Search results for ‘THCB Gang’

Artificial Intelligence vs. Tuberculosis, Part 1

Dec 4, 2019

By SAURABH JHA, MD

Slumdog TB

No one knows who gave Rahul Roy tuberculosis. Roy’s charmed life as a successful trader involved traveling in his Mercedes C class between his apartment on the plush Nepean Sea Road in South Mumbai and offices in Bombay Stock Exchange. He cared little for Mumbai’s weather. He seldom rolled down his car windows – his ambient atmosphere, optimized for his comfort, rarely changed.

Historically TB, or “consumption” as it was known, was a Bohemian malady; the chronic suffering produced a rhapsody which produced fine art. TB was fashionable in Victorian Britain, in part, because consumption, like aristocracy, was thought to be hereditary. Even after Robert Koch discovered that the cause of TB was a rod-shaped bacterium – Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (MTB), TB had a special status denied to its immoral peer, Syphilis, and unaesthetic cousin, leprosy.

TB became egalitarian in the early twentieth century but retained an aristocratic noblesse oblige. George Orwell may have contracted TB when he voluntarily lived with miners in crowded squalor to understand poverty. Unlike Orwell, Roy had no pretentions of solidarity with poor people. For Roy, there was nothing heroic about getting TB. He was embarrassed not because of TB’s infectivity; TB sanitariums are a thing of the past. TB signaled social class decline. He believed rickshawallahs, not traders, got TB.

HIMSSanity Preview

Feb 9, 2019

By MATTHEW HOLT

It’s time for my favorite busman’s holiday of the year, the HIMSS global conference, held this year in the cultural wasteland of Orlando, Florida (which given its cultural competition is Las Vegas is saying something!). But there are only 2 places in the US with enough hotel rooms to deal with 45,000 hungry and thirsty Health IT people and they’re it!

I think this is my 22nd HIMSS. First was in 1994, but I missed one when I was sick in the 90s, and 2-3 when I was taking a long post-dotcom bust sabbatical in the early 00s. Suffice to say I know my way around and have a decent party invite list. But this year is different. I’m both a HIMSS quasi-staff member, since Health 2.0 is now a HIMSS brand doing VentureConnect this year, AND I’m a vendor client with a booth for my SMACK.health advisory service program, which will be featuring several of our clients and a couple of special guests (or clients in waiting?).

So who will you see in booth #5594 at HIMSS?

First up the incomparable Jessica DaMassa will be interviewing all and sundry for her WTF Health specials. I’ll be stealing her camera for some THCB spotlights and we’ll also be recording segments for our forthcoming podcast HardCore Health. Then there’ll be a whole gang of super exciting tech companies and in no particular order with my (and not their quick summaries) here’s who they are:

SurveyorHealth — Super clever AI that optimizes medication management by fixing complex drug regimens, saving $$ and lives
BlueStream Health — Revolutionary, always-on telehealth network
CaptureProof — A visual medical record changing the game in ortho, derm, + + +
SAFE App — an STD lab test system hidden behind the coolest consumer app that will really help bring transparency to “dating” by sharing your STD status
Happego — Have you heard of psychological priming to create behavior change? This app does it at scale with no effort on the users part. Mindfulness made easy!
Ouchie – An app and community to help patients track, manage & beat chronic pain
Dot.Health — The home of the “.health” domain extension (come get yours!)
Tag.bio — Putting the power of data science into the hands of clinicians and researchers
InPharmD – “Siri for pharmacists,” bringing the most important lit searches to the end user
Visolyr — Interoperability-as-a-service for health care organizations

4 of these companies will be demoing at any one given time. Plus we will have the most fun furniture in the exhibit hall, and the only booth featuring a Unicorn Straddling during interviews. Come see us at booth 5594!

If you want to know more, the ringmaster is Zoya Khan.

Matthew is the Founder of The Health Care Blog and is the President of SMACK.health

Social determinants on becoming a physician

Jul 6, 2018• 2

By SAURABH JHA

Poverty is known to be an important determinant of a person’s health and longevity. A person’s zip code is more relevant than genetic code. Does a physician’s zip code – that is where they were born and raised – have an effect on where they practice? Specifically, do rural born and raised physicians return to their rural roots? The story of Prashant, a physician raised in rural Bihar, India, is instructive.

When I first met Prashant, he was a second-year medical student in Patna Medical College and Hospital. Patna is the capital of Bihar, and Bihar is one of the poorest states in India.

Prashant brimmed with idealism and vigor. “I’ll practice in Purnea one day and serve the poor villagers,” he told me in broken English.

Prashant comes from a family of Bihari farmers who are also affluent landowners. He grew up near Purnea, a fourth-tier town in Bihar surrounded by villages. Visiting these villages is like stepping into a time machine – you can see people travelling by bullock carts but using mobile phones.

The Ethics of Keeping Alfie Alive

May 21, 2018• 12

By SAURABH JHA

Of my time arguing with doctors, 30 % is spent convincing British doctors that their American counterparts aren’t idiots, 30 % convincing American doctors that British doctors aren’t idiots, and 40 % convincing both that I’m not an idiot.

A British doctor once earnestly asked whether American physicians carry credit card reading machines inside their white coats. Myths about the NHS can be equally comical. British doctors don’t prostate every morning in deference to the NHS, like the citizens of Oceania sang to Big Brother in Orwell’s dystopia. Nor, in their daily rounds, do they calculate opportunity costs for keeping patients alive on ventilators.

Conversations such as this are vanishingly rare.

Administrator: “It’s costing an arm and leg keeping this sick baby alive – to balance the annual budget we need to stop dialyzing a granny.”

