Janna Guinen (she/hers) is the executive director of the HLTH Foundation, where she brings her knowledge of communications, partnering, strategy, and program development to promote equity, inclusion, and opportunity in healthcare. The HLTH Foundation focuses on patients, innovators, and healthcare professionals.

Alexis Anderson (she/hers) is a principal at Ipsos Healthcare Advisory, a health care consulting and market research company that helps their clients better understand the markets — and people — they serve. At Ipsos, they believe that knowledge is at the root of all good decision making, and work with pharma, medtech, life sciences, and digital innovators in the healthcare space to make the best strategic decisions using detailed analytics and thoughtful insights.

Together, Ipsos and HLTH Foundation embarked on a deep dive into techquity, culminating in their “Path to Techquity” report. Here, Alexis and Janna speak about the importance of techquity when it comes to the future of health care, health outcomes, and health equity.

---

According to “The Path to Techquity Report,” techquity is the strategic design, development, and deployment of technology to advance health equity. It encompasses the notion that technology can either support or inhibit advancements in health equity if not implemented in an intentional and inclusive manner.

---

In Full Health (IFH): What does techquity mean to you?

Alexis Anderson: To me, I think of techquity being like a bridge. On one side of the bridge, we’ve got the health care industry and its technologies which can take so many forms — patient portals, wearables, connected health devices, telehealth, virtual care, and health apps just to name a few. On the other side of the bridge are the people — all those who the health care system intends to serve. To me, techquity is the fact that for those who are comfortable, willing, and able to use health care technologies — they can cross the bridge, no problem.

But let’s look at vulnerable, underserved, marginalized communities. Those are often the folks who you might argue would benefit from healthcare technologies and innovations the most but may have the hardest time crossing that bridge to access healthtech — for a number of reasons (which we explore in our report).

However, developing new forms of healthtech isn’t the solution from a techquity perspective. While we certainly need new innovations, techquity means acknowledging that if the health care industry doesn’t go onto the bridge ourselves and meet our communities where they are at (to build a better understanding of our vulnerable and underserved and to reduce barriers to adopting healthtech for example), then the healthtech bridge remains uncrossable, no matter how impressive the healthtech may be. In sum, techquity to me is about creating solutions that help all people get from where they are to the care they need.

---

---

IFH: What are some of the biggest techquity challenges people in the U.S. face?

Janna Guinen: Digital technology and data analytics are already at the center of health care, and they’re critical to how we continue to move forward. If we don’t ensure that technology is accessible, equitable, and designed inclusively — then we’re never going to be able to rise to healthcare’s goals of healing and prevention.

To me, health care is a human right. People deserve an equitable opportunity to pursue good health. Health technology can either serve the goals of health justice, or it can dramatically worsen prospects for marginalized people.

---

---

IFH: What motivated you to create “The Path to Techquity” report — and what was that process like?

Janna Guinen: Embedding equity into healthcare product and service design is an enormous, complex challenge– and it can’t wait because healthcare is becoming more and more reliant on technology. We set out to define techquity and frame and give context to the ways technology influences equity, as a starting point. Our ultimate goal is much bigger.

Alexis Anderson: I agree. Both Ipsos and the HLTH Foundation have a shared vision to promote health equity and advance the future of health care for all — and we see techquity as being mission-critical for the healthcare system to address.

Our ultimate goal has been to do something that has never been done before — to generate insights that tangibly move the entire industry forward. That has been our “north star” guiding us along the way. We’ve tried to be conscious of taking a structured and thoughtful approach to what we do and how we get there.

For example, some of the steps we took included learning from those who have been working in this space for years (if not decades), gathering representative input from across the industry, and including both the industry and patient perspective to be as inclusive as we can be. I think the importance of the human/patient perspective can’t be understated. Its been an incredible process, and I think the collaboration with multiple different stakeholders across the industry, and this partnership with patients is what makes it unique.

Janna Guinen: This work is the product of so many individuals sharing their expertise and experience, and it’s only the beginning. We hope that, at the end of this 3-year initiative, we will have developed some basic tools — best practices, a roadmap for adoption of techquity into care design, common metrics — and that the industry will create a coalition to help healthcare organizations integrate and accredit the work of techquity so that it becomes baked into healthcare.

---

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

“The Path to Techquity”

---

IFH: What would you say are the top takeaways you hope health solution developers and investors take away from this report?

Alexis Anderson: I’d love for people to be able to feel and recognize the connection between health technology and its impact on health outcomes. Technology is so clearly integrated with our health. I hope that folks feel a sense of urgency in recognizing that the time is now to address some of these challenges. It’s not something that we can wait on.

---

The other main takeaway is really around the importance of action. It’s not enough to talk about this topic. It’s important that the industry has a clear, tangible, transparent plan for success and that we’re continuously evaluating how we’re doing along the way so that we can move the industry forward.

Alexis Anderson
Principal, Ipsos Healthcare Advisory

---

IFH: After reading the report, what are some next steps or actions people can take to center techquity in their own work or health care organizations?

Janna Guinen: I hope solution developers and investors take away some very concrete actions they can take to support health equity.

Review your data collection. Make sure that you are collecting the data that you need to understand the populations you serve and how well you’re meeting their needs.

Understand that diverse representation directly impacts the relevance and value of health innovations. Demand diversity from your business partners and invest in diverse leadership and governance in your own company.

Equitable access does not necessarily occur without effort. Solution developers need to take steps to ensure their innovations are made available in communities that have been most excluded from health care and health innovation. Investors can also influence techquity by asking more of their portfolio companies and building techquity considerations into their investment decisions.

And, I hope solution developers and investors will reach out to us and contribute to this work. We want to normalize techquity an everyday part of healthcare. It will take many kinds of experts.

IFH: What’s next for the techquity initiative?

Alexis Anderson: We’re developing an advisory committee to continue this conversation, as well as creating an industry benchmarking survey to really see what the industry is doing when it comes to techquity. We also want to generate some tailored insights around children, youth, and families and understand some of the unique nuances there. As an end goal, we are working towards coming up with best practices and guidelines to get that lay of the land to help the whole industry move forward together in terms of clear, actionable next steps. And then beyond that, the sky’s the limit.

---