Today on Health in 2 Point 00, I’m back (despite Jess’s attempt to replace me). In Episode 82, Jess asks me about Talkspace’s $50 million raise, Heal getting flack for adding telehealth to their house call service, and Apple acquiring Tueo Health last year—and we’re just now hearing about it. Jess also gets riled up by Pokemon Sleep and Pillo’s $11 million raise. —Matthew Holt
Teladoc, CVS, Utilization Rates, & Apple in ‘THE YEAR of Telehealth’ | Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic
By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH
According to healthcare leader Toby Cosgrove, THIS is “the year of telehealth.” Although Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic would rather use the phrase ‘virtual care’ to describe the space, he’s pretty much on board with the idea that more consumers than ever will jump onto the virtual care bandwagon this year. How will Teladoc’s partnership with CVS play a role? Any other acquisitions on the horizon? Gorevic gets real about what’s impacting utilization rates and whether or not he’s worried about Teladoc competing with Apple, Google, and Amazon. (Hint: He’s not.)
Filmed at JP Morgan Healthcare 2019 in San Francisco, January 2019.
Jessica DaMassa is the host of the WTF Health show & stars in Health in 2 Point 00 with Matthew Holt.
Get a glimpse of the future of healthcare by meeting the people who are going to change it. Find more WTF Health interviews here or check out www.wtf.health.
The Power & Perils of Unconventional Healthcare Partnerships
By LYGEIA RICCIARDI
Last week’s announcement by Aetna and Apple of their Attain “experience” designed to enable Aetna members to achieve better health using the Apple watch was the latest in a series of partnerships vying to shake up healthcare from an unconventional angle. Others include Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway-JP Morgan’s collaboration to reshape health insurance, and Uber and Lyft’s numerous partnerships with Sutter, CareMore Health, and other healthcare systems to address transportation challenges for patients.
The Heat is On
Big changes in healthcare—including the shift to value-based care, the growing influence of consumerism, and a recognition that health outcomes depend on a wide array of everyday life factors ranging from foods to moods—are forcing the old guard in healthcare to recalibrate. Healthcare provider organizations alone engaged in a record-breaking 115 mergers and acquisitions in 2017, and continued apace until now, with deals already announced in 2019 between Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), among others.
The most interesting partnerships, from my perspective, pair traditional healthcare players with non-traditional ones: it’s a recognition that something fundamental has to change, a point which hasn’t been lost on the 84% of the Fortune 50 companies that are already in healthcare, up from 76% in 2013. Everyone from tech giants to car manufacturers seems to gambling to some extent on healthcare. And why not, when the potential jackpot just keeps growing?
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 65 | Microsoft-Walgreens, Google, and HIMSS
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess is braving the oncoming blizzard in Boston for MassChallenge. In this episode, Jess asks me about some crazy things happening in health tech, from the recently announced Microsoft-Walgreens partnership to compete with Amazon, to Google buying new smartwatch technology from Fossil, to Jim Cramer’s suggestion that Apple should buy Epic. Also in some HIMSS news, Atul Gawande has pulled out of HIMSS. But—I’ve got a booth for Smack Health at HIMSS this year, so stop by to find some Smack startups & Jess doing WTF Health interviews as well. –Matthew Holt
Google Is Quietly Infiltrating Medicine — But What Rules Will It Play By?
By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON
With nearly 80 percent of internet users searching online for health-related information, it’s no wonder the catchphrase “Dr. Google” has caught on, to the delight of many searchers and the dismay of many real doctors.
What’s received little attention from physicians or the public is the company’s quiet metamorphosis into a powerhouse focused on the actual practice of medicine.
If “data is the new oil,” as the internet meme has it, Google and its Big Tech brethren could become the new OPEC. Search is only the start for Google and its parent company, Alphabet. Their involvement in health care can continue through a doctor’s diagnosis and even into monitoring a patient’s chronic condition for, essentially, forever. (From here on, I’ll use the term Google to include the confusing intertwining of Google and Alphabet units.)
Will Apple Track Your Mind, Not Just Your Heart?
By MICHAEL MILLENSON
If your heart throbs with desire for the new Apple Watch, the Series 4 itself can track that pitter-pat through its much-publicized ability to provide continuous heart rate readings.
On the other hand, if you’re depressed that you didn’t buy Apple stock years ago, your iPhone’s Face ID might be able to discover your dismay and connect you to a therapist.
In its recent rollout of the Apple Watch, company chief operating officer Jeff Williams enthused that the device could become “an intelligent guardian for your health.” Apple watching over your health, however, might involve much more than a watch.
