes as the broader healthcare ecosystem shifts its strategic priorities and seeks greater support in enabling the delivery and reimbursement of quality home-based care. Nearly 91% of health plans have recently indicated plans to move more care to the home. HME suppliers are facing a critical challenge: meeting that demand in an operationally efficient manner. A recent HME delivery cost survey found that new personal protective equipment expenses, plus longer round trips with associated fuel and labor expenses, have increased overall delivery costs by 30% or more for most suppliers. "HME suppliers are a critical lever to shift care to the home, which is often overlooked by payors," Vijay Kedar, CEO and Co-Founder, Tomorrow Health." Tomorrow Health's technology and unique position with payors enables change end-to-end, supporting everything from prescription to reimbursement while arming suppliers with valuable insights that can drive business growth and ensure positive experiences for every single stakeholder." "Tomorrow Health is not only focused on delivering high-quality, innovative technology to suppliers in need of operational efficiencies, but they're also connecting with suppliers to understand what is and isn't working for them," said Tom Ryan, President and CEO, American Association for Homecare (AAHomecare), an advocacy organization for home-care providers and DME and HME companies. "By actively seeking out and listening to feedback from the supplier community, Tomorrow Health has been able to build a solution that drives definitively better outcomes for everyone." Many suppliers today receive HME orders from one-size-fits-all digital solutions that don't meet payor requirements or specific clinical needs. Tomorrow Health delivers an intuitive, precise digital order to suppliers within its platform, prioritizing urgent, same-day orders and queuing other provider orders as they come in, in compliance with payor requirements. Tomorrow Health has reduced supplier operating expenses by up to 24%. All necessary documentation is included in the order, with 87% of orders having enough information to be immediately serviceable. The supplier also has the ability to communicate with all necessary parties, including payers and providers, about the order through the platform. "Our partnership with Tomorrow Health enables us to automate and dramatically scale Home Care Delivered's best-in-class customer onboarding process, while simultaneously allowing us to drive the clinical, quality, and financial outcomes that are needed by patients, their healthcare providers, and payers," said Lowell Price, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Chief Growth Officer of Home Care Delivered. "While there are other e-platforms in the market today that we support, none are more strategically aligned to us in both commitment and capability to delivering value-based care in DME than Tomorrow Health. We couldn't be more excited about our partnership." About Tomorrow Health Tomorrow Health builds technology that improves the way home-based care is ordered, delivered, and paid for. Today, the home-based care ecosystem is fragmented, confusing, and expensive, costing the healthcare system billions of dollars annually. Tomorrow Health manages and improves every step of the process, using technology-driven matching and considering quality, specialization, insurance coverage, and geography to pair patients with appropriate suppliers of more than 40,000 products and services, leading to improved patient health results and lowered costs. Tomorrow Health partners with more than 125 leading health plans and health systems nationwide, including Pennsylvania's Geisinger Health Plan, and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, BOND, Obvious Ventures, BoxGroup, Rainfall Ventures, and Sound Ventures.

Read More

HEALTHCARE ANALYTICS

Revolutionizing Senior Healthcare with Virtual Reality, Viva Vita and Waya Health Announce Partnership

PRNewswire | May 30, 2023

Viva Vita and Waya Health are joining forces to simplify the integration of virtual reality (VR) technology for healthcare providers. Through this collaboration, patients, including residents in senior living communities, will gain access to advanced VR experiences that will revolutionize their daily healthcare journey. The healthcare sector's growing interest in VR poses challenges due to fragmented solutions. Viva Vita and Waya Health's partnership offers a unified offering on a single VR headset, facilitating easier integration with existing healthcare systems and workflows and reducing the complexity and costs associated with implementing VR technology. "This collaboration - or 'Coalition' - we're forming could not come at a better time," said Carleigh Berryman, CEO of Viva Vita."Healthcare providers can now bundle the Waya Health and Viva Vita product suite, saving time, effort, resources, all while gaining access to a comprehensive suite of VR solutions that cater to their specific needs." By seamlessly integrating VR solutions across health systems, senior living brands, rehabilitation systems, and more, Viva Vita and Waya Health aspire to drive industry-wide transformation. "This partnership brings us closer to our mission of enabling immersive patient experiences, empowering providers with new tools and insights, and optimizing healthcare systems for improved efficiency and effectiveness. ," said Joe Morgan MD, President at Waya Health. "Leveraging the proven technologies of Waya Health and Viva Vita, along with our combined know-how for success at scale, we are in a position to disrupt healthcare in ways that were previously unimaginable." About Waya Health Waya Health was founded by clinicians who are leveraging technology to improve the lives of patients, colleagues, and what is possible in healthcare. As a healthcare company first, we are committed to creating better patient outcomes, whether that is less pain, reduced anxiety, a speedier recovery or reducing the need for drugs. The Waya platform is a unified virtual reality platform that allows this technology to be deployed in the most sensible, cost-effective, and versatile way. We constantly strive to add new capabilities as the potential of this technology is discovered, tested and proven. Our values are in line with the patients, doctors, and the medical support staff we empower with our leading-edge technological tools. We are clinicians harnessing the power of technology.

