We have all read the articles on huge amounts of money being raised by hot, new social media software companies. Two twenty-somethings with a great idea, a Stanford pedigree and a freshly minted business plan from the Y Combinator raise $15 million dollars and move into the 18th floor of the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco. Well, that is not the way it works…  at least not in healthcare. In my experience, it involves endless meetings, lots of inane questions, and traditional Venture Capital always seem to end up at the same place:

• How long is your sales cycle? Did you really say six to twelve months?

• You mean your staff actually goes on site to train and support the client? How can that scale?

• Did you really say that you have to integrate with hospital systems and you can't just download an app or subscribe to a cloud service? That sounds way too complicated.

Now don't get me wrong, I have worked with Venture Capitalist for more than 30 years and I know some great ones, Dick Kramlich at NEA, Randy Komisar and John Doer at Kleiner Perkins, to name a few. But the Venture Capitalist landscape has changed. Funds are raising hundreds of millions of dollars, with deal size getting bigger and bigger. Valuations have grown as rapidly as planning horizons have shrunk. Deal velocity is up and patience is down.

We recently closed a Preferred Round with strategic investors, one a major vendor and the other a top-rated healthcare provider. Why would we do this? I think the number one reason is that "they get it". Not just as a financial transaction but as a shared vision for transforming healthcare. We must act and we must have strong partners that can look over the horizon.

So, we all hate going to the doctor’s office for one reason or another, whether it’s because it’s not fun being sick, you hate needles, or it’s just a pain to take time out of your busy schedule. One of my biggest pet peeves is walking into my doctor’s office, checking in with the receptionist, filling out any necessary paperwork (which is normally about fifteen pages) and then you sit. You sit and wait for what seems like a lifetime, not knowing if you will be next or if the eight people sitting there along with you will be called back before you. No one gives you any idea of a time frame on how long you will be there. Everyone has his or her face buried in a magazine and not much conversation is had.

Well, all of that is about to change. Close your eyes and picture this. You enter through large wooden doors into a beautiful lobby area. Directly in front of you is a peaceful and serene waterfall. To your right is a big screen TV that takes up the entire wall. Right next to this is a cheerful chef making delicious chocolate chip cookies or a healthy chicken salad. A smiling face then greets you and introduces himself or herself as a member of the Life Guide team.

A Life Guide meets patients immediately upon entering the clinic and redirects them to a decentralized check-in area. This private, more intimate area allows patients to feel like their visit is one-on-one. The Life Guide helps with any paperwork and gives a brief tour of the clinic, and when the caregiver is ready, the Life Guide escorts the patient to a procedure room. No longer are patients sitting in a lobby, waiting and wondering how long it will be until they are seen by a caregiver. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

Now open your eyes because this is the reality at one group of forward-thinking clinics. I recently went to a newly opened Mosaic Clinic in Kansas City, Missouri for a site visit, and as I was introducing new Voalte users to the solution, I kept asking myself, “What is this Life Guide position all about?” I learned that Life Guides are there to make patients feel as though they are not just numbers. Life Guides are welcoming, caring, and compassionate, and they help guide patients through the sometimes confusing and frustrating process of obtaining healthcare services. Most traditional clinics can make us feel like we’re trapped in the “hurry up and wait” game. We are checked in and paperwork is pushed through and we are left to wonder whether we will be there for ten minutes, one hour or half a day. In Kansas City, the status quo is no longer good enough. At Mosaic clinics, you, the patient, are the main priority from the moment you walk through those doors, and we all know there is no better feeling in the world than when someone makes you feel special. Inarguably, Life Guides are playing a critical role in solidly establishing Mosaic as a leader in this movement towards more comprehensive, personalized service. Nationwide clinics take note. We’re your patients, your customers, and THIS is what we want!

There’s no question that the social media explosion being led by companies like Facebook and Twitter is having a profound impact on healthcare. While the introduction of such innovative technology into the healthcare industry is sure to be met with fiery debate, I continue to be amazed at the rate at which it’s being adopted (as of August, there were 552 hospital Twitter accounts and 341 Youtube channels) and the uses the industry keeps finding for it.

Since February 2009, when Henry Ford Hospital performed the first live-tweeted surgery, several other hospitals have followed suit, including Voalté’s first customer and key development partner, Sarasota Memorial Hospital. The hospital used this to demonstrate a new, minimally invasive approach to treating renal cell cancer from the operating room to physicians attending the Southeastern Section of the American Urological Association’s Annual meeting in Miami.

The use of hashtags have also exploded since the first healthcare hashtag, #hcsm, appeared two years ago (What is a hashtag, you ask?).  Today, several dozen other hashtags are used, driving trending topics, discussions, and even weekly conversations such as the #hcsm chat on Sundays from 9 PM – 10 PM EST. Hashtags have become so critical to the online healthcare conversation, that when Fox ePractice  unveiled its Healthcare Hashtags Social Project to better organize the conversation, over 1 million tweets were catalogued in the first week alone.

If you stop and think about it, it’s truly quite remarkable that an industry not typically known for its early adopters has really embraced this trend and pioneered some really innovative uses for it. For a Company like Voalté, it’s validation that we’re heading in the right direction, but more importantly, it represents the opportunity for caregivers to further hone their craft on a (global) scale that was previously not possible, while making enormous strides in the way patient care is delivered.

The debate over social media’s role will surely continue for some time, but it’s exciting to think of what this may all mean for the coming year and beyond. When @Jack sent the world’s first tweet back in 2006, I don’t think he expected surgeons to be live broadcasting procedures just a few years later. Are new innovative uses just around the corner for others like Foursquare or newcomer Quora? Welcome to 2011—a new decade in healthcare.