The Foursquare Framework for investing in HealthTech based on Medicine Needs and Social Needs

Krishna Yeshwant, a doctor and investor with GV, Alphabet’s venture firm, takes a lot of meetings with entrepreneurs that have lofty goals to fix health care. But different patients have different needs.

So to help entrepreneurs empathize with their users, he came up with a simple, foursquare box that he’ll scrawl on a napkin, in meetings. He drew it for me at HLTH, a major health conference, that happened in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Yeshwant came up with the idea while practicing medicine.

He soon realized that his own patients, many of whom are lower-income and struggling with complex health problems, wouldn’t adopt the same solutions as the tech workers in his Google network.

He also...