Is Elon Musk going to buy Twitter? Are the telehealth waivers going to be passed forward? Jess and I just waiting waiting waiting. Nothing is happening, so we just reminisce about some stuff over the past days, as well as some of these new deals! Legacy raises $25 million; Ness raises $15 million; NowRX raises $22 million; & Monument acquires Tempest.
–Matthew Holt
BY KIM BELLARD
One of my favorite movies is The Princess Bride. Among the many great quotes is one from Inigo Montoya, who becomes frustrated when the evil Vizzini keeps using “inconceivable” to describe events that were clearly actually taking place. “You keep using that word,” Inigo finally says. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”
So it is for most of us with the word “innovation” – especially in healthcare.
What started thinking me about this is an opinion piece by Alex Amouyel: Innovation Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does. Ms. Amouyel is the Executive Director of Solve, an MIT initiative whose mission is “to drive innovation to solve world challenges.” It sees itself as “a marketplace for social impact innovation.”
In her article, Ms. Amouyel notes that traditional definitions of innovation focus on the use of novelty to create wealth. She doesn’t dispute that view, as long as “wealth” includes the less traditional “community wealth,” which includes “broadly shared economic prosperity, racial equity, and ecological sustainability.” I suspect that innovators like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk don’t ascribe to that view of innovation.
Ms. Amouyel’s view is: “For me, innovation is about solving problems. And if innovation is about solving problems, what problems you are solving and who is setting about solving them is key.” She notes the multiplicity and difficulty of both global and community-level problems that we face, and urges: “Most urgently, we should zero in on problems that affect the most underserved among us.”
Continue reading…
By HAMISH MACDONALD
Being a patient has always meant being at the bottom of a trickle-down pyramid in healthcare. Late to get information, our test results, our data, and as for earning the money that our healthcare data is worth – that is something the healthcare industry does without our permission or dues. We are left right out of that.
But what if we made clinical data tools available on your device, so that you could build the most valuable set of healthcare data that exists about you anywhere? What if you owned that particular data set as your personal asset? Well, we think that researchers are going to want access to it – and pay you for that access.
Not only that, how valuable would it be to have the most complete and accurate healthcare data set available about you under your ownership and control? How can you expect a doctor or yourself to reach the best conclusion with incomplete information about your health?!? Frustration, confusion, anxiety and poor health outcomes are often the result.
How The Sovereignty Network empowers you to build your own healthcare data set
Building the most valuable data set about you, for you, is what we have done at The Sovereignty Network. We elevate you as a patient to be a Data Owner. There are 4 easy steps to becoming a Data Owner and earning what your data is worth – and having a complete and accurate set of your healthcare data on hand for your peace of mind.
Turning your data set into licensable income – or donating it to causes you support
Because you and only you own the copy of your healthcare data that you have built – your record, or specific parts of it, is now licensable.
Continue reading…In this episode of #healthTechDeals Jess DaMassa is hoping Matthew Holt disappears, possibly on Elon Musk’s rocket to Mars. Matthew just wants him to buy Chelsea FC. And then there’s actual funding deals for Osmind ($40m), Turquoise Health ($20), Mahmee ($9) & Simplifed which got $6m despite having Matthew help!
It’s Friday 13th, the unluckiest day and many on the stock market were feeling it. But there were some deals. Alan in France raises 183m Euros, HealthMap Solutions gets $25m for kidney care, Icelandic Sidekick Health gets $55m for DTx & Dialogue buys Tictrac for $43m US.
–Matthew Holt
By HANS DUVEFELT
In some practices, patients with seemingly simple problems are scheduled to be seen by a nurse or medical assistant. Sometimes they can even just drop off a urine sample in case of a suspected urinary tract infection.
This is a dangerous trap. What if the patient rarely gets urinary infections, has back pain and assumes it is a UTI instead of a kidney stone or shingles on their back just where one kidney is located; what if they have lower abdominal pain from an ovarian cyst or an ectopic pregnancy?
