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Category: Health Tech

Streaming, Baby Yoda, and Healthcare

By KIM BELLARD

I’ve never seen The Mandalorian.  I don’t have Disney+.  But I know who Baby Yoda is, and I’m pretty sure Disney is counting on that.  Hollywood, in case you haven’t been paying attention, is going through some radical changes.  There may be some lessons for healthcare in them. 

2020 has been the year of streaming.  Moviegoing isn’t entirely dead in the pandemic, but it may be on life support, with major chains like Regal and AMC barely staying out of bankruptcy.  “Yes, there is pent-up demand to see movies in a theater,” Hollywood insider Peter Chernin told The New York Times.   “But people change their habits.”

Indeed, they do.  A new Press Ganey survey found that telemedicine visits shot to 37% of all visits in May, then settled down to around 15% – far above less than 1% pre-COVID-19.  Habits do, indeed, change, even in healthcare. 

Hollywood has made some startling announcements in the past few weeks that illustrate how swiftly changes are coming to the entertainment industry:

Disney: Disney expects to have 100 new titles – TV shows or movies – each year for the next few years.  Disney chairman Bob Iger noted modestly: “The pipeline of original content we’re making is much more robust than originally anticipated.”  Of particular note, though, CEO Bob Chapek said, “Of the 100 new titles announced today, 80 percent of them will go to Disney Plus.” 

NYT characterized the move as: “Here is a 97-year-old company making a jump to direct-to-consumer hyperspace.”  (If you don’t get the reference, you probably didn’t get the Baby Yoda one either). 

The strategy appears to be working.  Disney said that its year-old Disney+ streaming service already has 87 million subscribers; it had originally projected to reach this number by 2024.  Now it expects to reach 260m subscribers by 2024.  And those numbers do not include Disney services Hulu (39m) and ESPN+ (12m).  Collectively, Disney now expects up to 350m subscribers by 2024. 

Continue reading…

The Evernorth Digital Health Formulary & the Disruption of the Digital Health Payment Model

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Last December, Express Scripts — now a part of Evernorth — became the first PBM to go to market with a digital health formulary. Basically, adapting the vetting, organizing, and pricing functions of a traditional medication formulary to the digital (health) age. Mark Bini, Chief Patient Experience Officer, spearheaded the effort, meant to alleviate the burden faced by Evernorth’s clientbase of 4,000 employers and health plans, who’s HR benefits teams want to make digital health solutions available to the 100+ million members of their health plans, but don’t have a frictionless, repeatable way to do so. As Mark puts it, “if you’ve seen one digital health startup, you’ve seen one.” And, for an HR benefits administrator whose inbox is inundated by digital health companies, the challenge of dealing with different levels of clinical validation, different data needs, different contracts, and, probably, most frustrating, different payment models that are often separated from their health benefit and pharmacy benefits, Evernorth’s Digital Health Formulary eases a real burden. So, a year in… how’s it going? Have Evernorth’s clients bought into more digital health solutions as a result of the formulary? What’s uptake been like among the populations they manage? And, how has this been working out for digital health startups? Mark gives us an update, talks through the details of the selection process, AND reveals what he’s got planned next. Spoiler: The evolution of the Formulary means adding more cohorts of digital health solutions more frequently, increasing the number of digital health solutions covered under drug benefits, getting a beat on longitudinal digital health engagement, and working out how to help consumers navigate all the various health tech options that are available to them.

THCB Gang Episode 35, Dec 10

Episode 35 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed Thursday, Dec 10. You can watch it below.

Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) was joined by not one but two of America’s leading health futurists Ian Morrison (@seccurve) and Jeff Goldsmith; Patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano); health writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); employer health expert Jennifer Benz (@jenbenz); and surgeon and innovation dude Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal).

There was lots of conversation about who is going to pay for what health care. What are big employers going to do. How is the vaccine going to roll out and are we ready? What does it all mean for the future of hospitals, doctors, employers, innovation and more.

