I Have Some Silly Questions
BY KIM BELLARD
Last year I used some of Alfred North Whitehead’s pithy quotations to talk about healthcare, starting with the provocative “It is the business of the future to be dangerous.” I want to revisit another of his quotations that I’d like to spend more time on: “The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.”
I can’t promise that I even have intimations of what the totally new developments are going to be, but if any industry lends itself to asking “silly” questions about it, it is healthcare. Hopefully I can at least spark some thought and discussion.
...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 18, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Healthcare Kim Bellard US Healthcare system Source Type: blogs
Coverture – Could History Repeat?
BY MIKE MAGEE
All eyes were on Wisconsin – not last week, but in 1847. That’s when Wisconsin newspaperman and editor of the Racine Argus, Marshall Mason Strong, let loose in a speech on the disturbing trend to allow women the right to buy and sell property. It seems the state had caught the bug from their neighbor, Michigan, which was considering loosening coverture laws.
“Coverture” is a word you may not know, but should. It was a series of laws derived from British Common Law that “held that no female person had a legal identity.” As legal historian Lawrence Friedman explained, “Essentially ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 17, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Coverture Lawrence Friedman Marshall Mason Strong Source Type: blogs
Obesity is crippling the US, but there are solutions
By STEPHANIE TILENIUS
Well over a third of Americans are obese — and the percentage keeps growing at a staggering rate. Over the last twenty years, obesity prevalence grew from 30% to 42% of the US population and rates of severe obesity nearly doubled. If we don’t make serious changes to our healthcare system, it’s scary to think where we’re headed in a few short years.
The fact is, obesity is far from a cosmetic condition. It can be a devastating disease and was classified as such by the American Medical Association in 2013. Obesity is the leading risk factor for deadly diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart d...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 13, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy GLP-1 Obesity Stephanie Tilenius vida health Source Type: blogs
Can we trust ChatGPT to get the basics right?
by MATTHEW HOLT
Eric Topol has a piece in his excellent newsletter Ground Truth‘s today about AI in medicine. He refers to the paper he and colleagues wrote in Nature about Generalist Medical Artificial Intelligence (the medical version of GAI). It’s more on the latest in LLM (Large Language Models). They differ from previous AI which was essentially focused on one problem, and in medicine that mostly meant radiology. Now, you can feed different types of information in and get lots of different answers.
Eric & colleagues concluded their paper with this statement: “Ultimately, GMAI promises unpreced...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 12, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Matthew Holt AI ChatGPT Eric Topol Source Type: blogs
Implementation May Be a Science, But, Alas, Medicine Remains an Art
By KIM BELLARD
I’ve been working in healthcare for over forty (!) years now, in one form or another, but it wasn’t until this past week that I heard of implementation science. Which, in a way, is sort of the problem healthcare has.
Granted, I’m not a doctor or other clinician, but everyone working in healthcare should be aware of, and thinking a lot about, “the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other EBPs into routine practice, and, hence, to improve the quality and effectiveness of health services” (Bauer, et. al).
It took a JAMA article,...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 11, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Medical Practice Health care tech Implementation Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
THCB Spotlight: Glen Tullman, Transcarent & Aneesh Chopra, Carejourney
No THCB Gang today because my kid is in the hospital (minor planned surgery) So instead I am reposting this great interview from last week.
I just got to interview Glen Tullman, CEO Transcarent (and formerly CEO of Livongo & Allscripts) & Aneesh Chopra, CEO Carejourney (and formerly CTO of the US). The trigger for the interview is a new partnership between the two companies, but the conversation was really about what’s happening with health care in the US, including how the customer experience needs to change, what level of data and information is available about providers and how that is changing, how AI...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 6, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech THCB Spotlights AI Aneesh Chopra Carejourney Glen Tullman Medicare Medicare Advantage Navigators transcarent Source Type: blogs
Trump As Catalyst For Legal and Cultural Reform
BY MIKE MAGEE
Former President Donald Trump’s indictment this morning reinforces most Americans’ belief that “No man is above the law.” But few of us have taken the time to explore what that statement means when it comes to building a healthy nation, and why we believe it.
How do you create a healthy nation?
This is at once a very simple and a very complex question. It is at the heart of successful and failed nation building.
It applies equally to a self-assessment of our approach to rebuilding Germany and Japan as part of the Marshall Plan after WW II, and to our own struggl...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 5, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Common Law Donald Trump Indictment Mike Magee Source Type: blogs
I Have No Mouth, Yet Still I Scream
BY KIM BELLARD
In light of the recent open letter from AI leaders for a moratorium on AI development, I’m declaring a temporary moratorium on writing about it too, although I doubt either one will last long (and this week’s title is, if you hadn’t noticed, an homage to Harlan Ellison’s classic dystopian AI short story). Instead, this week I want to write about plants. Specifically, the new research that suggests that plants can, in their own way, scream.
