The Health Care Blog – Page 181 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

Ouchie, a Chronic Pain Management App Mapping “Pain Journeys” | Rachel Trobman, Upside Health

Jan 31, 2020

BY JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Not only is ‘Ouchie’ what you say when you’re in pain, but now it’s also what you say when you need to find relief! Rachel Trobman, CEO of Upside Health, introduces us to Ouchie, a remote patient monitoring and treatment tool for chronic pain that patients can download onto their phones. Central to the patient experience of the app is the focus on documenting the patient’s “pain journey” where they answer a series of important lifestyle questions that inform the platform to come up with ways to receive support and other health resources. Not only does this self-reported data help patients identify triggers and patterns that impact their pain level, but it is also a treasure trove of information for physicians who can use it to better (and more quickly) tailor treatment to suit individual needs. The business behind Ouchie, called Upside Health, is starting to take off too and Rachel talks through revenue model, funding, and future plans.

Filmed at Frontiers Health in Berlin, Germany, November 2019.

Why the Centene and WellCare Merger is the Biggest Deal in 2020

Jan 31, 2020• 1

By ANDY MYCHKOVSKY

I feel like the healthcare world just skipped over the $17.3 billion mega-merger between Centene and Wellcare, which just received final regulatory approval last Wednesday. With their powers combined, this new company will create the Thanos of government-focused health plans, hopefully without any of the deranged plans to take over the world. I do get it, 181 million lives are covered by employer-sponsored insurance, between full-risk and self-insured plans. These employer populations have the most disposable income and their HR departments are willing to provide supplemental benefits. However, in my opinion, the future growth of health insurance will be governmental programs like Medicare Advantage (MA), Medicaid managed care, and ACA exchanges. But instead of me telling you this, here is exactly what Centene and WellCare said in a press release to defend the merger:

“The combined company would be the leader in government-sponsored healthcare with increased scale and diversification both geographically and in its managed care service offerings, and enhance access to high-quality services for members. It will offer affordable and high-quality products to its more than 12 million Medicaid and approximately 5 million Medicare members (including Medicare Prescription Drug Plan), as well as individuals served in the Health Insurance Marketplace and the TRICARE program. The combined company will operate 31 NCQA accredited health plans across the country and will have increased exposure to government-sponsored healthcare solutions through WellCare’s Medicare Advantage and Medicare Prescription Drug Plans. It will also benefit from leveraging Centene’s growing position in the Health Insurance Marketplace to new markets. The transaction creates a company with the size and scale to better serve members through enhanced healthcare programs, expanded capabilities and increased investment in technology.”

Simply put, here’s some of quick stats provided at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference presentation on January 13, 2020:

National footprint now serving 1 in 15 Americans
Clear market leader in Medicaid managed care and ACA exchange marketplace
Dominance serving most complex populations, #1 leader in LTSS and #2 in dual eligible
Competitiveness in the Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment wars
$500 million in proposed savings due to annual cost synergies

Livongo Takes on Hypertension | Zane Burke, CEO, Livongo

Jan 30, 2020

BY JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Livongo CEO, Zane Burke, has been a busy guy since the company’s IPO late last year. The applied health signals company has seen triple-digit (148%) growth and a robust expansion of the weight management and behavioral health platforms they’ve been building to support the ‘whole health life’ of people with diabetes. Case-in-point, Zane talks through the outcomes of the company’s latest clinical research on Livongo’s hypertension management tool, which showed that clients who used both Livongo’s diabetes management tool and hypertension tool in tandem experienced significant decreases in their hypertensive blood pressure in as little as four weeks. As traditional healthcare companies and digital health startups alike continue to watch Livongo’s every move for an indication of ‘what’s possible’ for health tech startups, we asked Zane to clue us in on how he’s keeping his team focused on product development, market expansion, and issues related to reimbursement.

Filmed at Frontiers Health in Berlin, Germany, November 2019.

Quantum Theory of Health

Jan 30, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

We’re pretty proud of modern medicine. We’ve accumulated a very intricate understanding of how our body works, what can go wrong with it, and what are options are for tinkering with it to improve its health. We’ve got all sorts of tests, treatments, and pills for it, with more on the way all the time.

However, there has been increasing awareness of the impact our microbiota has on our health, and I think modern medicine is reaching the point classical physics did when quantum physics came along.

Classical physics pictured the atom as kind of a miniature solar system, with well-defined particles revolving in definite orbits around the solid nucleus. In quantum physics, though, particles don’t have specific positions or exact orbits, combine/recombine, get entangled, and pop in and out of existence. At the quantum level everything is kind of fuzzy, but quantum theory itself is astoundingly predictive. We’re fooled into thinking our macro view of the universe is true, but our perceptions are wrong.

So it may be with modern medicine. Our microbiota (including both the microbiome and mycobiome) both provide the fuzziness and dictate a significant portion of our health.

