Yesterday it was Fortune’s 40 under 40, and a lot of great people, most of whom I thought were much older or at least seem to have been around a while, got listed in the health care section–including Andre Blackman, Ambar Bhattacharyya & Julia Cheek. Lisa Suennen (@venturevalkyrie) and I got into a Twitter exchange about whether we were eligible for the under 40 category or for that matter the category above that. The answer was, amazingly, “no”. Somehow she came out with the line that “we are old”. Knowing her love for 80s pop, I reminded her that this was the inverse of the first line of the Pat Benatar classic “Love is a Battlefield.” Somehow this ended up in us tweeting a new set of lyrics for that song to each other all day. Of course I feel compelled to share them with you. I encourage you to play the video below and sing along!
We are old Wheelchair to wheelchair we sit…. No Promise ring, yes Depends Don’t want my age revealed
Before Long They will all sing our swan song Scans of our hearts show something wrong Both of us slowing.. Don’t want my age revealed
Ads begging me to Ro Then making me pay Why do my knees hurt so bad? It would help me to know Should I stand a different way? My hip hurts too, I might add
If you work in a large organization, especially one that has been around for at least a few decades, the words “legacy system” probably strikes angst in you. If you’ve dealt with such an organization, legacy systems probably contributed to problems you may have had with them. Think about health insurance claims systems, hospital billing systems, financial institution account records, or practically any government system.
Though these systems run practically every aspect of our lives, we don’t give them a second thought because, for the most part, they function. It doesn’t even occur to us that IT is something that needs constant attention to be kept in working order.”
Because they usually work OK, management often doesn’t want to risk the potential disruption of replacing or modernizing them, so they get older and older, with more and more layers built on them, and with the people who originally built them or understand the language they are written in (e.g. COBOL) gone.
On today’s Health in 2 Point 00, Jessica is distracted playing video games, and rants about the unbearable maleness of wearables. Meanwhile Komodo Health raises $50m for more analytics (presumably of patients playing Pong), Picnic Health gets $25m as PHRs will not go away, Hazel Health gets $33 million to take telehealth back to school, and then there’s Amazon Halo — and our stars’ alter egos make an appearance — Matthew Holt
As we witnessed in last week’s Republication convention, when in doubt, go with the golden oldies. Australian songwriter Peter Allen said as much in the fourth stanza of his classic song, “Everything Old Is New Again”, which reads:
“Don’t throw the past away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again”
In fact, there’s nothing original in Trump’s playbook, and that includes his postal service gambit. Manipulating and militarizing the US Postal Service dates back to 1873 in the form of one Anthony Comstock, a zealot who was fond of describing himself as a “weeder in God’s garden.”
A savvy New York City insider, he created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice declaring himself committed to stamping out smut. But to accomplish this task, he needed a hammer. He turned to political allies in the United States Postal Service who provided him with police powers and the right to carry a weapon.
Still, the weapon was of little use without a law to enforce. So he turned to his friends in industry who reached out to Congress. “An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use” was passed on March 3, 1873, ch. 258, § 2, 17 Stat. 599. Forever after known as the Comstock Law, the statute’s lofty intent was “to prevent the mails from being used to corrupt the public morals.”
Big Health bills itself as a “complete 24-hour solution for mental health,” offering Sleepio to those who have trouble sleeping and Daylight to those who suffer from worry and anxiety during the day. Fresh off a $39M Series B in June 2020 (total $54.3M) — and having just landed Daylight onto CVS Health’s digital health formulary to join Sleepio there as a “point solution” payors can easily integrate into their benefits offerings — co-founder & CEO Peter Hames stops by for an ENORMOUS conversation about the ‘state-of-play’ for digital mental health companies like his own. Has CVS Health’s digital formulary made it any easier to contract with employers and get the attention of health consumers? And, what of the attention being paid to Big Health itself? As we hit “peak platformization” in digital health, is the company a prime acquisition target? (Note: Omada Health’s CEO Sean Duffy is a friend and investor and we get a good laugh around the 15-minute mark when we fact-check some rumors… ) Finally, another “insight highlight” worth mentioning: some candid conversation on what’s happening in digital therapeutics (DTx) as Peter is the Chair of the category’s industry org, the Digital Therapeutics Alliance. Does Big Pharma still have an appetite for DTx despite some rough news about partnerships with startups in recent months? You’ll want to tune in around 17:30 for more on that too.
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess might be a little wary of my colonoscopy story, but it reveals just how well insurance companies communicate. In this episode, Jess and I cover GoodRx filing an S1 to go public, Trellus Health raising $5 million in seed funding for its platform for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and other chronic conditions, Klara Health raising $15 million for patient engagement, and Castor raising $12 million for its clinical trial platform. —Matthew Holt
In Partnership with the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, Resolve to Save Lives, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Maryland, Catalyst @ Health 2.0 is excited to announce the launch of The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge is looking for novel analytic approaches that use COVID-19 Symptom Survey data to enable earlier detection and improved situational awareness of the outbreak by public health and the public.
