BY PRAMOD JOHN

Although many participants in the healthcare supply chain like to shroud drug transactions in a cloak of complexity and regulation, drugs are just ‘packaged technology’ and could be transacted much like other technology-based products, albeit regulated ones. As those in the Rx supply chain know, drug transactions have been carefully engineered to be anything but simple.

There is a lot of scuttlebutt about retail powerhouse Amazon bringing its proven brand of simplicity to the drug markets. We at VIVIO Health applaud this effort and hope it becomes successful as the result will be significant progress toward a market-driven industry, a much-needed first for healthcare consumers. Unfortunately, Amazon, even with its storied history of disrupting archaic industries must overcome four key structural roadblocks.

It’s easy to see the Amazon experience starting with consumers who are buying generic prescriptions either without insurance, when the price is lower than their copay, or as purchases counting toward plan deductibles. Beyond this point, Amazon’s path gets significantly bumpier. After satisfying deductible requirements, many consumers only pay 10-20% of the purchase price as coinsurance cost while the plan pays the rest. Amazon knows many people’s post-deductible out-of-pocket costs, especially on higher cost generic and branded drugs, will be significantly lower when using their plan rather than the Amazon platform. This is the first structural challenge they need to overcome.

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By SAURABH JHA, MD

When I first read about neurosyphilis in medical school, I became convinced that Mrs. Thatcher, who I detested intensely because it was fashionable detesting her, had General Paralysis of the Insane. The condition, marked by episodic bouts of temporary insanity, which indicated that the spirochetes were feasting on expensive real estate in the brain, seemed a plausible explanation why she had introduced the retarded Poll Tax.

A little bit of medical knowledge can lead to tomfoolery by the juvenile. I began diagnosing the powerful with medical conditions. I thought the former leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, who had an odd affect, was both hyperthyroid and hypothyroid – when he spoke he looked myxedematous and when was silent he looked like he had Grave’s Disease. The tacit, but not silent enough, Prince Charles spoke in a tone that seemed a cry for help for acutely thrombosed piles. I also realized that the Prince of Wales –  who is the most compelling evidence for the magical kingdom of elves – wasn’t reducible to a single diagnostic code. Diagnosing Hillary was relatively straightforward. After reading a third of her memoirs, which permanently cured my insomnia, I felt someone had inadvertently given her dextrose without thiamine.

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By STEPHEN SOUMERAI  and ROSS KOPPEL

U.S. health care policies should be based on solid evidence, especially those policies with life-and-death consequences. All too often, though, they are not. Consider the recommendation by congressional advisors that the government should favor basic ambulances with only minimal equipment and less trained staff over advanced ambulances with more life-saving equipment and better trained staff. A poorly controlled study, however, claimed that patients were more likely to die during or after riding in the advanced ambulances than in the basic (but cheaper) ambulances.

Why would “basic” ambulances (with less life-saving equipment and with lesser trained staff) be better than the more advanced ambulances? They probably were not, and we’ll show how the data supporting the benefits of “basic” ambulances are unreliable, and often confuse cause and effect. Worse perhaps, the study offers yet another example of economic research devoid of context generating dubious national policy.

The Study    

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Harvard Medical School used insurance data to examine how well a large sample of Medicare beneficiaries fared after ambulance transport for out-of-hospital emergencies. They compared those sent in basic life support ambulances vs. people transported in advanced life support ambulances.

The results, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, are of course counterintuitive: patients transported to the hospital in Advanced Life Support ambulances were more likely to die than those riding in the simpler, basic ambulances.

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By MANEESH JUNEJA

This is the most difficult blog post I’ve ever had to write. Almost 3 months ago, my sister passed away unexpectedly. It’s too painful to talk about the details. We were extremely close and because of that the loss is even harder to cope with.

The story I want to tell you today is about what’s happened since that day and the impact it’s had on how I view the world. In my work, I spend considerable amounts of time with all sorts of technology, trying to understand what all these advances mean for our health. Looking back, from the start of this year, I’d been feeling increasingly concerned by the growing chorus of voices telling us that technology is the answer for every problem, when it comes to our health. Many of us have been conditioned to believe them. The narrative has been so intoxicating for some.

Ever since this tragedy, it’s not an app, or a sensor or data that I turned to. I have been craving authentic human connections. As I have tried to make sense of life and death, I have wanted to be able to relate to family and friends by making eye contact, giving and receiving hugs and simply just being present in the same room as them. The ‘care robot’ that had arrived from China this year as part of my research into whether robots can keep us company, remains switched off in its box. Amazon’s Echo, the smart assistant with a voice interface that I’d also been testing a lot also sits unused in my home. I used it most frequently to turn the lights on and off, but now I prefer walking over to the light switch and the tactile sensation of pressing the switch with my finger. One day last week, I was feeling sad, and didn’t feel like leaving the house, so I decided to try putting on my Virtual Reality (VR) headset, to join a virtual social space. I joined a virtual computer generated room where it was sunny and in someone’s back yard for a BBQ, I could see their avatars, and I chatted to them for about 15 minutes. After I took off the headset, I felt worse.

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