If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

Michelin Star Medicine: Food Start-Up Epicured Delivers Meals for GI & Chronic Condition Care

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Food-as-Medicine startup, Epicured, looks and acts a lot like the consumer meal delivery startups booming during this pandemic (think Freshly, which was just acquired by Nestle for $1.5B) but with one important difference: all the meals are based on diets that have been clinically validated as treatments for chronic disease. The three year old company got its start in GI disorders, turning complex Low FODMAP diets, gluten-free diets, etc. into home-delivered, ready-to-eat dishes that patients with Crohn’s disease, Colitis, IBS, IBD, celiac, or other gastro conditions could actually integrate into their daily lives. (Just Google the list of restrictions on a Low FODMAP diet and imagine the lack of adherence over a 6-8 week period while trying to calm an IBS flare-up…)

Richard Bennett, Epicured’s CEO & co-founder, stops by to talk about why he believes this more convenient, yummy, and easy solution will not only continue to win the hearts of healthcare consumers, but why, ultimately, healthcare payors will look to invest more into innovation around nutrition, particularly as its proven to help with other, more common and costly conditions like diabetes, renal disease, and cancer. Backed in part by Mount Sinai (which not only invested in their seed round, but also lent their GI team to the co-design a special IBS menu), Rich let’s us know a bit about some yet-to-be-released clinical study results AND how Epicured has taken a page out of the “digital therapeutics playbook” by partnering with AbbVie to wrap their solution around one of the pharma co’s drugs as a way to improve medication adherence. Chicken Cacciatore wins over companion app any day!

PointClickCare buys Collective Medical

By MATTHEW HOLT

I was a little surprised to find out that PointClickCare, a Canadian-based EMR that has a big market share in SNFs and long term care was buying Collective Medical, a Utah-based interoperability-sniffer (that’s a term I just made up). Collective specializes in extracting data from acute care EMRs to find where patients have received care (think: ERs), and transmit that information (think: meds & diagnoses) to other providers. (Press Release here). The logic is that the “post acute” landscape is getting more complex and better integrated with the rest of care, and Collective Medical will help get PointClickCare’s SNFs and the hospitals & home care agencies they work with much more accurate tracking of patient movements between them. Given the mess that sector is experiencing with COVID-19 right now, this should be a good idea.

I spoke to PointClickCare’s Dave Wessinger & Collective Medical’s Chris Klomp about the deal. They of course wouldn’t tell me the price, but Blake Dodge at Business Insider sniffed it out and thinks it’s $650m. Moody’s reports that PointClickCare raised $550m in debt to help–although I doubt those cunning Canucks handed over too much of that cash, and they certainly sound like they want to keep the whole Collective Medical team around.

This is Your Brain on Microwaves

By KIM BELLARD

Those of us of a certain age well remember the 1987 ad campaign from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. It equated frying an egg to what drugs did to our brains. The ad certainly impacted awareness, but it is less clear that it impacted drug use or, for that matter, that it actually was like what drugs did to our brains.

Well, it turns out that there is something that can scramble our brains, but it’s microwaves, and it appears that “malevolent actors” are using them to do just that. We’re now in the age of “directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy.” 

There were reports coming out of Havana in 2016 of State Department employees complaining of mysterious symptoms, including dizziness, fatigue, headaches, memory loss, balance issues, and hearing loss. Over the next couple years there were more reports, in Cuba and in other countries, including China and Russia, with CIA officers also seemed to be common targets. It has been labeled “the Havana syndrome.”

As least 44 people from Cuba and 15 from China were treated at Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania, with more believed to have been treated elsewhere. No one could pin down exactly what was happening. 

Now the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine has issued a report concluding that the directed, pulsed microwave bursts were “the most plausible mechanism” to explain what happened. They evaluated but ruled out other mechanisms, such as background microwaves, chemical agents, infectious diseases, and even “psychological issues.” 

Committee chairman David Relman, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, said:

The committee found these cases quite concerning, in part because of the plausible role of directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy as a mechanism, but also because of the significant suffering and debility that has occurred in some of these individuals.  We as a nation need to address these specific cases as well as the possibility of future cases with a concerted, coordinated, and comprehensive approach.

One thing in particular that concerned the Committee was the presence of persistent symptoms in many victims – “persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD), a functional (not psychiatric) vestibular disorder that may be triggered by vestibular, neurologic, other medical and psychological conditions and may explain some chronic signs and symptoms in some patients.”  i.e., not only can you be impacted by such an attack, but the impairment can last an indefinite time. 

Continue reading…

THCB Gang Episode 34 Live Dec 3

Episode 34 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, Dec 3, 1pm PT/4pm ET. You can watch it below.

Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) was joined by some of the gang regulars: entrepreneur, MD & CEO of Suntra Modern Recovery, JL Neptune (@jeanlucneptune): Patient advocate & public speaker extraordinaire Robin Farmanfarmaian (@Robinff3), Consumer expert and current President of the Medical Board of California, Denise Pines; policy & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis); and Consumer advocate & CTO of Carium Health Lygeia Ricciardi (@Lygeia)

It looks like the election is settled! The first COVID-19 vaccines is out in the wild in the UK. What does it all mean for the future of health care? There’s some optimism and some pessimism — but there were some gems in the conversation too!

