Where ’s Our Infrastructure Plan B?
By KMI BELLARD
I’ve been thinking a lot about infrastructure. In particular, what to do when it fails.
There was, of course, the tragic collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. Watching the video – and, honestly, what were the odds there’d be video? — is like watching a disaster movie, the bridge crumbling slowly but unstoppably. The bridge had been around for almost fifty years, withstanding over 11 million vehicles crossing it each year. All it took to knock it down was one container ship.
Container ships passed under it every day of its existence; the Port of Baltimore is one of the busie...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 3, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Bridges Change Healthcare GPS Infrastructure Internet Cables Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
H5N1 Discovered at Texas Egg Facility
Cal-Main Foods reported that H5N1 was discovered at its Texas egg facility in Parmer County, Texas. 1.6 million hens and 337,000 pullets were culled as a result.Read more on sciencespacerobots.com (Source: HealthNewsBlog.com)
Source: HealthNewsBlog.com - April 2, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: h5n1 hpai Source Type: blogs
Optum: Testing Time for an Invisible Empire
By Jeff Goldsmith
Years ago, the largest living thing in the world was thought to be the blue whale. Then someone discovered that the largest living thing in the world was actually the 106 acre, 47 thousand tree Pando aspen grove in central Utah, which genetic testing revealed to be a single organism. With its enormous network of underground roots and symbiotic relationship with a vast ecosystem of fungi, that aspen grove is a great metaphor for UnitedHealth Group. United, whose revenues amount to more than 8% of the US health system, is the largest healthcare enterprise in the world. The root system of UHG is...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 2, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Health Tech Jeff Goldsmith Optum PBMs United HealthGroup Source Type: blogs
Bevey Miner, Consensus Cloud Solutions
Bevey Miner runs health care for Consensus Cloud Solutions. I’ve known Bevey since she was at Allscripts in the 2000s where she was one of the first building online prescribing. She’s been at lots of places and is now at Consensus which is taking unstructured data via cloud fax and assessing it, structuring it and delivering it–especially to places like skilled nursing facilities. Bevey calls that data at the “outer circles” and we were talking at a time when a lot of electronic communication was down because of the Change Healthcare hack when a lot of it wasn’t flowing. Bevey tells us a...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 1, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Bevey Miner Cloud faxinfg Consensus Cloud Solutions TEFCA Unstrcutured Health Data Source Type: blogs
The Long and Tortured History of Alpha-Synuclein and Parkinson ’s Disease
This study tracks the decades-long journey to harness alpha-synuclein as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Steven Zecola an activist who tracks Parkinson’s research and was on THCB last month discussing it, offers three key changes needed to overcome the underlying challenges.
A Quick Start for Alpha-Synuclein R&D
In the mid-1990’s, Parkinson’s patient advocacy groups had become impatient by the absence of any major therapeutic advances in the 25 years since L-dopa had been approved for Parkinson’s disease (PD).
The Director of National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) se...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 29, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Medical Practice Parkinson's Disease Steven Zecola Source Type: blogs
Ami Parekh, Included Health
Ami Parekh is the to Chief Health Officer of Included Health. It provides navigation services & expert medical opinions (the original Grand Rounds) and virtual care (the old Doctors on Demand) and it then bought a smaller company called Included Health. Ami explains why navigation exists (clue: health plans have been terrible at it) and how it works, and what money it saves on trend (about 2%). They’re also reaching out asking about people’s “Healthy days” and are tracking that metric, and giving people more healthy days–Matthew Holt (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 28, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Matthew Holt THCB Quickbites Ami Parekh Included Health Navigation virtual care Source Type: blogs
WEBINAR: The How-To of Healthcare Analytics: Implementation to Activation
SPONSORED POST
30% of the world’s data volume is being generated by the healthcare industry. We have more information available to us than any other industry but have yet to realize the potential of this information to create predictive, personalized care. To help us navigate the data complexities currently holding us back, Reuters Events has united informatics experts, from NYC Health + Hospitals, Sutter Health, & UnityPoint Health.
Register here for the March 28 (THAT’s THIS COMING FRIDAY!) 11am ET webinar: ‘The How-To of Healthcare Analytics: Implementation to Activation’. (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 28, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech analytics Reuters Source Type: blogs
Gen Z ’s Mid-Life Crisis
By KIM BELLARD
These are not happy times in America.
Now, I’m not thinking about the increasing cultural wars, the endless political bickering, the troubles in the Med-East or Ukraine, the looming threat of climate crisis, or the omnipresent campaigning for the November 2024 elections, although all those play a part. I’m talking about quantifiable data, from the latest World Happiness Report. It found that America has slipped out of the top 20 countries for the first time, falling to 23rd – behind countries like Slovenia and the U.A.E. and barely ahead of Mexico or Uruguay.
