Click here for Part I, Part II and Part III

Simplifying the health insurance market through revolutionary and easy to use analytics tools

Jay Silverstein is the CEO of Picwell, a healthcare startup dedicated to simplifying employees’ healthcare choices. Based in Philadelphia, PA, Picwell uses predictive, statistical algorithms that analyze nearly a million variables and are tailored to individual consumers’ lifestyles to deliver highly personalized, scored healthcare plan choices. The system improves incrementally with each new Picwell user, adding value and additional savings for consumers over time. Jay’s career in healthcare goes back to 1985; prior to working on Picwell, he held leadership roles at UnitedHealthcare, Medco, and Oxford Health Plans.

Jay spoke with Reid Blynn of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank for this interview.

REID BLYNN: What are your plans moving forward?

JAY SILVERSTEIN: We see the potential for Picwell as unlimited. We’re actually entering people’s homes in what’s one of the most expensive decisions they make every year, and one of the most meaningful decisions for your health, and we’re helping you get to the right place and pick the right plan within that choice. Our idea for building our brand is an Intel Inside type of approach—in other words, to work with these large aggregators, to work with the carriers, to work with the exchangers. As a consumer, because you know that Picwell gets you to the best place, you’ll look for those sites, those exchanges, those carriers that are using Picwell to help consumers or to help me make the choice I need to make. So, we see the opportunity for us to start with health, expand into other insurance products, and then who knows where the future may be from there? If we built that meaningful a brand in the insurance world, we probably could go into other large, one-time purchases where data and complexity and extremely gnarly elements are brought into play and that you need help and the powers of machine learning, data science, to get you there.

Q. What kinds of technology are you working on?

A. Some of our partners are the active deployers of various types of behavioral technologies: wearables or information and data that relates to how people live their life or how they make choices. So, in other words, if you’re an individual who’s risk-averse to the point where you would prefer to take a medication versus surgery, you’re just going to at all costs avoid invasive surgery. Well then, we should actually contemplate that information in your cluster profile in some way that, when we enable a plan for you or identify plans for you, what you’ve bought aligns itself with how you live and how you seek care. As we evolve, we’ll be working with more and more enterprises if you will and companies that are sitting on robust data sets and the challenge of our data science team and they relish this challenge is figuring out ways to weave that data into our sandbox if you will to create even greater results.

We fundamentally work on two areas within inside Picwell. One is our ability to use as little information as possible to get you to the right leaf. As we collect data from biomarkers and other behavioral things they could help us identify new leaves, if you will, and get you to that leaf.

The second thing we then do is work on how accurate we make that leaf, or that cluster, in terms of its predictive abilities with regard to utilization of services, cost of services, and the right plans for you. So, there are really two sides to the equation. The biomarkers, the Fitbits, all the kind of wearables—all of the other data sets that are out there that could possibly be woven in—are definitely in our future. We see Picwell as a tool that can deliver a more efficient and effective marketplace. I’m not sure that our tool will be the key driver of more effective delivery of care but it will be the tool that drives consumers to make better decisions with regard to the plan they purchase, which may then result in driving down other cost downstream In the early 90s when he was the head of the Institute of Medicine, Don Berwick wrote a seminal piece of work that was called “To Err is Human.” It identified that 90 thousand people a year die in hospitals. Everybody was scared. In that piece of work, Berwick was quoted and focused on what were called the “four rights”: right time, right care, right place, right cost. For the last 27 years, the health insurance industry and the health industry overall has been focused on those four rights. Well, I would offer that Picwell is bringing in the fifth right. What if I got you to the right plan to begin with, because that’s where the consumer is actually buying from and that’s the first part of the entire experience that individuals have when purchasing a plan.

Connect with Jay on LinkedIn

ABOUT NEWMARK GRUBB KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Grubb Knight Frank (NGKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NGKF’s 12,800 professionals operate from more than 370 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

With roots dating back to 1929, NGKF’s strong foundation makes it one of the most trusted names in commercial real estate. NGKF’s full-service platform comprises BGC’s real estate services segment, offering commercial real estate tenants, landlords, investors and developers a wide range of services including leasing; capital markets services, including investment sales, debt placement, appraisal, and valuation services; commercial mortgage brokerage services; as well as corporate advisory services, consulting, project and development management, and property and corporate facilities management services. For further information, visit www.ngkf.com.

NGKF is a part of BGC Partners, Inc., a leading global brokerage company servicing the financial and real estate markets. BGC’s common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol (NASDAQ: BGCP). BGC also has an outstanding bond issuance of Senior Notes due June 15, 2042, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol (NYSE: BGCA). BGC Partners is led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Howard W. Lutnick. For more information, please visit www.bgcpartners.com.

Reid Blynn, Executive Managing Director at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank (NGKF), has been a leader in Philadelphia’s commercial real estate brokerage community for nearly 30 years. Reid has completed over 1000 transactions representing over eight million square feet.

Today Reid devotes his full attention to his corporate real estate and tenant representation services practice. He has represented many Philadelphia-based corporations for corporate headquarters requirements. By concentrating his practice in representing tenant and corporate clients, Reid is able to avoid potential conflicts with the region’s property owners, thus ensuring his clients receive the full benefit of his advocacy.

Reid has close ties to the venture capital community and has represented many growing venture backed companies in the health care, IT and life sciences sectors. Long term relationships have enabled him to work outside of Philadelphia as his clients grow outside of the region. Presently, multi-market corporate work is the fastest growing sector of Reid’s practice.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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