Read More

HEALTH TECHNOLOGY

Apollo Launches Next-Generation Platform for Rapid Insights in Healthcare and Life Sciences

Businesswire | June 01, 2023

Apollo Intelligence (Apollo), a leading provider of real-time global data and insights to the healthcare and life science industries, announces the launch of its next-generation market insights technology platform to support rapid insights and data collection in the healthcare and life science industries. The advanced platform is fueled by the company’s ongoing investments in its core technologies, propelled by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). With a modern enterprise data architecture, built from best-in-class technologies, Apollo’s next-generation platform provides customers with advanced capabilities to support their progressive insight and data needs. The platform uses ML sampling intelligence to reach global healthcare professional (HCP) panelists with higher efficiency, offering the right research opportunities to the right HCP stakeholders, at the right place and time. This new, advanced capability fosters a seamless cycle of targeted interaction and ongoing engagement that enables greater speed-to-insight and higher quality data. For HCPs, Apollo’s enhanced routing capabilities mean they receive more relevant and matched opportunities to share their expertise and amplify their voice. Capabilities currently rolling out in beta include natural language processing (NLP) advancements in open text analysis for tagging, coding, ML-enhanced adverse event (AE) detection, and reporting. ML-based honoraria optimization for panel engagement. dynamic profiling and validation. In the second half of 2023, these foundational capabilities will support further ML and AI advancements focused on sentiment analysis for free text, survey automation, and expanded global capabilities. “Apollo has been on a multi-year, multimillion-dollar journey building towards this moment when our investments in data and technology would allow us to take advantage of advances in machine learning and data science applications to provide our clients with an unmatched service experience,” said Daniel S. Fitzgerald, president and CEO of Apollo Intelligence. “Life science companies will be able to see the immediate impact in speed and data quality as we leverage machine learning to intelligently sample our HCP communities for data collection. These advances are just the beginning for Apollo as we continue our innovative journey and extend our robust roadmap to deliver higher quality data, speed-to-insight, and advanced analytics and data visualization for our clients.” Apollo has made sizable investments in its platform since 2019 in anticipation of this launch. Its relationship with Frazier Healthcare Partners, in June 2022, has accelerated investment in these areas, with Frazier and Apollo sharing a vision for technological innovation within the healthcare data and insights market. The Frazier Data and AI Center of Excellence has been an instrumental partner in rapidly advancing these modern elements and realizing Apollo’s technology vision. Apollo Intelligence Apollo’s mission is to accelerate health innovation to improve life. In 2019, Apollo launched with the acquisition of InCrowd, a pioneer of real-time, automated insights for the life science industry. In 2020, Apollo strengthened its global reach by acquiring Survey Healthcare Global, a global market leader of first-party healthcare data collection and custom survey solutions. Apollo provides access to 2 million healthcare stakeholders worldwide—including physicians, patients, caregivers, and allied healthcare professionals. Apollo’s 250+ employees support top global pharmaceutical brands, market research agencies, and consultancies across 13 different countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Apollo is a portfolio company of Frazier Healthcare Partners.

Read More

HEALTHCARE ANALYTICS

Tomorrow Health Cements its Focus as the Premier Partner for Home-based Care Providers by Closing its Medical Supply Business