If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

RWJF Emergency Response Challenge Results!

by MATTHEW HOLT

Yesterday Catalyst @ Health 2.0 hosted the finals of the RWJF Emergency Response Challenges, one for tools for the General Public and the other for the Health System. It was a great session, sadly virtual and not at a conference with cocktails afterwards. But the promise of the tools that have been built as part of these challenges is immense in the battle against this COVID-19 pandemic and the ones yet to come.

The finalists for the General Public challenge were

  • Binformed Covidata– A clinically-driven comprehensive desktop + mobile infectious disease, epidemic + pandemic management tool targeting suppression and containment of diseases such as COVID-19. The presenter was veteran health IT expert Rick Peters.
  • CovidSMS– A text message-based platform providing city-specific information and resources to help low-income communities endure COVID-19. In contrast to Rick, CovidSMS’ team were undergraduates at Johns Hopkins led by Serena Wang
  • Fresh EBT by Propel– A technology tool for SNAP families to address food insecurity & economic vulnerability in times of crisis – highlighted by Michael Lewis on his Against the Rules podcast about coaching earlier this year. Stacey Taylor, head of partnerships for Propel presented their solutions for those in desperate need.

The finalists for the Health System challenge were

  • PathCheck–  A non profit just spun out of MIT. It has a raft of volunteers and well known advisors like John Brownstein and John Halamka among many others, and is already working with several states and countries. Pathcheck provides privacy first, free, open source solutions for public health to supplement manual contact tracing, visualize hot spots, and interface with citizen-facing privacy first apps. MIT Professor Ramesh Raskar was the presenter.
  • Qventus–  A patient flow automation solution that applies AI / ML and behavioral science to help health systems create effective capacity, and reduce frontline burnout. Qventus is a great data analytics startup story. It’s raised over $45m and has lots of health system clients, and they have built a suite of new tools to help them with pandemic preparedness. Anthony Moorman, who won the best facial hair of the day award, showed the demo.
  • Tiatros Inc– A mental health and social support platform that combines clinical expertise, peer communities and scalable technology to advance mental wellbeing and to sustain meaningful behavioral change. They’ve done a lot of work with soldiers with PTSD and as you’ll see entered this challenge to get their tools to another group of extremely stressed professionals–frontline health care workers. CEO Kimberlie Cerrone and COO Seth Norman jointly presented.

Videos of the whole session and the demos will be up soon.

And the winners were…

A tie in General Public challenge between CovidSMS & BInformed, who split the $25,000 first prize (and the $10,000 second prize!)

Qventus in the Health System challenge who take home $25,000

But there were no losers. A great culmination of a lot of work to get tech solutions to help us deal with the pandemic.

Matthew Holt is Publisher of THCB and also Co-Chairman at Catalyst @ Health 2.0

THCB Gang Episode 33, Thursday 11/19

Episode 33 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed here Thursday, November 19th. You can watch it below.

Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) was joined by some of our regulars: CEO of Day Health Strategies Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1), data privacy expert Deven McGraw (@healthprivacy), patient safety expert Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson) and health futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve). While the chaos of the post election legal shenanigans goes on, we chatted what the Biden team might and can do, and look at the pre- and post-vaccine COVID-19 future of health care.

If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

The Catalyst @ Health 2.0/Wipfli Survey on the State of Digital Health

By MATTHEW HOLT

Catalyst @ Health 2.0, supported by professional services firm Wipfli, is launching a survey about the state of Digital Health. We hope to get a comprehensive analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on digital health companies and the rest of the ecosystem. This survey should take under 8 minutes to complete (and probably less). For your time we will get you a copy of the results when they are released. As an added bonus TWO respondents drawn at random who complete the survey will get advertising for their company for 6 months on The Health Care Blog (worth $5,000).

We are interested in hearing from leaders working in digital health companies, or those connected to digital health in health systems, payers, life sciences, consulting or investment companies.

To take the survey CLICK HERE

NOTE–None of the data from this survey will be shared by Catalyst @ Health 2.0 (even with our friends at Wipfli) other than as aggregate survey results. So you can be assured that your answers are completely confidential.

Matthew Holt is Co-Chairman of Catalyst @ Health 2.0 & Publisher of THCB

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