The iPhone models introduced at the same time as the Series 4 all deploy facial analysis software. The feature works in part by projecting a grid of more than 30,000 infrared dots on the user’s face in order to create a three-dimensional map for user recognition. Continue reading…
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 38
Somewhere in this long and rambling in-mourning edition of #HealthIn2Point00 Jessica DaMassa gets past my depression about England’s World Cup semi-final exit & asks me about NuRx’s funding round, and Verily’s move into sleep. But it’s mostly soccer depression! — Matthew Holt
Apple, Cerner, Microsoft, and Salesforce
… all rumored to be in the mix to acquire athenahealth.
Nope.
Why not?
a) Apple doesn’t do “verticals.” It’s that easy. Apple sells products that anyone could buy. A teacher, a doctor, my mom. Sure – they have sold high-end workstations that video editors can use, but so could a hobbyist filmmaker. Likelihood of Apple buying athenahealth? ~ .01%
b) Cerner? Nah. While (yes) they have an aging client-server ambulatory EHR that needs to be replaced by a multi-tenant SaaS product (like the one athenahealth cas built), they have too much on their plate right now with DoD and VA and the (incomplete) integration of Siemens customers. Likelihood of Cerner buying athenahealth? ~ 1%
c) Microsoft. Like Apple, it’s uncommon for MSFT to go “vertical.” They have tried it. (Who remembers the Health Solutions Group?) But the tension between a strong product-focused company that meets the needs of many market segments, and a company that deeply understands the business problems of health (and health care) is too great. The driving force of MSFT, like Apple, is to sell infrastructure to care delivery organizations. Owning a product that competes with their key channel partners would alienate the partners – driving them to AMZN, GOOG and APPL. Likelihood of Microsoft buying athenahealth? ~ 2%
d) Salesforce. I’d love to see this. But it’s still unlikely. athenahealth has built a product, and they (now) have defined a path to pivot the product into a platform. This is the right thing to do. Salesforce “gets” platform better than everyone (aside from, perhaps, Amazon). But Salesforce has struggled with health care. They’ve declared n times in recent years that they are “in” to really disrupt health care, and with the evolution of Health Cloud, and their acquisition of MuleSoft, they have clearly made some investments here, but the EHR is not the “ERP of healthcare” as they think it is. (Salesforce’s success in other markets has been that they dovetail with – rather than replace – the ERP systems to create value and improve efficiencies.) The way that Salesforce interacts with the market is unfamiliar (and uncomfortable) to most care delivery organizations. So if Salesforce “gets” platform, and athenahealth wants to be a platform when it matures, could these two combine? It’s the most likely of the three, but I still see the cultures of the two companies (I know them both well) as very different, and not quite compatible. Likelihood of Salesforce buying athenahealth? ~ 10%
e) IBM. yup. I forgot that one. Many recent acquisitions. This would fit. I don’t think it would work very well, but it could happen. ~6%
Others?Continue reading…
Health in 2 point 00, Episode 14
For Episode 14, Jessica DaMassa asks me all the questions she can about health & technology in 2 minutes. On the docket today, Walmart & Humana, MyFitnessPal’s huge data breach, and Apple in health tech (again!)–Matthew Holt
Apple’s EHR: Why Health Records on Your iPhone is Just the Beginning
Americans on average will visit a care provider about 300 times over the course of their lives. That’s hundreds of blood pressure readings, numerous diagnoses, and hundreds of entries into a patient’s medical record—and that’s potentially with dozens of different doctors. So it’s understandable, inevitable even, that patients would struggle to keep every provider up-to-date on their medical history.
This issue is compounded by much of our healthcare information being fragmented among multiple, incompatible health systems’ electronic health records. The majority of these systems store and exchange health information in unique, often proprietary ways—and thus don’t effectively talk with one another.
Fortunately, recent news from Apple points to a reprieve for patients struggling to keep all of their providers up-to-date. Apple has teamed with roughly a dozen hospitals across the country, including the likes of Geisinger Health, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, to make patient’s medical history available to them on their phone. Patients can bring their phone with them to participating health systems and provide caregivers with an up-to-date medical history.
Empowering patients with the ability to carry their health records on their phone is great, and will surely help them overcome the issue of fragmented healthcare records. Yet the underlying standardization of how healthcare data is exchanged that has made this possible is the real feat. In fact, this standardization may potentially pave the way for innovation and rapid expansion of the health information technology (HIT) industry.
