The long-standing quadrennial dance known as the Iowa caucuses is 2 days away from commencing. This “Drivers Start Your Engines!” event essentially launches us full speed into the real presidential campaign season. Everything up until now was simply a primer, practice rounds and pilot programs.

The presidential candidates have been starting to come out with bits and pieces of their platforms. Some are on TV around the clock saying the election will come down to the economy…” it always does.”  Others will anchor to global conflict issues, promotion of clean energy and so on. Core websites housing calculated details about the candidates, how they are model Americans that truly care and touting their life successes are up and running.

Healthcare will continue its decades long tradition of being a heavily discussed national issue. But, are we in for anything different this go around? Or, will the cacophony of conversations center around the same old scripts written by a team of speech writers — “we need better access, lower costs, etc. Just look at today’s student $1.6 trillion student debt crisis…we have to help these students now; we have to make massive changes for the future generations…” We will have to see.

“Healthcare will continue its decades long tradition of being a heavily discussed national issue. But are we in for anything different this go around?”

Our leaders at 7wireVentures have been healthcare executives for nearly 25 years. So, our ask to all the presidential candidates is to focus on these three vital elements. Some are already coming out and advocating for change in one or more of these areas. This is exciting and we’re eager to see how the language, tones and details evolve in the coming months.

First of all…we must continue to cultivate true innovation.

Having been in the venture capital area for many years, we have been fortunate to see hundreds of brilliant ideas driven by impressive entrepreneurs firsthand. Healthcare is only getting more complex, chronic diseases are on the rise, we have mental health and opioid abuse crises rampant in every zip code. Finding new ways to cultivate new models, supporting upstarts through grants and other funding is an important part to a healthier nation.

Second…we must empower the patient with their data.

We are moving closer to the panacea of patients being able to access their healthcare data anytime, anywhere, but we still have a long way to go. There are a plethora of innovations in various stages of development working to breakdown the siloed walls and the presidential candidates should be in favor of doing everything we collectively can to make this a reality.

And third…it’s not just opioids, it’s our deteriorating mental health that’s a massive problem.

As we briefly mentioned in our first point, these too sad issues are ravaging our country’s happiness, health and productivity. The opioid abuse epidemic has been garnering more headlines in the last few years but in 2020 and beyond, our nation absolutely needs to continue putting more resources into helping the 20% of the population dealing with mental health issues. The pressures of life are not getting any easier on our brains and bodies.

Our country has a little over nine months to perk up our collective ears before we take to the voting booths. We at 7wireVentures are hopeful that as we move closer to November, our firm, our colleagues, patients and really everyone in the healthcare ecosystem will feel that all the candidates in the running have “wow’d” us with their commitment to focus on these three issues.