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Announcing GuideWell’s 2020 Scale Up Accelerator: Aging in Place

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SPONSORED POST

By CATALYST @ HEALTH 2.0

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of American seniors will grow to over 71 million by 2030. To address critical problems that the growing elder population faces, GuideWell is hosting a health and wellness accelerator program for companies and innovators focused on senior care. GuideWell’s Scale Up Accelerator: Aging in Place is seeking solutions that provide affordable, accessible health care or holistic solutions for diverse aging populations.

10 companies will be selected to participate in an exciting eight week program that consists of a two-day kickoff boot camp, followed by weekly mentoring sessions and a series of virtual workshops that focus on challenges in the health care industry (e.g. customer acquisition, regulatory compliance, etc.).

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More Disruption from Jonathan Bush…This Time It’s Primary Care | Jonathan Bush, Firefly Health

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By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Health tech rabble-rouser, Jonathan Bush, marked his return to digital health with an appearance on the Health 2.0 stage, and quick chat with WTF Health about his new role as Executive Chairman at Firefly Health. As if conquering EMRs wasn’t enough, JB’s planning on disrupting primary care for his second act. With $10.8M series A funding and a huge addressable market, this may not be such a crazy idea after all. So, what made us miss this guy so much during his year-long hiatus from health tech? Just watch. This interview goes from the “Kabuki theater of the doctor’s office visit” to “Marie Kondo-ing” healthcare to Machiavelli and universal healthcare’s impact on the health tech market. Welcome back, JB.

Filmed at the Health 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, CA in September 2019.

Why Isn’t Price Transparency Working in Healthcare?

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By TAYLOR CHRISTENSEN, MD

I strongly believe that getting people the information and incentives necessary to choose higher-value providers and insurers is the solution to improving value in healthcare (see my Healthcare Incentives Framework). But, you say, we’ve tried that and it doesn’t work, and current efforts are a waste of time!

Here’s an example of some great research that you might use to support your opinion:

Examining a Health Care Price Transparency Tool: Who Uses It, and How They Shop for Care (Sinaiko and Rosenthal, Health Affairs, April 2016)

The news media would see this and report the main findings–that only 3% of enrollees used Aetna’s price comparison tool–and argue that even people who have the opportunity to shop for care will not do it, which they will interpret to mean any “consumer-driven” healthcare effort is proven through evidence not to work. People can wrest information to prove whatever they want.

But what if you actually read the study?

Sinaiko and Rosenthal found that only about 60% of enrollees even had a claim during their study period. And of those 60%, I’m guessing a large percentage of those were outpatient visits (primary care or specialty) with established providers, which are claim types that people historically do not shop for. Think about it, if you have your favorite hairdresser who knows you best, you have a relationship with that person, and you like how they cut your hair, are you going to price shop every single time you need to get your hair cut?

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THCB Spotlight: Two old men reminisce about the glory days!

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Today on THCB spotlight I have a bit of fun with Ryan Tarzy. Ryan has been to every Health 2.0 conference in a number of guises and now has a new gig at Prealize. We saw each other at the very glitzy, very full HLTH conference last week, so you might title this, “2 old men reminiscing about the glory days of digital health & Health 2.0” —Matthew Holt

Clinical Depth: The Power of Knowing More than the Minimum

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By HANS DUVEFELT, MD

In medicine, contrary to common belief, it is not usually enough to know the diagnosis and its best treatment or procedure. Guidelines, checklists and protocols only go so far when you are treating real people with diverse constitutions for multiple problems under a variety of circumstances.

The more you know about unusual presentations of common diseases, the more likely you are to make the correct diagnosis, I think everyone would agree. Also, the more you know about the rare diseases that can look like the common one you think you’re seeing in front if you, rather than having just a memorized list of rule-outs, the better you are at deciding how much extra testing is practical and cost effective in each situation.

Not everyone with high blood pressure needs to be tested in detail for pheochromocytoma, renal artery stenosis, coarctation of the aorta, Cushing’s syndrome, hyperaldosteronism, hyperparathyroidism or thyroiditis. But you need to know enough about all of these things to have them in mind, automatically and naturally, when you see someone with high blood pressure.

Just having a lifeless list in your pocket or your EMR, void of vivid details and depth of understanding, puts you at risk of being a burned-out, shallow healthcare worker someday replaced by apps or artificial intelligence.

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The Untold Reality of Medical Device Shortages in the U.S.

