João Bocas is known as “The Wearables Expert” and has been talking, writing and innovating in health tech for a while. Last month he had me on his video series. It was a fun interview in which I talked about Flipping the Stack, the Continuous Clinic, and the slow pace of change in health care! With João’s permission I am reproducing that interview here–Matthew Holt
Above the Fold
THCB Gang Episode 94, Thursday June 2
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday June 2 were regulars Grace Cordavano (@GraceCordovano); patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); and policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1). Gun control, hospital quality and much more all came up and were interlinked. Quite the conversation.
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
AI are (going to be) people too
BY KIM BELLARD
My heart says I should write about Uvalde, but my head says, not yet; there are others more able to do that. I’ll reserve my sorrow, my outrage, and any hopes I still have for the next election cycle.
Instead, I’m turning to a topic that has long fascinated me: when and how are we going to recognize when artificial intelligence (AI) becomes, if not human, then a “person”? Maybe even a doctor.
Continue reading…A deal on AHIP in Vegas!
I’m going to AHIP in Vegas next month and you should come too!
It’s time to be together again. It’s also time to save. Register for AHIP 2022 (formerly Institute & Expo), June 21 – 23 in Las Vegas with code THCB and save. Together, we’ll explore the ideas, innovations, and forward-thinking driving health care’s transformation. Check out the agenda and Register today with code THCB.
The Mental Health ‘Formulary of the Future’? Otsuka’s Work in DTx, Psychedelics, & More
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
Otsuka Pharmaceuticals is expanding its mental health formulary – looking beyond traditional medications to psychedelics, and to the “intersection of technology and psychiatry” with digital therapeutics currently in clinical trials for Major Depressive Disorder. Kabir Nath, Senior Managing Director of Otsuka’s Global Pharmaceutical Business, lets us in on the thinking behind these bold moves, why the pharma co is even innovating to expand the spectrum of treatments available for mental illness in the first place, and how soon these new therapies will reach patients.
“Follow the science” is a key undercurrent of this conversation, particularly as we talk through Otsuka’s investments in psychedelic medicine start-ups Compass Pathways and, more recently, Mindset. Kabir says the body of clinical evidence for these therapies is building and we get his prediction on when they might become more mainstream and readily available.
We also get his take on digital therapeutics (DTx) and the work Otsuka is doing with Click Therapeutics in Major Depressive Disorder. Their clinical trial, done in partnership with Verily, is the first-ever fully remote clinical trial conducted in this space, and the hope is that it not only generates evidence to support the emerging DTx category, but that it also sets a precedent for a new, tech-enabled way to run clinical trials.
This is just the beginning. There’s lots more on the innovations changing pharma and the future of mental health care in this one. Watch now!
British Doctor Suspended for falsely claiming she was “promised” a laptop. WTF!
BY SAURABH JHA
If forced to choose Britain’s two biggest contributions to civilizations, I’d pick the Magna Carta and the vaguely instructional “fuck off.” If permitted a third, I’d choose “managerialism.” Brits are good at telling others what to do. Managerialism is how the Brits once ruled India. Buoyed by the colonial experience, British managers felt they could rule doctors.
The new Viceroy, the manager-in-chief, is the General Medical Council (GMC). The GMC is a physician watchdog, funded by doctors, which works for the public good and is answerable to…well, I’ll get to that later. Their relevance rose exponentially when the psychopathic Dr. Harold Shipman, a charming, clinically adept, general practitioner, killed over two hundred patients. Never again, said the managers. They promised to keep the public safe from dodgy doctors with aspirations of Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd.
Continue reading…Russ Johannesson, CEO, Glooko
Russ Johannesson has been CEO of Glooko since 2018. In that time the diabetes data platform has expanded internationally, made a couple of acquisitions, and added support for digital therapeutics and distributed clinical trials. He brought me up to date with the latest–Matthew Holt
THCB Gang Episode 93, Thursday May 26 1pm PT, 4pm ET
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday May 26 were medical historian Mike Magee (@drmikemagee); Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune); and fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey). Plenty of conversation about guns as a public health crisis, and also much about data use, data reidentification and controversy there.
You can see the video below live (and later archived) & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
#HealthTechDeals Episode 31| Homethrive, Greater Good, Parallel Learning, Cayaba Care, Miga Health
You know what Jess just realized? We haven’t heard my opinion on Cerebral! Scandal! Firings! Intrigue! Legal Issues! Risk! Skyrocketing! Dying! Cerebral offers quite some food for thought. Check out the episode for my opinion on this incredibly fast-brewing story as well as more multi-million deals: Homethrive raises $20 million; Greater Good raises $10 million; Parallel Learning raises $20 million; Cayaba Care raises $12 million; Miga Health raises $12 million.
-Matthew Holt
Defanging HIPAA: How Your De-identified Data Was Re-identified For Profit.
BY MIKE MAGEE, M.D.
Arthur Sackler continues to demonstrate just how wealthy one can become by advantaging patients and their diseases.
He’s been dead since 1987, but his ghost continues to access your personal health data, pushes medical consumption and over-utilization, and expands profits exponentially for data abusers well beyond his wildest dreams. Back in 1954, he and his friend and secret business partner, Bill Frohlich, were the first to realize that individual health data could be a goldmine. That relationship would still be a secret had it not been exposed in a messy family inheritance feud unleashed by his third wife after Sackler’s death.
That company, IMS Health, was taken public and listed on the NYSE on April 4, 2014, transferring $1.3 billion in stock. I’ll come back to that in a moment. But in the early years, the pair realized that the data they were collecting would multiply in value if it could be correlated with a second data set. That dataset was the AMA’s Physician Masterfile which tracked the identity and location of all physicians in America from the time they entered medical school.
Continue reading…
