Youre a healthcare IT consultant who has been approached by a former boss and mentor who is now an angel investor and is working with a couple of venture capital firms.  Your mentor would like to invest in a healthcare start-up, but has been away from the industry for several years.  To bring herself back up to speed, she attended the 2018 HIMSS Conference in Las Vegas, which is the largest healthcare IT convention in the world.

She came away from the conference amazed by the number of IT solutions vendors that are focusing on data aggregation and analysis solutions built to support value-based care reporting (specifically, MIPS/MACRA requirements).  While she feels that this signals a hot market, shes also concerned that it could indicate market saturation.

Your mentor is likely to offer you the opportunity to lead the creation of the start-up, but shes reluctant to move forward with next steps without evaluating two, high-level options: (1) a product-focused start-up that will develop a solution that will streamline MIPS reporting for ACOs, or (2) a services-focused start-up that will provide consulting services to ACOs that are focused on checking the boxes for ACO compliance and reporting, but that need help optimizing and sustaining their internal operations and care delivery functions.

On the basis of what you know right now, which option would you recommend?

Reading for the writing:

https://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2013/09/26/disruptive-innovation-and-the-affordable-care-act/