How the Challenge Works:
In Phase I, innovators submit a white paper (“digital poster”) summarizing the approach, methods, analysis, findings, relevant figures and graphs of their analytic approach using Symptom Survey public data (see challenge submission criteria for more). Judges will evaluate the entries based on Validity, Scientific Rigor, Impact, and User Experience and award five semi-finalists $5,000 each. Semi-finalists will present their analytic approaches to a judging panel and three semi-finalists will be selected to advance to Phase II. The semi-finalists will develop a prototype (simulation or visualization) using their analytic approach and present their prototype at a virtual unveiling event. Judges will select a grand prize winner and the runner up (2nd place). The grand prize winner will be awarded $50,000 and the runner up will be awarded $25,000.The winning analytic design will be featured on the Facebook Data For Good website and the winning team will have the opportunity to participate in a discussion forum with representatives from public health agencies.
Phase I applications for the challenge are due Tuesday, September 29th, 2020 11:59:59 PM ET.
Learn more about the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge HERE.
Challenge participants will leverage aggregated data from the COVID-19 symptom surveys conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland, in partnership with Facebook Data for Good. Approaches can integrate publicly available anonymized datasets to validate and extend predictive utility of symptom data and should assess the impact of the integration of symptom data on identifying inflection points in state, local, or regional COVID outbreaks as well guiding individual and policy decision-making.
These are the largest and most detailed surveys ever conducted during a public health emergency, with over 25M responses recorded to date, across 200+ countries and territories and 55+ languages. Challenge partners look forward to seeing participant’s proposed approaches leveraging this data, as well as welcome feedback on the data’s usefulness in modeling efforts.
Indu Subaiya, co-founder of Catalyst @ Health 2.0 (“Catalyst”) met with Farzad Mostashari, Challenge Chair, to discuss the launch of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. Indu and Farzad walked through the movement around open data as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the challenge goals, partners, evaluation criteria, and prizes.
(This is the third in a series of excerpts from Terry’s new book, Physician-Led Healthcare Reform: a New Approach to Medicare for All, published by the American Association for Physician Leadership.)
The American Medical Association (AMA) last year announced that, for the first time, more physicians were employed than were independent. While many of these doctors were employed by private practices, the AMA said, about 35% of them worked directly for a hospital or for a hospital-owned practice.25
This estimate was lower than that of other surveys. According to research conducted by the Physicians Advocacy Institute (PAI) and Avalere Health, a consulting firm, 44% of physicians were employed by hospitals in January 2018, compared to 25% in July 2012. More than half of U.S. physicians now work for or contract with fewer than 700 healthcare systems across the country, according to a new study in Health Affairs.
Many of the physicians employed by hospitals and health systems formerly were in private practice. They sold their practices to hospitals because of increasing overhead, dwindling reimbursement, and the rising administrative burdens of ownership, according to Jackson Healthcare, a physician recruiting firm.
The many negative factors affecting primary care also have impelled a growing number of primary care physicians to seek employment in recent years. In 2018, 47% of general internists, 57% of family physicians and 56% of pediatricians were employed. There is evidence that this trend may be exacerbating the primary care shortage because employed doctors see fewer patients per day, on average, than do those in private practice.
With 3 consecutive days of $100M in funding, here is the most confusing (or rather the most confused we have been) Episode 147 of Health in 2 Point 00. Jess asks me about Verily partnering with Swiss Re to get into the stop-loss insurance game, Prescryptive Health raising a $26M Series A for their maybe GoodRx-like or PBM platform, Sonde Health acquiring NeuroLex for its vocal biomarkers platform, Aetion reopening their Series B and raising another $19M to the $36M they have already raised, and Otsuka after investing millions of dollars in Proteus, deciding to buy the rest of it with $15M, but we don’t know why any of these deals happened –Matthew Holt
Privacy concerns across the country continue to increase, and consumers expect their healthcare information to be private. Headline-making data sales, skepticism of Silicon Valley privacy practices, and COVID-19 contact tracing concerns compounded with a general lack of consumer awareness have continued to generate an ongoing storm ofnegative press and political scrutiny.
With COVID-19 continuing to rampage throughout the country, there is a need for the contact tracing and other technology applications to assess public health. At the same time, changing HHS rules are giving Americans more access and control over their own health data. Both availability and the promise of positive impact of data on people’s lives has never been greater.
Despite the critical need and incredible potential, there is still a great deal of confusion, lack of awareness and heightened concern among consumers. Studies show that the vast majority of Americans think the potential risks of data collection outweighs the potential benefits.
Clamping down on data privacy stifles innovation, and moving forward as we’ve been doing presents a potential privacy minefield. So, what should the healthcare industry do about it?