Consumer Weight Loss Platform Noom Heads for Digital Health | Saeju Jeong, CEO, Noom

Jan 29, 2020

By JESSICA DAMASSA

Popular weight management app Noom is officially stepping into the world of digital health and digital therapeutics. CEO & co-founder, Saeju Jeong, shares some of the impressive stats that the behavior change platform has been able to help users achieve — including an average 7.5% reduction in body weight in 6 months. With more than 1 million (!) users around the world already, Noom is expanding globally and is venturing further into the healthcare space as a result of their successful pilot with Novo-Nordisk, which saw Noom as a ‘wrap around’ support to the drug company’s diabetes medication. On tap next, Saeju tells us he’s headed further into diabetes management, hypertension, kidney failure, and various cardiac conditions.

Filmed at Frontiers Health in Berlin, Germany, November 2019.

Strategic Interests and the ONC Annual Meeting

Jan 29, 2020• 6

By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD

The HHS Office of National Coordinator (ONC) hosted a well-attended Annual Meeting this week. It’s a critical time for HHS because regulations authorized under the almost unanimous bi-partisan 21stC Cures Act, three and a half years in the making, are now facing intense political pressure for further delay or outright nullification. HHS pulled out all of the stops to promote their as yet unseen work product.

Myself and other patient advocates benefited from the all-out push by ONC. We were given prominent spots on the plenary panels, for which we are grateful to ONC. This post summarizes my impressions on three topics discussed both on-stage and off:

Patient Matching and Unique Patient Identifiers (UPI)
Reaction to Judy Faulkner’s Threats
Consumer App Access and Safety

Each of these represents a different aspect of the strategic interests at work to sideline patient-centered practices that might threaten the current $Trillion of waste.

The patient ID plenary panel opened the meeting. It was a well designed opportunity for experts to present their perspectives on a seemingly endless debate. Here’s a brief report. My comments were a privacy perspective on patient matching, UPI, and the potential role of self-sovereign identity (SSI) as a new UPI technology. The questions and Twitter about my comments after the panel showed specific interest in:

The similarity of “enhanced” surveillance for patient matching to the Chinese social credit scoring system.
The suggestion that we already have very useful UPIs in the form of email address and mobile phone numbers that could have been adopted in the marketplace, but are not, for what I euphemistically called “strategic interests”.
The promise of SSI as better and more privacy preserving UPIs that might still be ignored by the same strategic interests.
The observation that a consent-based health information exchange does not need either patient matching or UPIs.

Disrupting How We Detect Asthma & Hypertension | Edward Allegra, BioLum Sciences

Jan 28, 2020

BY JESSICA DAMASSA

BioLum Sciences is introducing new chemistry that has the potential to completely change the way we test for respiratory illnesses, like asthma, and analyze blood samples to identify hypertension. CEO Edward Allegra talks through the science behind both their breath and blood tests, both of which are patent-pending and have the ability to completely bend the cost-curve when it comes to identifying and monitoring these two common chronic conditions. What’s next for the early-stage health startup? A range of applications to detect everything from COPD to lung cancer and more.

Filmed at Bayer G4A Signing Day in Berlin, Germany, October 2019.

Why Healthcare Needs Designers

Jan 28, 2020• 2

By TINA PARK, MFA

Designing a functional lamp is simple. Building the Mars Rover is complex. Getting a doctor to ask the right questions so that a patient feels confident about their care in a highly regulated and time constrained environment? That’s complicated.

Healthcare is filled with complicated challenges. Increasingly, healthcare companies and institutions are attacking these challenges with cross-disciplinary teams — doctors, data scientists, marketers, quality officers, financial experts, information technologists, and more. An often missing member of these teams are design leaders. Designers can provide an invaluable role in healthcare, but too often healthcare does not take advantage of all that design can offer.

Good design is invisible. Think about the last time you obtained or purchased something that was well designed. When you get a new blender, you plug it in and turn it on without looking at the user manual, and it works. You don’t necessarily think “Wow, they put that on button right where I thought it would be.” You use it and get on with your day. And every day you use that blender, putting in new mixtures of fruits and vegetables. Sometimes you get a delicious jackpot mix and think this is the best blender ever. Sometimes you get something brown and sticky and you make a mental note never to try that one again, even as you choke it down.

Announcing the Finalists of GuideWell’s Caring for Caregivers Challenge

Jan 27, 2020

Digital Therapeutics Category Outlook for Reimbursement | Megan Coder, Digital Therapeutics Alliance

Jan 27, 2020

BY JESSICA DAMASSA

What’s ahead for digital thereaputics as the category carves out its place in the broader world of digital health and health tech? Megan Coder, Executive Director of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance (the professional org founded in 2017 to guide the development of the category), swings by to level set with some definitions, talk reimbursement trends in US and Europe, and explain the intention behind the DTA’s recently published code of conduct and best practices for DTX companies.

Filmed at Frontiers Health in Berlin, Germany, November 2019.