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Above the Fold

Contact Tracing: 10 Unique Challenges of COVID-19

Jun 12, 2020• 1

By VINCE KURAITIS, ERIC PERAKSLIS, and DEVEN McGRAW

This piece is part of the series “The Health Data Goldilocks Dilemma: Sharing? Privacy? Both?” which explores whether it’s possible to advance interoperability while maintaining privacy. Check out other pieces in the series here.

A worldwide dialog about COVID-19 contact tracing is underway. Even under the best of circumstances, the contact tracing process can be difficult, time-consuming, labor-intensive, and invasive — requiring rigorous, methodical execution and follow-up.

COVID-19 throws curve balls at the already difficult process of contact tracing. In this post we will provide some basic background on contact tracing and will list and describe 10 challenges that make contact tracing of COVID-19 exceptionally difficult. The 10 unique challenges are:

1) COVID-19 is Highly Contagious and Deadly

2) Contact Tracing is Becoming Politicized

3) We Lack Scientific Understanding of COVID-19

4) Presymptomatic Patients Can Spread COVID-19

5) Asymptomatic Patients Can Spread COVID-19

6) Contact Tracing is Dependent on Availability of Testing

7) Contact Tracing is Dependent on New, Extensive Funding

8) Contact Tracing is Dependent on an “Army of Tracers” and Massive Support for Patients

9 ) The Role of Technology is Unclear — Is it Critical Support or a Distraction?

10) The U.S. Response Has Been Fragmented and Inconsistent

The thrust of this post is about traditional boots-on-the-ground contact tracing conducted by public health agencies. We will touch on a few aspects of digital contact tracing (e.g., smartphone apps), but we’ll go into much more depth on digital contact tracing in future posts.

How does contact tracing relate to the theme of this series — The Health Data Goldilocks Dilemma? It’s about obtaining the right amount and types of information — not too much, not too little. Not too much data so that privacy rights or civil liberties are infringed, or that contact tracers are overwhelmed with useless data; not too little data so that public health agencies aren’t handcuffed in protecting our safety in tracing COVID-19 cases.

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 127 | AireHealth, Sharecare, PlushCare, & PatientPing

Jun 11, 2020

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess asks Matthew about AireHealth merging with BreathResearch, adding machine learning-based diagnostics to their respiratory health remote monitoring devices, Sharecare acquiring behavioral health platform MindSciences, the “digital One Medical” telemedicine company PlushCare raising $23 million in a Series B, and PatientPing raising $60 million to expand their e-notifications network to achieve greater interoperability and coordinated care. —Matthew Holt

A Missed Opportunity for Universal Healthcare

Jun 11, 2020

By PHUOC LE, MD and CONNIE CHAN

The United States is known for healthcare spending accounting for a large portion of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) without yielding the corresponding health returns. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), healthcare spending made up 17.7% ($3.6 trillion) of the GDP in the U.S. in 2018 – yet, poor health outcomes, including overall mortality, remain higher compared to other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. According to The Lancet, enacting a single-payer UHC system would likely result in $450 billion in savings in national healthcare and save more than 68,000 lives.

Figure 1. Mortality rate in the US versus other OECD countries.

The expansion of Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) was not the first attempt the United States government made to increase the number of people with health insurance. In 1945, the Truman administration introduced a Universal Health Care (UHC) plan. Many Americans with insurance insecurity, most notably Black Americans and poor white Americans, would benefit from this healthcare plan. During this time, health insurance was only guaranteed for those with certain jobs, many of which Blacks and poor white Americans were unable to secure at the time, which resulted in them having to pay out-of-pocket for any wanted healthcare services. This reality pushed Truman to propose UHC within the United States because it would allow “all people and communities [to] use the promotive, preventative, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services they need of sufficient quality…, while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user to financial hardship.”

THCB Gang, Episode 13

Jun 11, 2020

Episode 13 of “The THCB Gang” was on Thursday, June 11th. Watch it below or on our YouTube Channel.

Matthew Holt (@boltyboy)was back on the moderating chair! Joining him were patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano), patient safety expert Michael Millenson (MLMillenson), policy expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), MD & hospital system exec Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal), data privacy expert Deven McGraw (@healthprivacy) and fierce journalist & data rights activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey). This was a doozy, and the conversation ranged from what it’s like re-opening at a big academic medical center to data flow and public health in Taiwan to statues of Confederate losers in Richmond. Not to mention what will happen in the impeding second wave.

If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Zoya Khan

Healthcare’s Sliding Doors Moment

Jun 10, 2020

By LINDA T. HAND

Every day, we make thousands of choices. Some of them – even those that seem trivial at the time – will change the course of our lives. This concept was memorably illustrated in the 1998 film Sliding Doors, which imagined two very different paths for Gywneth Paltrow’s character, Helen, based entirely on whether or not she makes or misses the London Tube on her commute home—the film’s eponymous sliding doors.

Helen doesn’t have the luxury of weighing her possible futures and altering her choices accordingly, perhaps quickening her pace or stopping for a latte along the way. Fortunately, for today’s healthcare decision-makers now facing their own Sliding Doors moment, the diverging paths of reactive versus proactive healthcare are much easier to contrast.

