Health 2.0’s WinterTech conference on January 13, 2016 at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco, CA showcases the latest in digital health investing featuring leaders from Venrock, Canvas Venture Fund, Helix, Doximity, Grand Rounds, Livongo, Omada Health, and more. Learn about the latest financing and market trends of digital health and hear directly from the start-ups creating the biggest waves in the industry.
Matthew Holt
The End Game–Live in Finland!
Today I am in Finland at the Vertical digital health accelerator, part of a really impressive network of accelerators and incubators in Helsinki. Tomorrow is the huge SLUSH festival at which I (plus Steven Krein of Startup Health) will be talking on Thursday. Today, I’m speaking and moderating a great seminar with excellent speakers at Vertical for the End Game.The End Game is a thought leader seminar that finds answers to questions. The most insightful speakers from around the world will talk about digital health. Speakers include the Head of Health & Medical equipment division of Samsung France, the Head of Healthcare of Telia, and many others including Luis Barros VC expert from Boston.
The seminar is streaming live on www.endgame.fi on November 10th at 3pm Finnish time (8 am ET, 5 am PT) The video will also be available for later viewing.
Flashback from Fall Conference: The Unmentionables
Every year, Alex Drane takes us on an incredible journey through the health issues we don’t talk about. But should. Topics that were covered included:
Chelsea Clinton & US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy at Health 2.0 Fall Conference 2015
Chelsea Clinton got the 9th Annual Fall Conference on the right foot sharing the numerous successes of the Clinton Foundation including improving school lunches, providing antiretroviral therapy to millions of people living with HIV worldwide, and advancing women’s health.
Five takeaways about the Theranos broo-ha-ha
You’ve probably seen by now both that the WSJ’s John Carreyrou has run a well researched hit piece on Theranos and that the company, led by wunderkind Elizabeth Holmes, has somewhat muffed its reply. If you haven’t, best thing is to read the Roger Parloff Fortune piece which summarizes the pay-walled piece so you don’t have to do the painful task of sending Rupert Murdoch money. Now in the spirit of FD I need to let you know that we’ve invited Holmes to speak at Health 2.0 twice and her PR handlers have been unbelievably hard to communicate with. They’ve either flat out ignored us or taken forever to turn us down, even though she’s appeared often at (what I at least consider) much less important or relevant venues. I have no idea if she’s badly advised, wanting to stay away from sophisticated health tech audiences, or if her handlers decided that we and our 2,000 strong crowd are just not cool enough for her. Or maybe simply her calendar hasn’t allowed it. Either way I have no first hand knowledge of her or the product–although Elizabeth our invite is still out there! But I do know five things.
1) Lab business decentralizes & democratizes. Whether or not Theranos is lying, cheating, not using its own tech, or its cool stuff just doesn’t work, the trend towards comprehensive, cheap and soon at home lab testing is clear. More than 5 years ago a company called BioIQ was selling at home fingerstick based cholesterol & glucose tests. In the past year the two stage Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE (of which we hosted stage 1 at Health 2.0 in 2013) has revealed a plethora of companies taking minute quantities of blood, pee or spit and doing complex diagnosis from them. And it’s not stopping there. The next phase is using light and other sensors to diagnose direct from the skin. Whether or not the locus of activity ends up using Theranos at Walgreens or the kitchen table using something else, the dam holding back continuous, cheap multi-faceted testing is going to burst soon.
2) Theranos and Holmes are not the most important thing in health care. There, I’ve said it. While Holmes has talked a lot about revolutionizing health care access and has given lots of transparency into Theranos’ pricing if not its testing technology, what they’re up to is getting easier access to lab tests. I think this is very important and a very good thing, but no one can seriously believe that this is the biggest change in health care. It’s part of a trend towards consumerism. But I’d argue the most important trend in health care is the redesign of chronic care management, on which we spend a shed-load more than lab testing. I may be wrong but if you insert your pet issue here, I’d bet it’s not cheaper lab testing. The media has been a tad snowed by the “youngest female billionaire” and “blonde Steve Jobs” analogies, but even if she runs the field and takes over most lab testing, it’s an incremental change not a huge revolution in health care.
GET Funded Service – What did we learn?
Part of an EU-funded programme, the GET Funded service targeted European digital health SMEs looking for follow-up investments – typically between 0.5 and 2M € – and was designed to provide them with training, resources and networking opportunities with European investors. In two years, we worked with 50 start-ups, trained and placed over 30 of them on stage to pitch in front of investors. What did we learn?
The GET consortium started by identifying the European investors that were the most active in digital health: about a dozen dedicated funds plus a mix of corporate, health care, technology, and agnostic venture funds. We recruited about 40 we considered as ‘active’, a number that will grow as we witness the creation of new dedicated funds every year. 2015 saw the creation of one in particular that should be interesting to follow: AXA, already ahead of the game in terms of digital health reimbursements, now has a new dedicated investment fund.
A little Sharecare, Health 2.0 taster
I’m working on a long piece about Sharecare. Today at Health 2.0 my partner Indu Subaiya will be interviewing Jeff Arnold CEO of Sharecare about the progress they’ve made in the 5 years since he launched the company on stage at Health 2.0 in 2010.
Just to give you a little taster, I’m posting an interview with one of Sharecare’s clients and investors, the big Catholic hospital chain Trinity. I think this interview with Bret Gallaway at Trinity will whet your appetite for Jeff today and the longer article coming shortly. But it’s a great story about what is now a major platform for consumer health.
Healthline creates provider-focused NLP company Talix
Big news from perennial Health 2.0 favorite Healthline. The fast growing consumer destination site is spinning off a new subsidiary aimed at the market of provider-side analytics. Here’s a quick announcement of the news from CEO Dean Stephens
Indu & Matthew talk Health 2.0 with Lisa & Dave
One of the most insightful and funniest writers in health care is recovering VC Lisa Suennen. With trusty sidekick Dave Shaywitz, she’s been doing Tech Tonics, one of these newly trendy (again) podcasts. And Sunday at Health 2.0 they interviewed my partner Indu Subaiya, and me. Want to know a little more aobut the backstory of Health 2.0? Listen in!
Getting the Real Story: Valid Performance Measures
If you want the real story about whether a wellness program or health product worked, you want valid, accurate measures. Getting the real story is the topic of our lively panel discussion at Health 2.0 hosted by the Validation Institute. By adhering to principles of objectivity and stringent validation processes, the Validation Institute provides healthcare industry consumers with sound and valid information, allowing them to evaluate companies with confidence.
I am a population health scientist with training in epidemiology, biostatistics, quality measures, and risk finance and I run Health Economy LLC.
