A Speech For The Ages – 83 Years Ago This Christmas
By MIKE MAGEE
On the evening of December 29, 1940, with election to his 3rd term as President secured, FDR delivered these words as part of his sixteenth “Fireside Chat”: “There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness…No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it.”
Millions of Americans, and millions of Britains were tuned in that evening, as President Roosevelt made clear where he stood while carefully avoiding over-stepping his authority in a nation still in the grips of a combative and isolationist opposition party.
That very evening, the Germans Luftwaffe, launched their largest yet raid ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 22, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Non-Health Churchill Democracy FDR Hitler Mike Magee Trump Source Type: blogs
A Place to Call Home
By KIM BELLARD
Congratulations, America. We have another new record, albeit a dismal one. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there are now 653,000 homeless people, up 12% from the prior year. As one can imagine, compiling such a number is problematic at best, and no doubt misses a non-trivial number of such unfortunate people.
“Homelessness is solvable and should not exist in the United States,” said HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge. Well, yeah, like kids without enough food, pregnant women without access to adequate prenatal care, or people without health insurance, yet here we are....
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 18, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Homelessness HUD Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
AI Could Have “Unimaginable Consequences” For Democratic Societies, Says Expert.
By MIKE MAGEE
His biography states, “He speaks to philosophical questions about the fears and possibilities of new technology and how we can be empowered to shape our future. His work to bridge cultures spans artificial intelligence, cognition, language, music, creativity, ethics, society, and policy.”
He embraces the title “cross-disciplinary,” and yet his PhD thesis at UC Berkeley in 1980 “was one of the first to spur the paradigm shift toward machine learning based natural language processing technologies.” Credited with inventing and building “the world’s first global-scale online language transla...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 14, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech AI Dr. De Kai Mike Magee Source Type: blogs
From Xenobots to Anthrobots
By KIM BELLARD
There were many things I could have written bout this week – e.g., in A.I., in quantum computing, even “transparent wood” — but when I saw some news about biological robots, I knew I had my topic.
The news comes from researchers at Tufts University and Harvard’s Wyss Institute. Their paper appeared in Advanced Science, introducing “a spheroid-shaped multicellular biological robot (biobot) platform” that they fondly dubbed “Anthrobots.” Importantly, the Anthrobots are made from human cells.
Let’s back up. In 2020, senior researcher Michael Levin, Ph.D., who holds positions at ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 13, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Biological Robots Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
The Courage of Corporate America is Needed to End America ’ s Opioid Crisis
By RYAN HAMPTON
A Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll published in July found that three in ten U.S. adults (29%) said they had someone in their family who struggled with opioid dependence. Also surprising, and encouraging, was the statistic that 90% support increasing access to opioid use disorder treatment programs in their communities.
As a person in recovery from opioid use disorder and advocate, my read on this data set is that the public support is there. Now more than ever, we need leaders in healthcare, public policy, and corporate America to have the courage to advance effective treatment options. T...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 11, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy addiction Albertsons DEA Opiods Ryan Hampton Source Type: blogs
I ’ m on The HealthTech Marketing Show
As you read this I am winging my way to Tokyo to be at the Health Tech Sum Japan 2023, which means no THCB Gang. So to tide you over I am letting you imagine you’re listening to me there, but here! Adam Turinas, a fellow expat Brit (and Chelsea fan) had me on his podcast, The HealthTech Marketing Show this week. Half an hour of whether Digital Health is Dead and what that means–Matthew Holt (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 8, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Matthew Holt Adam Turinas digital health Health Launchpad HIMSS The Health Tech Marketing Show Source Type: blogs
Lead Pipe Cinch
By KIM BELLARD
The term “lead pipe cinch” means something that is very easy or certain. Here’s two things that are lead pipe cinches: first, that ingesting lead, such as from the water or the air, is bad for us. It’s especially bad for children, whose cognitive abilities can be impaired. Second, that the Biden Administration’s latest proposal to reduce the lead in our drinking water is not going to accomplish that.
The new proposed rules would require that lead service lines be replaced within ten years; there are estimated to still be some 9.2 million such lines in the U.S. The trouble is, no one really kn...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 7, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Kim Bellard Lead public health Source Type: blogs
Where is AI in Medicine Going? Ask The Onion.
By MIKE MAGEE
One of the top ten headlines of all time created by the satirical geniuses at The Onion was published 25 years ago this December. It read, “God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy. ‘No,’ Says God.”