Staying the course with reactive healthcare

To date, most health systems and insurers have had little choice but to stick with the familiar path of reactive healthcare. The status quo since medicine’s earliest days, reactive healthcare passively waits for people to get sick before “reacting” with all available measures to return them to health. As a result, patients wait longer to enter the system and arrive sicker, and end up receiving avoidable or more expensive care than if they had come to our attention earlier. And rising costs often serve as an additional deterrent to patients seeking care.

Defund Health Care!

Jun 9, 2020• 2

By KIM BELLARD

In the wake of the protests related to George Floyd’s death, there have been many calls to “defund police.” Those words come as a shock to many people, some of whom can’t imagine even reducing police budgets, much less abolishing entire police departments, as a few advocates do indeed call for.

If we’re talking about institutions that are supposed to protect us but too often cause us harm, maybe we should be talking about defunding health care as well.

America loves the police. They’re like mom and apple pie; not supporting them is essentially seen as being unpatriotic. Until recent events, it’s been political suicide to try to attack police budgets. It’s much easier for politicians to urge more police, with more hardware, even military grade, while searching for budget cuts that will attract less attention.

It remains to be seen whether the current climate will actually lead to action, but there are faint signs of change. The mayor of Los Angeles has promised to cut $150 million from its police budget, the New York City mayor vowed to cut some of its $6b police budget, and the Minneapolis City Council voted to “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department,” perhaps spurred by seeing the mayor do a “walk of shame” of jeers from protesters when he would not agree to even defunding it.

The Medical-Industrial Complex Pads Its Pockets As We Empty Ours

Jun 8, 2020• 5

By MIKE MAGEE, MD

A report this month published in the British Medical Journal found that 80% of 293 physician leaders and board members of 10 of the most influential medical associations in the United States (including the American College of Physicians, American College of Cardiology, American Psychiatric Association, Infectious Disease Society of America, American College of Rheumatology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Endocrine Society, American Thoracic Society, and Orthopaedic Trauma Association) received financial payments of $130 million in total for “leadership” activities between 2017 and 2019.

In doing so, they were replicating the behavior established in 1939 by Van n evar Bush. Born March 11, 1890, in Everett, Massachusetts, the only son of a Universalist preacher and the grandson of a whaler, Bush earned a math degree from Tufts, followed by a PhD in engineering from MIT. From the beginning of his career he straddled the academic and the industrial in a way that anticipated the future of almost all scientific research.

In 1939, with the Second World War consuming both Europe and Asia, the father of the Medical-Industrial Complex met with the president of Harvard University and the president of Bell Labs, and mapped out a strategy for overcoming our lack of scientific preparedness. Out of that small meeting came a short, four-paragraph proposal for a centralized science operation—outside the control of the military—which he presented to President Roosevelt on June 12, 1940.

The president read the report, seized his pen, and scratched at the top, “OK-FDR.” With that stroke, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was created, and with it, the fully codified and institutionalized era of academic-industrial partnerships in research.

RWJF Emergency Response Challenge Apps Closing Soon: Apply Today!

Jun 8, 2020

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 126 | A triple-episode ft. Bigfoot, Tictrac, Lifestance & many more

Jun 5, 2020

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, there’s been so much movement in digital health funding this week that we have a triple-episode. Bigfoot Biomedical raised $55 million in a Series C, Tictrac raised $7.5 million for employee wellness, Lifestance Health raised a whopping $1.2 billion, Maven acquired Bright Parenting, Higi raised $30 million, Bright.md raised $16.7 million, Tia raises $24 million, Doktor.se raising €45 million, Orbita raised $9 million, Curatio’s undisclosed A, Siren raised $11.8 million, 100plus raised $15 million, Ubie raised $18.7 million, Change Healthcare acquired 2 different companies—PDX for $208 million and ERX for $213 million, and special funds by Andreessen Horowitz and Softbank supporting founders of color. —Matthew Holt

More Women Are Pursuing Majority-Male Specialties and Changing Patients’ Perceptions

Jun 5, 2020• 3

By AMY E. KRAMBECK, MD

With the exceptions of pediatrics and obstetrics/gynecology, women make up fewer than half of all medical specialists. Representation is lowest in orthopedics (8%), followed by my own specialty, urology (12%). I can testify that the numbers are changing in urology – women are up from just 8% in 2015, and the breakdown in our residency program here at Indiana University is now about 20% of the 5-year program.

One reason for the increase is likely the growth of women in medicine – 60% of doctors under 35 are women, as are more than half of medical school enrollees. I also credit a generational shift in attitudes. The female residents I work with do not anticipate hostility from men in the profession and they expect male patients to give them a fair shake. They may be right – their male contemporaries are more egalitarian than mine – but challenges still exist in our field.

Urologists see both men and women, but the majority of patients are male. Urology focuses on many conditions that only affect men such as enlarged prostate, prostate cancer, and penile cancer. Furthermore, stone disease is more common in men, as are many urologic cancers such as bladder cancer and kidney cancer. So the greatest challenge for young women in urology is to gain acceptance among older men who require examination of their genital region and often need surgery. I’m hopeful that women entering urology today can meet that challenge, largely because we have already made significant progress. For the barriers we still face, leading urologists have blazed a clear path to follow with these three guideposts.