There's no question: Nashville reigns as the healthcare capital of the United States. If we embrace innovation, our vibrant city can retain - and expand - its leading edge.
For years, top names in healthcare have conducted industry-changing work here, while building a harmonious and collaborative community within the sector. To stay competitive, Nashville's healthcare leaders must recognize the signposts and grow accordingly. While our city boasts some of the nation's top corporate names in the industry, we are also home to hundreds of smaller, highly innovative healthcare companies working on the next wave of industry-changing solutions.
To put it in Music City terms, Nashville's current healthcare sector is akin to country music royalty. This is the golden moment - the career pinnacle - where the artist must choose. Keep blazing creative trails or fall back on greatest hits? Fortunately for Nashville, our city's inspired DNA compels us to keep moving forward, exploring new frontiers together. We will not fade into the sunset if we keep expanding our horizons.
What does that look like for our healthcare sector? Our team at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center's Project Healthcare initiative sees firsthand the power in collaboration across sectors within the industry. Much like movable social determinants of health determine roughly 80 percent of length and quality of life according to some studies, Nashville's healthcare industry's future will be determined by how much we embrace growth and innovation. We cannot afford to neglect this.
My best-case scenario would involve key players recognizing the value of Nashville healthcare innovators and entrepreneurs in telehealth, artificial intelligence and machine learning, virtual care technologies, and community and social services programs - each addressing the industry challenges of cost, access, quality, safety, and equity. This collaboration will contribute to the vibrancy of the sector and those larger institutions directly. Fortunately, many leading companies already see this as part of their corporate strategy. To progress, we must rally together to accelerate these capabilities - combining the knowledge, wisdom and experience of industry giants with the exuberance and enthusiasm of cutting edge entrepreneurs. Our entire industry will flourish if we do.
As Nashville's leading healthcare entrepreneurship initiative, Project Healthcare exists to bridge the communities of healthcare business leaders and entrepreneurs. To those who have built the Nashville healthcare sector as we know it, I offer thanks for your decades of commitment and an invitation: Come join us as we map out our future, together.
Just like Music City's greatest hits are often co-writes, collaboration will pave the way for healthcare's brightest future.
Healthcare executive Eric Thrailkill is chairman of Project Healthcare, an initiative of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center designed to provide innovators the tools and resources to successfully scale solutions targeting healthcare industry challenges. For more information, go to ec.co.
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