PRNewswire | May 29, 2023

Tomorrow Health, an innovator in home-based care, announced that it has closed its first-party home medical equipment (HME) supply business to remove barriers and unlock new opportunities for its network of home-based care providers. Tomorrow Health serves as a partner for home-based care needs to leading suppliers, including AdaptHealth, Apria, Home Care Delivered, Lincare, and Rotech Healthcare, providing each with holistic technology solutions that streamlines end-to-end workflows and enables unparalleled operational efficiency at scale. Tomorrow Health's vision has always been to restore the home as the primary point of care. Initially, it sought to achieve this vision by operating its own home medical equipment (HME) supplier business. A more powerful opportunity to shift care to the home quickly revealed itself: the transformation of the end-to-end process of how HME is ordered, processed, and delivered to patients at scale. Tomorrow Health evolved, building a market-leading connective technology and service layer that coordinates care seamlessly across payers, referring providers, patients and home-based care suppliers. The company's unique approach, built on its prior learnings as an HME supplier business, has delivered technology that supercharges home-based care provider growth via high-quality, cost-effective care. With its technology seeing rapid adoption and impact, Tomorrow Health has formally closed its HME supplier business. Tomorrow Health's decision to concentrate its focus on technology for supplier partners comes as the broader healthcare ecosystem shifts its strategic priorities and seeks greater support in enabling the delivery and reimbursement of quality home-based care. Nearly 91% of health plans have recently indicated plans to move more care to the home. HME suppliers are facing a critical challenge: meeting that demand in an operationally efficient manner. A recent HME delivery cost survey found that new personal protective equipment expenses, plus longer round trips with associated fuel and labor expenses, have increased overall delivery costs by 30% or more for most suppliers. "HME suppliers are a critical lever to shift care to the home, which is often overlooked by payors," Vijay Kedar, CEO and Co-Founder, Tomorrow Health." Tomorrow Health's technology and unique position with payors enables change end-to-end, supporting everything from prescription to reimbursement while arming suppliers with valuable insights that can drive business growth and ensure positive experiences for every single stakeholder." "Tomorrow Health is not only focused on delivering high-quality, innovative technology to suppliers in need of operational efficiencies, but they're also connecting with suppliers to understand what is and isn't working for them," said Tom Ryan, President and CEO, American Association for Homecare (AAHomecare), an advocacy organization for home-care providers and DME and HME companies. "By actively seeking out and listening to feedback from the supplier community, Tomorrow Health has been able to build a solution that drives definitively better outcomes for everyone." Many suppliers today receive HME orders from one-size-fits-all digital solutions that don't meet payor requirements or specific clinical needs. Tomorrow Health delivers an intuitive, precise digital order to suppliers within its platform, prioritizing urgent, same-day orders and queuing other provider orders as they come in, in compliance with payor requirements. Tomorrow Health has reduced supplier operating expenses by up to 24%. All necessary documentation is included in the order, with 87% of orders having enough information to be immediately serviceable. The supplier also has the ability to communicate with all necessary parties, including payers and providers, about the order through the platform. "Our partnership with Tomorrow Health enables us to automate and dramatically scale Home Care Delivered's best-in-class customer onboarding process, while simultaneously allowing us to drive the clinical, quality, and financial outcomes that are needed by patients, their healthcare providers, and payers," said Lowell Price, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Chief Growth Officer of Home Care Delivered. "While there are other e-platforms in the market today that we support, none are more strategically aligned to us in both commitment and capability to delivering value-based care in DME than Tomorrow Health. We couldn't be more excited about our partnership." About Tomorrow Health Tomorrow Health builds technology that improves the way home-based care is ordered, delivered, and paid for. Today, the home-based care ecosystem is fragmented, confusing, and expensive, costing the healthcare system billions of dollars annually. Tomorrow Health manages and improves every step of the process, using technology-driven matching and considering quality, specialization, insurance coverage, and geography to pair patients with appropriate suppliers of more than 40,000 products and services, leading to improved patient health results and lowered costs. Tomorrow Health partners with more than 125 leading health plans and health systems nationwide, including Pennsylvania's Geisinger Health Plan, and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, BOND, Obvious Ventures, BoxGroup, Rainfall Ventures, and Sound Ventures.

Read More

HEALTHCARE ANALYTICS

Revolutionizing Senior Healthcare with Virtual Reality, Viva Vita and Waya Health Announce Partnership

PRNewswire | May 30, 2023

Viva Vita and Waya Health are joining forces to simplify the integration of virtual reality (VR) technology for healthcare providers. Through this collaboration, patients, including residents in senior living communities, will gain access to advanced VR experiences that will revolutionize their daily healthcare journey. The healthcare sector's growing interest in VR poses challenges due to fragmented solutions. Viva Vita and Waya Health's partnership offers a unified offering on a single VR headset, facilitating easier integration with existing healthcare systems and workflows and reducing the complexity and costs associated with implementing VR technology. "This collaboration - or 'Coalition' - we're forming could not come at a better time," said Carleigh Berryman, CEO of Viva Vita."Healthcare providers can now bundle the Waya Health and Viva Vita product suite, saving time, effort, resources, all while gaining access to a comprehensive suite of VR solutions that cater to their specific needs." By seamlessly integrating VR solutions across health systems, senior living brands, rehabilitation systems, and more, Viva Vita and Waya Health aspire to drive industry-wide transformation. "This partnership brings us closer to our mission of enabling immersive patient experiences, empowering providers with new tools and insights, and optimizing healthcare systems for improved efficiency and effectiveness. ," said Joe Morgan MD, President at Waya Health. "Leveraging the proven technologies of Waya Health and Viva Vita, along with our combined know-how for success at scale, we are in a position to disrupt healthcare in ways that were previously unimaginable." About Waya Health Waya Health was founded by clinicians who are leveraging technology to improve the lives of patients, colleagues, and what is possible in healthcare. As a healthcare company first, we are committed to creating better patient outcomes, whether that is less pain, reduced anxiety, a speedier recovery or reducing the need for drugs. The Waya platform is a unified virtual reality platform that allows this technology to be deployed in the most sensible, cost-effective, and versatile way. We constantly strive to add new capabilities as the potential of this technology is discovered, tested and proven. Our values are in line with the patients, doctors, and the medical support staff we empower with our leading-edge technological tools. We are clinicians harnessing the power of technology.