The first paragraph of that column introduced us to Timmy Yu, an optimistic 7-year old, who despite the failures of the health system had held on to his “precious dream.” As the article explained, “From the bottom of his heart, he has hoped against hope that God would someday hear his prayer to walk again. Though many thought Timmy’s heavenly plea would never be answered, his dream finally...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 6, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech AI Cris Ross John Halamka Mayo Clinic Mike Magee Source Type: blogs
Patients are Not “Consumers”: My Cancer Story
By JEFF GOLDSMITH
On Christmas Eve 2014, I received a present of some profoundly unwelcome news: a 64 slice CT scan confirming not only the presence of a malignant tumor in my neck, but also a fluid filled mass the size of a man’s finger in my chest cavity outside the lungs. Two days earlier, my ENT surgeon in Charlottesville, Paige Powers, had performed a fine needle aspiration of a suspicious almond-shaped enlarged lymph node, and the lab returned a verdict of “metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck with an occult primary tumor”.
I had worked in healthcare for nearly forty years when ca...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 5, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Medical Practice The Business of Health Care Cancer Jeff Goldsmith Medicare Advantage Patient Experience Source Type: blogs
My Cancer Story
By JEFF GOLDSMITH
On Christmas Eve 2014, I received a present of some profoundly unwelcome news: a 64 slice CT scan confirming not only the presence of a malignant tumor in my neck, but also a fluid filled mass the size of a man’s finger in my chest cavity outside the lungs. Two days earlier, my ENT surgeon in Charlottesville, Paige Powers, had performed a fine needle aspiration of a suspicious almond-shaped enlarged lymph node, and the lab returned a verdict of “metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck with an occult primary tumor”.
I had worked in healthcare for nearly forty years when ca...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 5, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Medical Practice The Business of Health Care Cancer Jeff Goldsmith Medicare Advantage Patient Experience Source Type: blogs
Stephanie Strong, CEO, Boulder
Stephanie Strong is the CEO of Boulder, which has been blazing a trail in the virtual treatment of substance use disorder. She left venture capital to start the company and has been steadily building its capabilities and reach. We talked in depth about how Boulder helps its patients, who are predominantly on Medicaid and in general tend–as you’d expect–not to have easy circumstances. One remarkable thing Stephanie has done is spearhead resistance to the DEA’s proposal to ban telehealth prescribing of the anti-addiction drug Buprenorphine. And it looks like that campaign has been successful. that alo...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 4, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Medical Practice Buprenorphine DEA opiates Stephanie Strong Source Type: blogs
NODE.Health ’ s Digital Medicine Conference
Next week is the NODE.Health Digital Medicine Conference in New York. Dec 6-8. It features a great line up of speakers and digital health tech luminaries & THCB readers can get a 30% discount using the code THCB30. Register here (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 1, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech NODE.health Source Type: blogs
THCB Gang Special: Episode 138, Thursday 30 November 2023 with Jen Goldsack
On #THCBGang today we have a special solo episode with Olympic rower for 2 countries and Digital Medicine Society CEO Jennifer Goldsack, (@GoldsackJen) joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy). It’s at at 1pm PST 4pm EST on Thursday November 30. Find out about what DiME is and does, and what projects it is pushing forward in the future of health tech.
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels. (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 30, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Abdul Ghafar Tags: THCB Gang #THCBGang Jennifer Goldsack Matthew Holt Source Type: blogs
Health Innovation & Data: Five Common Missteps (and How to Interrupt Them)
By MARIE COPOULOS
I’ve had the great fortune of spending much of my career at the intersection of health care innovation and the underlying data that drives new models.
For those of us who’ve worked in this space for a long time, there’s a certain pattern recognition that comes with this work that is often immediate and obvious – both in terms of really cool developments but also gotchas. “Ah, you’re stumbling here. Everyone does that.”
The challenge, I’ve found, is that these ‘gotchas’ that can be so visible to the folx who’ve worked in health tech for the past few decades can be counterintu...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 29, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Bardavon Health Innovations Data Marie Copoulos Teams Source Type: blogs
Amazon Can Still Surprise Me
By KIM BELLARD
It’s Cyber Monday, and you’ve probably been shopping this weekend. In-stores sales on Black Friday rose 2.2% this year, whereas online sakes rose almost 8%, to $9.8b – over half of which was via mobile shopping. Cyber Monday, though, is expected to outpace Black Friday’s online shopping, with an estimated $12b, 5.4% higher than last year.
Lest we forget, Amazon’s Prime Day is even bigger than either Cyber Monday or Black Friday.
All that shopping means lots of deliveries, and here’s where I got a surprise: according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, Amazon is now the leadin...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 28, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech The Business of Health Care Amazon AWS Delivery Kim Bellard Pharmacy Pillpack Source Type: blogs