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Chaun Powell
Soumi Saha

By CHAUN POWELL, MBA and SOUMI SAHA, PharmD, JD

Say the word “shortage” to a healthcare professional and chances are the first thing that will come to mind is drug shortages. With good reason, too – there are more than 100 drugs currently at risk or not readily available for U.S. hospitals, according to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) drug shortage list. 

Shortages don’t just apply to drugs, however, and as 2019 has shown, healthcare providers must become more focused on shortages of the medical device variety. The shutdown of multiple medical device sterilization facilities in 2019 is poised to jeopardize the availability of devices that are critical to routine patient care. On Nov. 6, the FDA is hosting a panel to hear from stakeholders, including hospital epidemiologists and healthcare supply chain experts, on the risks associated with facility shutdowns and potential action steps.

The industry as a whole is in need of meaningful solutions. As taxpayers, patients and key stakeholders in healthcare, we must collaborate to eliminate interruptions to our healthcare supply chain. For those invested in improving healthcare from the inside, this means working across competitive boundaries and borrowing best practices from sister industries as we work to identify the root cause of these issues and provide meaningful and preventative solutions.

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Should We Fear The Robots Taking Over Healthcare? | David Ewing Duncan, CEO Arc Fusion

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By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

In his new book, “Talking to Robots,” award-winning journalist and author, David Ewing Duncan, explores what happens when robots become ubiquitous characters in our everyday lives. From Facebookbot and Sexbot to Coffeebot and Warriorbot and, for our health tech purposes, Doctorbot, David imagines a future-state where today’s tech takes over. Interesting food for thought for anyone working in tech when it comes to thinking through the good (and possibly bad!) aspects of their innovations.

Filmed at the Health 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, CA in September 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 Health Data Goldilocks Dilemma | Vince Kuraitis & Deven McGraw

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By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Which is better: sharing access to all health data across platforms so that interoperability is achieved, or protecting some data for the sake of privacy? Health data privacy experts Vince Kuraitis, founder of Better Health Technologies, and Deven McGraw, Chief Regulatory Officer at Ciitzen, are crowdsourcing opinions and insights on what they are calling The Health Data Goldilocks Dilemma. How much data protection is ‘juuuust right’? What should be regulated? And, by whom? The duo talks through their views on the data protection conversation and urge others to join in the conversation via their blog series called, “The Health Data Goldilocks Dilemma,” on The Health Care Blog.

Filmed at the HIMSS Health 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, CA in September 2019.

Prehab Tool and AI Win Big at the 2019 RWJF Live Pitch

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SPONSORED POST

By CATALYST @ HEALTH 2.0

Six finalists competed in an exciting live pitch for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s 2019 Innovation Challenges at the 2019 Health 2.0 Annual Conference. They demoed their technologies in front of an audience of health care professionals, investors, provider organizations, and members of the media. The Home and Community Based Care Challenge sought technologies that support the advancement of at-home or community based care. The Social Determinants of Health Innovation Challenge called for solutions that increase access to services related to social determinants of health.

During the 3-day Conference, Jessica DaMassa, Executive Producer & Host of @WTF_Health, spoke with the finalists about their experience competing in the RWJF Innovation Challenges, their personal highlights, and what’s next!

Home and Community Based Care Innovation Challenge Finalists

First Place:

Ooney’s home-based web-app for older adults, Prehab Pal, delivers individualized prehabilitation to accelerate postoperative functional recovery and return to independence after surgery.

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The FDA has approved AI-based PET/MRI “denoising”. How safe is this technology?

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By LUKE OAKDEN-RAYNER, MD

Super-resolution* promises to be one of the most impactful medical imaging AI technologies, but only if it is safe.

Last week we saw the FDA approve the first MRI super-resolution product, from the same company that received approval for a similar PET product last year. This news seems as good a reason as any to talk about the safety concerns myself and many other people have with these systems.

Disclaimer: the majority of this piece is about medical super-resolution in general, and not about the SubtleMR system itself. That specific system is addressed directly near the end.

Zoom, enhance

Super-resolution is, quite literally, the “zoom and enhance” CSI meme in the gif at the top of this piece. You give the computer a low quality image and it turns it into a high resolution one. Pretty cool stuff, especially because it actually kind of works.

In medical imaging though, it’s better than cool. You ever wonder why an MRI costs so much and can have long wait times? Well, it is because you can only do one scan every 20-30 minutes (with some scans taking an hour or more). The capital and running costs are only spread across one to two dozen patients per day.

So what if you could get an MRI of the same quality in 5 minutes? Maybe two to five times more scans (the “getting patient ready for the scan” time becomes the bottleneck), meaning less cost and more throughput.

This is the dream of medical super-resolution.

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