- Venrock and Robin: Robin is a brand new digital assistant for doctors. Hear Venrock Partner Bryan Roberts and Robin CEO Punit Son discuss the opportunities Venrock sees in Robin.
- 415 and Lemonaid: Patient experience has gotten easier with Lemonaid’s accessible online platform. Lemonaid CEO Paul Johnson sits with investment firm 415 to talk about their business strategy.
- Thrive Capital and Honor: An online service that connects in-home caregivers, seniors and their families, Honor sits down with its investor Thrive Capital to discuss the purpose of their investment.
- Grandrounds and Venrock: Owen Tripp of Grandrounds and Bob Kocher of Venrock discuss their working partnership, and give insight into what those closed-door meetings look like.
Why Consumers No Longer Want Fitness Trackers
Millions of Americans have adorned themselves with glimmering Fitbits, Jawbones, Nike Fuelbands, and Misfits, Basis, Withings, and Garmin bracelets over the years. The devices have become so mainstream even Grandma has one. Perhaps the fact that Grandma is now tracking her data means that the industry is ripe for a change.
Recently though we’ve seen the popularity of wearables wane considerably. This month Mike and Albert Lee, founders of myfitnesspal announced that they would be departing from Under Armour; and we learned that Adidas is dropping their wearables division entirely.
Why? Its a fairly easy question to answer. Under Armour spent 2017 falling from grace and it’s possible their waning interest in connected fitness is due both to financial constraints as well as a series of departures of senior-level talent including Robin Thurston (MapMyRun), and Mette Lykke (Endomondo). Looking at Adidas though, they are dropping their dedicated connected fitness division in favor of a more distributed and integrated approach.
See live demos from Habit, Parsley Health, and more at Health 2.0’s WinterTech event on January 10thduring JP Morgan week.
Tickets are selling quickly so register today!
FDA, VCs, Big Ideas, and more at WinterTech
WinterTech is almost one month away, and we’re extremely excited about the final agenda. The 2018 edition of WinterTech will be not only be focusing on the new investment treads in digital health, but will take a in-depth look into the revolution in choice within the consumer landscape and the rapid development of digital therapeutics.
- Keynote presentation on how to create seamless health care experiences to meet the needs of consumers by Mark Ganz, CEO of Cambia Health.
- Panel discussion on the opportunities, roadblocks, and regulations within the field of digital therapeutics by Bakul Patel, Associate Director for Digital Health at the FDA.
- Investment Strategies Past and Present: a look into 2017 trends, surprises, and flops. plus predictions for 2018 by VC firms GE Ventures, Canaan, Fifty Years, NEA, and B Capital Group.
- Fireside chat between 4 VCs and their CEOs on their relationship and investment models
- Access to the Investor Breakfast where start-ups and investors discuss business models and explore portfolios. Start-ups apply here.
- Live demos from some of the most innovative companies in the digital healthcare space.
Secure your seat for live demos on precision medicine delivery at next week’s Tech Summit
The Evolution of Precision Health
Health 2.0 sat down with Linda Molnar to discuss the evolution of Precision Health, the imperatives at stake in a fast-paced field, and empowerment through big data. Linda has over 20 years in the field of Life Sciences and is responsible for a number of initiatives that further the field with start-ups, the feds, and for investors.
Her current endeavor is leading the upcoming Technology for Precision Health Summit in San Francisco alongside Health 2.0. “We’re never going to pull together all of this disparate data from disparate sources in a meaningful (i.e. clinically actionable) way, unless we talk about it” she says. “The Summit is an attempt to bring together the worlds of Precision Medicine and Digital Healthcare to realize the full potential of a predictive and proactive approach to maintaining health”.
What investors are saying about the state of digital health
Here’s a preview…
– Bryan Roberts, Venrock on what he looks for in an investment.
The New Health Care Experience For Consumers
A Brief History of Price Controls by Annoyed Republican Administrations
Although, unlike most other nations, the U.S. has only two parties worth the name, their professed doctrines compared with their actions strikes me as more confusing than the well-known Slutsky Decomposition which, as everyone knows, can be derived simply from a straightforward application of Kramer’s rule to a matrix of second partial derivatives of a multivariable demand function.
The leaders of the drug industry, for example, probably are now breaking out the champagne in the soothing belief that their aggressive pricing policies for even old drugs are safe for at least the next eight years from the allegedly fearsome, regulation-prone, price-controlling Democrats. My advice to them is: Cool it! Follow me through a brief history of Republican health policy, to learn what Republicans will do to the health-care sector when it ticks them off.
Republicans like to tar Democrats over allegedly socialist policy instruments such as price controls, global budgets and deficit-financed government spending. Democrats usually roll over to take that abuse, almost like hanging onto their posteriors signs that says “Kick me.” I say “abuse,” because Republicans have never shied away from using the Democrats’ allegedly left-wing tactics when health care chews up their budgets or turns voters against them.
Uwe Reinhardt 1937-2017
Uwe Reinhardt, Princeton economist and one of the best known and best loved personalities in the health policy world died today. I join the rest of the health policy community in mourning the passing of the master explainer and wit that Uwe was.
But I also remember a small act of his kindness. The first time I met him I was a little late joining a crowd trying to get his attention after a keynote. He had talked to many, and had to go. But as he was being hustled off by his handlers, he realized he hadn’t talked to me, and he walked back to do an introduction and share a few words. He was already the biggest celebrity in our little world, and he was clearly running late for his next appointment. He didn’t know me, yet was prepared to spend the extra moment to make me feel included. And in all our future interactions over the next 2 decades, he was the same way.
It’s clear that it was the same for everyone he knew and it’s why the grief and shock in our community is so heartfelt.
John & I are very proud that in recent years Uwe offered to write some original pieces for our little blog, and we will be running a few of them in the next few days.
RIP and thank you Uwe, and we send our condolences to his wife Mae and their daughter and son–Matthew Holt