Read More

HEALTH TECHNOLOGY

Apollo Launches Next-Generation Platform for Rapid Insights in Healthcare and Life Sciences

Businesswire | June 01, 2023

Apollo Intelligence (Apollo), a leading provider of real-time global data and insights to the healthcare and life science industries, announces the launch of its next-generation market insights technology platform to support rapid insights and data collection in the healthcare and life science industries. The advanced platform is fueled by the company’s ongoing investments in its core technologies, propelled by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). With a modern enterprise data architecture, built from best-in-class technologies, Apollo’s next-generation platform provides customers with advanced capabilities to support their progressive insight and data needs. The platform uses ML sampling intelligence to reach global healthcare professional (HCP) panelists with higher efficiency, offering the right research opportunities to the right HCP stakeholders, at the right place and time. This new, advanced capability fosters a seamless cycle of targeted interaction and ongoing engagement that enables greater speed-to-insight and higher quality data. For HCPs, Apollo’s enhanced routing capabilities mean they receive more relevant and matched opportunities to share their expertise and amplify their voice. Capabilities currently rolling out in beta include natural language processing (NLP) advancements in open text analysis for tagging, coding, ML-enhanced adverse event (AE) detection, and reporting. ML-based honoraria optimization for panel engagement. dynamic profiling and validation. In the second half of 2023, these foundational capabilities will support further ML and AI advancements focused on sentiment analysis for free text, survey automation, and expanded global capabilities. “Apollo has been on a multi-year, multimillion-dollar journey building towards this moment when our investments in data and technology would allow us to take advantage of advances in machine learning and data science applications to provide our clients with an unmatched service experience,” said Daniel S. Fitzgerald, president and CEO of Apollo Intelligence. “Life science companies will be able to see the immediate impact in speed and data quality as we leverage machine learning to intelligently sample our HCP communities for data collection. These advances are just the beginning for Apollo as we continue our innovative journey and extend our robust roadmap to deliver higher quality data, speed-to-insight, and advanced analytics and data visualization for our clients.” Apollo has made sizable investments in its platform since 2019 in anticipation of this launch. Its relationship with Frazier Healthcare Partners, in June 2022, has accelerated investment in these areas, with Frazier and Apollo sharing a vision for technological innovation within the healthcare data and insights market. The Frazier Data and AI Center of Excellence has been an instrumental partner in rapidly advancing these modern elements and realizing Apollo’s technology vision. Apollo Intelligence Apollo’s mission is to accelerate health innovation to improve life. In 2019, Apollo launched with the acquisition of InCrowd, a pioneer of real-time, automated insights for the life science industry. In 2020, Apollo strengthened its global reach by acquiring Survey Healthcare Global, a global market leader of first-party healthcare data collection and custom survey solutions. Apollo provides access to 2 million healthcare stakeholders worldwide—including physicians, patients, caregivers, and allied healthcare professionals. Apollo’s 250+ employees support top global pharmaceutical brands, market research agencies, and consultancies across 13 different countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Apollo is a portfolio company of Frazier Healthcare Partners.

Read More

Spotlight

Events

The Intelligent Health Conference 2023

Conference

Intestinal Lipid Metabolism in Health and Disease

Conference

Measurement of Cardiac Function Using Pressure-Volume Loops in Swine

Webinar

Resources

resource image

MEDICAL DEVICES

Philips Image Guided Therapy Mobile C-arm System 1000 - Zenition 10

Video

resource image

DIGITAL HEALTHCARE, MEDICAL DEVICES

EMRs: The Game-Changer in Healthcare Documentation

infographic

resource image

MEDICAL DEVICES

Philips Image Guided Therapy Mobile C-arm System 1000 - Zenition 10

Video

resource image

DIGITAL HEALTHCARE, MEDICAL DEVICES

EMRs: The Game-Changer in Healthcare Documentation

infographic

resource image

MEDICAL DEVICES

Philips Ultrasound Service and Technology Maximizer Value Proposition

Video

Events