Even worse, the fall in U.S. score...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 27, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Happiness Kim Bellard Mental Health Social Media Source Type: blogs
The 12 Best Be Kind to Yourself Quotes (and Helpful Tips on Self-Love)
When you fall or stumble then the default for many is to be hard on yourself.
To push yourself forward again. Or to not make the same mistake in the future.
Being tough on oneself is a common strategy in many situations but I have over the years found that being kind to yourself works even better.
Why?
Well, for one, I find it makes it easier to get back on the right track and move forward (being hard on yourself can lead to feeling disappointed and discouraged from even trying again).
And in today’s post I want to share 12 of my favorite be kind to yourself quotes plus my own thoughts and tips related to each of these ...
Source: Practical Happiness and Awesomeness Advice That Works | The Positivity Blog - March 20, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Henrik Edberg Tags: Inspirational Quotes Personal Development Self Esteem Source Type: blogs
Disability Activist: Take Great Care When Seeing Bias Toward Disabled Citizens
By RANDY SOUDERS
During the years I served as Chairman of the Board for Jean Kennedy Smith’s Arts and Disability program, Very Special Arts (VSA at the Kennedy Center), I had there opportunity to meet a wide range of remarkable and courageous disabled Americans. Among the lasting friendships is a painter and visual artist, Randy Souders, who was rendered quadriplegic at the age of 17 in a 1972 accident. His concerns of late have been heightened by Trump and MAGA Republicans. I share his communication with his permission here in the hope that tech designers and others will be alert to the fact that great care is requir...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 20, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Disability eugenics Holocaust Mike Magee Randy Souders Trump Source Type: blogs
Microplastics, Major Problem
By KIM BELLARD
It’s been almost four years since I first wrote about microplastics; long story short, they’re everywhere. In the ground, in the oceans (even at the very bottom), in the atmosphere. More to the point, they’re in the air you breathe and in the food you eat. They’re in you, and no one thinks that is a good thing. But we’re only starting to understand the harm they cause.
The Washington Post recently reported:
Scientists have found microplastics — or their tinier cousins, nanoplastics — embedded in the human placenta, in blood, in the heart and in the liver and bowels. In one re...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 19, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Kim Bellard Microplastics Source Type: blogs
The Latest AI Craze: Ambient Scribing
By MATTHEW HOLT
Okay, I can’t do it any longer. As much as I tried to resist, it is time to write about ambient scribing. But I’m going to do it in a slightly odd way
If you have met me, you know that I have a strange English-American accent, and I speak in a garbled manner. Yet I’m using the inbuilt voice recognition that Google supplies to write this story now.
Side note: I dictated this whole thing on my phone while watching my kids water polo game, which has a fair amount of background noise. And I think you’ll be modestly amused about how terrible the original transcript was. But then...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 18, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Matthew Holt abridge AI Ambient Scribing Anthropic clinical care Coding Google Microsoft Nabla Nuance OpenAI Suki Source Type: blogs
What could we do if GLP-1 weight loss drugs were free? Would our obesity epidemic be solved for good?
By CECI CONNOLY and SAMI INKINEN
Unless you have been living under a rock, you likely have heard the names Ozempic, Wegovy or Mounjaro. Or perhaps been humming the jingle. Rarely has a class of drugs (in this case, GLP-1s) achieved such widespread attention in popular culture and the media, which has people clamoring for them in every doctor’s office in the nation.
And for good reason. What we know is that the efficacy and safety profile of these medications is substantially better than any weight loss drug in the past, while our obesity epidemic has only ballooned. As organizations committed to sound science and h...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 13, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy ACHP Ceci Connoly GLP-1s Obesity Sami Inkinen virta Source Type: blogs
Wait Till Health Care Tries Dynamic Pricing
By KIM BELLARD
Nice try, Wendy’s. During an earnings call last month, President and CEO Kirk Tanner outlined the company’s plan to try a new form of pricing: “Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and day-part offerings along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling.”
None of the analysts on the call questioned the statement, but the backlash from the public was immediate — and quite negative. As Reuters described it: “the burger chain was scorched on social media sites.”
Less than two weeks later Wendy’s backtracked – e...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 12, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care Kim Bellard pricing Private equity Wendy's Source Type: blogs
Roy Schoenberg, CEO, AmWell
AmWell is a now veteran telehealth platform. It used its IPO money to re-architect its entire platform and add companies like Conversa AI chat service and mental health service Silvercloud, as well as integrating deeply with EMRs & more. That change hit its earnings….so can they recover? Roy Schoenberg, CEO, tells you why this is good for AmWell and what happens next.–-Matthew Holt (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 11, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Matthew Holt THCB Spotlights AmWell Roy Schoenberg Telehealth Source Type: blogs