Bear with me.
To be fair, the researchers don’t use the word “scream;” they talk about “ultrasonic airborne sounds,” but just about every ac...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 4, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Non-Health Kim Bellard Microbiome Plants Source Type: blogs
Can American Democracy Pass The Trump Stress Test?
BY MIKE MAGEE
As we enter a new and potentially historic week, with a former President doing his best to reignite a Civil War in our nation, we do well to take a breath and reread James Madison’s words from Federalist No. 51. But first, a few words of history.
When it came to checks and balances in this new national experiment in self governance, the Founders, while establishing three co-equal branches, left one of those branches the task of defining by practice its own power and influence.
The new Constitution in 1787 awarded one branch, the elected Congress, the daunting power to impeach, convict and remove re...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 31, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Mike Magee Mitch McConnell Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Trump William Marbury Source Type: blogs
THCB Spotlight: Glen Tullman, Transcarent & Aneesh Chopra, Carejourney
I just got to interview Glen Tullman, CEO Transcarent (and formerly CEO of Livongo & Allscripts) & Aneesh Chopra, CEO Carejourney (and formerly CTO of the US). The trigger for the interview is a new partnership between the two companies, but the conversation was really about what’s happening with health care in the US, including how the customer experience needs to change, what level of data and information is available about providers and how that is changing, how AI is going to change data analytics, and what is actually happening with Medicare Advantage. This is a fascinating discussion with two real leade...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 31, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech THCB Spotlights AI Aneesh Chopra Carejourney Glen Tullman Medicare Medicare Advantage Navigators transcarent Source Type: blogs
THCB Gang Episode 122, Thursday March 30
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday March 30th at 1PM PT 4PM ET are Olympic rower for 2 countries and DiME CEO Jennifer Goldsack, (@GoldsackJen); patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); benefits expert Jennifer Benz (@Jenbenz); and our special guest health economist & VP of Research at Trilliant Health, Sanjula Jain @sanjula_jain.
If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Matthew Holt (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 30, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Abdul Ghafar Tags: THCB Gang jennifer benz Jennifer Goldsack Matthew Holt Michael Millenson Sanjula jain Source Type: blogs
AI: Not Ready, Not Set – Go!
By KIM BELLARD
I feel like I’ve written about AI a lot lately, but there’s so much happening in the field. I can’t keep up with the various leading entrants or their impressive successes, but three essays on the implications of what we’re seeing struck me: Bill Gates’ The Age of AI Has Begun, Thomas Friedman’s Our New Promethean Moment, and You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills by Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin. All three essays speculate that we’re at one of the big technological turning points in human history.
We’re not ready.
The subtitle ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 27, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech AI Health care tech Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
Matthew ’s health care tidbits: The drug model for DTx was wrong
Each time I send out the THCB Reader, our newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB (Sign up here!) I include a brief tidbits section. Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt
If you were to look at pharmaceuticals in the US you might make three observations. 1) They are the most important way health conditions are helped, cured or eradicated. 2) The way they are delivered to patients (via pharmacies) is very badly integrated with the health care delivery system. 3) They are way too expensive.
OK, so those are my observations not yours but I think ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 24, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Matthew Holt digital therapeutics dtx Pear Therapeutics Source Type: blogs
Nils Bottler, Angelini Ventures
I’ve been friends with Roberto Ascione for many years. Roberto is a keen Napoli fan who on the side runs the Healthware Group and also the Frontiers Health Conference that I’ve been going to for many years (and where Jess DaMassa is co-MC). Recently Healthware acquired the media company pharmaphorum and hired star reporter (and another friend) Jonah Comstock, ex MobiHealthNews and HIMSS Media. This is THCB’s second cross-posting with pharmaphorum.—Matthew Holt
Nils Bottler, who recently joined Angelini Ventures as Principal, is an avid skier, surfer, and digital health investor based in Berlin. I...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 23, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care Angelini Ventures Elia Stupka Healthware Jonah Comstock Paul Tunnah pharmaphorum Roberto Ascione Source Type: blogs
Elia Stupka, Angelini Ventures
I’ve been friends with Roberto Ascione for many years. Roberto is a keen Napoli fan who on the side runs the Healthware Group and also the Frontiers Health Conference that I’ve been going to for many years (and where Jess DaMassa is co-MC). Recently Healthware acquired the media company pharmaphorum and hired star reporter (and another friend) Jonah Comstock, ex MobiHealthNews and HIMSS Media. This is THCB’s second cross-posting with pharmaphorum.—Matthew Holt
Nils Bottler, who recently joined Angelini Ventures as Principal, is an avid skier, surfer, and digital health investor based in Berlin. I...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 23, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care Angelini Ventures Elia Stupka Healthware Jonah Comstock Paul Tunnah pharmaphorum Roberto Ascione Source Type: blogs