Another dangerous type of “nurse visit” is when patients focus on one symptom or parameter, thinking for example that as long as their blood pressure is okay, their vague chest pressure with sweating and shortness of breath isn’t anything serious. It’s one thing if I want a couple of blood pressure checks by my nurse, but a whole different thing when it is the patient’s idea, assumption or self diagnosis.
In many cases, a telephone call with the provider or a triage nurse can be safer and more diagnostic than starting with a nurse visit. Because the symptom history is usually more important when making a diagnosis. And nurse visits tend to be skimpy when it comes to the clinical history, even though the provider assumes responsibility for the diagnosis and treatment of a patient they didn’t talk to or examine.
Continue reading…By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
What does digital transformation look like at a global healthcare giant like Pfizer? Lidia Fonseca, Pfizer’s Chief Digital & Technology Officer, shares her strategy for building the life sciences company’s digital data and technology solutions, including her thinking about digital therapeutics, digital diagnostics, and digital biomarkers. As Lidia puts it, this is not about trying to simply implement a “digital strategy,” but is, instead, about building a “business strategy for digital world.”
There’s probably no better story that illustrates how that “business strategy for a digital world” is playing out than the fascinating example of how Pfizer’s Digital team helped accelerate the development of the Covid19 vaccine and oral treatment. Lidia takes us inside and talks through how her team used tech to safely speed-up everything from development timelines to clinical trials and even go-to-market in areas around the globe that were experiencing outbreaks.
Beyond the tech team’s ability to effectively wield data that changed the game when it came to Covid, Lidia also shares what’s next for the pharma co when it comes to digital health and digital medicines. Beyond the pill? Around the pill? Instead of the pill? What’s Pfizer’s position on digital therapeutics as it continues to work to bring new breakthrough medicines to patients? We get into all the ways digital and technology are manifesting themselves within an organization like Pfizer AND get Lidia’s best advice for other healthcare organizations who are redefining their businesses with technology.
BY KIM BELLARD
Abortion rights continue to be one of the most heated issues in American politics, super-fueled by last week’s leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn 1973’s Roe v. Wade and return the issue to the states to decide.
I’ll leave it to others more qualified than me – women, for example — to weigh in on abortion itself, but I want to talk about how abortion pills are going to force changes to our healthcare system that many may not be ready for.
Although the stereotype of abortions is a procedure done by a physician in an office/clinic, the majority of abortions in the U.S. are now done through the use of abortion pills. It is a two step process, and the two medications must be prescribed by a physician. Until last December, women were required to see a physician in person, but the FDA permanently lifted those requirements, following a temporary waiver during the pandemic. The pills are considered both highly effective and safe. There are startups, like Hey Jane and Just the Pill, that specialize in them.
Not surprisingly, since the leak searches for “abortion pills” have hit all-time highs.
The states that have been passing various abortion bans have not ignored the loophole that abortion pills represent. There are a variety of restrictions that have been enacted, such as requiring in-person visits to outright banning use of telehealth for them. In those states, some women have opted to travel out of state to do the telehealth visit and/or to receive the pills via the mail.
Continue reading…In this episode of #HealthTechDeals, Jess is enjoying Cinqo de Mayo in an Addams Family-themed hotel where she is playing “the mummy” introducing health tech companies coming back from the dead. There’s gossip about Amazon’s pharmacy operation over supplying insulin, and there’s deals for Levels ($38m) in CGM analysis, Waltz Health ($35m) in pharmacy search, Safety Wing ($25m) for health insurance for nomads & Implicity ($23m) doing cardiac implantable monitoring in France.
It’s the May the 4th be with you day! In Episode 26 of #HealthTechDeals, Jessica is huddling in Boston after the American Telehealth Association conference, and has Star Wars-related trivia. There’s gossip there, there’s more gossip about Cerebral & its ADHD med strategy. Meanwhile a lot of copy cats in deals today with Hello Heart ($70m) for hypertension, Concert Health ($40m) for mental health, Vivian Health ($60m) for nurse staffing, Curebase ($40m) for DCTs, Mendel.ai ($40m) for NLP & Blue Spark ($40m) for RPM — all joining very crowded markets.
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