ICU doctor: “We’ll have to send poor Ethel to her grave. That’s a shame. She was beginning to grow on me.”

Health Ethicist: “Wait, let me check with National Institute of Clinical Excellence, the rationing experts, who should be relieved of intensive care first. Perhaps it should be Winston, not Ethel – because Winston is an alcoholic. We need to make rationing scientific and fair.”

Donald Trump’s Healthcare Problem

Feb 23, 2016• 20

By ROGER COLLIER

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 12.05.28 PM Whether you are elated, appalled, or just plain amazed that Donald Trump is the Republican primary front runner by a considerable margin, one thing should be clear: he’s not a policy guy.

So far, The Donald’s lack of policy specifics seems not to have hurt him. He’s successfully deflected the more searching debate questions, provided vague generalizations or given incomprehensible responses, and—when all else failed—insulted the debate moderators or his fellow Republican candidates.

So far, so good, for the Trump campaign. But is it time to change tactics?

As the number of competing candidates dwindles(So long, Jeb!),the focus in debates and interviews becomes sharper. With the original crowded field winnowed to just a handful,interviewers and debate moderators have time to probe a lot more deeply.And even if the questioners are relatively gentle, every other surviving candidate will be eager to pour scorn on policy statements that lack either substance or rationality.

Like Donald Trump’s healthcare proposals so far.

He’s said he wants the government to negotiate Medicare drug prices, he likes health savings accounts, he wants to be able to buy insurance across state lines, and he wouldn’t cut Medicare. And that’s pretty much it, except for one very big thing: he would “repeal and replace” Obamacare. But by what? “Something terrific” he says.

It’s easy to mock, but all of us – liberals and conservatives — should worry that we might just find ourselves with an incoming president trying to impose such an incoherent healthcare vision that our present system would look like a paragon of rationality.

The Stanford Lectures: So, Is Software Really Eating the World?

Aug 10, 2012• 6

By Blake Masters

Here at THCB we really can’t think of many lectures we’d rather sit in on than Peter Thiel’s Stanford course on entrepreneurship. And we can’t think of a better guest to catch than Netscape co-founder Marc Andreeson. In this talk, Andreeson talks about how healthcare IT is changing in the Facebook and Big Data Era era, the privacy issue and how the cloud may or not be eating software.

Is Software Eating the World?

Marc Andreessen’s most famous thesis is that software is eating the world. Certainly there are a number of sectors that have already been eaten. Telephone directories, journalism, and accounting brokerages are a few examples. Arguably music has been eaten too, now that distribution has largely gone online. Industry players don’t always see it coming or admit it when it arrives. The New York Times declared in 2002 that the Internet was over and, that distraction aside, we could all go back to enjoying newspapers. The record industry cheered when it took down Napster. Those celebrations were premature.

If it’s true that software is eating the world, the obvious question is what else is getting or will soon get eaten? There are a few compelling candidates. Healthcare has a lot going on. There have been dramatic improvements in EMR technology, healthcare analytics, and overall transparency. But there are lots of regulatory issues and bureaucracy to cut through.

Education is another sector that software might consume. People are trying all sorts of ways to computerize and automate learning processes. Then there’s the labor sector, where startups like Uber and Taskrabbit are circumventing the traditional, regulated models. Another promising sector is law. Computers may well end up replacing a lot of legal services currently provided by humans. There’s a sense in which things remain inefficient because people—very oddly—trust lawyers more than computers.

It’s hard to say when these sectors will get eaten. Suffice it to say that people should not bet against computers in these spheres. It may not be the best idea to go be the kind of doctor or lawyer that technology might render obsolete.

The Fall of Berwick?

Mar 9, 2011• 26

By MAGGIE MAHAR

When President Obama named Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) last March, I wrote this:

“Most who know Berwick describe him a ‘visionary’ and a ‘healer,’ a man able to survey the fragments of a broken health care system and imagine how they could be made whole. He’s a revolutionary, but he doesn’t rattle cages. He’s not arrogant, and he’s not advocating a government takeover of U.S. health care.”

To understand what I meant, view these clips from the film, Money-Driven Medicine, where Berwick speaks about the need for healthcare reform. Soft-spoken and charismatic, Berwick is as passionate as he is original. His style is colloquial, intimate, and ultimately absolutely riveting. He draws you into his vision, moving your mind from where it was to where it could be.

And now, it appears that we are going to lose him. Thursday, 42 Senators delivered a letter to President Obama demanding that he withdraw his support for Berwick to head CMS. The Boston pediatrician and co-founder of the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI) had received a temporary appointment in July while Congress was on vacation. President Obama re-nominated him in January. But Berwick still needs to be confirmed by the Senate, or he will have to leave his post at the end of this year.

With 42 out of 100 Senators firmly opposed to him, it appears that Berwick’s supporters won’t be able to muster the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate floor. Reportedly, Senate liberals already have given up. According to Politico.com’s Brett Coughlin: “At a meeting with Senate staffers Friday, health care lobbyists and advocates were told that there will be no confirmation hearing and that they’ll soon be discussing ‘next steps’ for CMS.” If this is true, Berwick is now a lame-duck CMS director without power—as of today.Continue reading…

A NY Times guest (inadvertently) spanks its professionals

Jun 21, 2010• 26

By Matthew Holt

A couple of weeks back two New York Times reporters (Abelson & Harris) decided to take on the orthodoxy of the Dartmouth school. Frankly their efforts reminded me of England’s performance in the world cup so far—abject and inept and leaving the fans hoping for much better. Within a few hours the mainstays of Dartmouth (Fisher & Skinner) responded correctly accusing Gardiner and Harris of shaky reporting. Although that original article was particularly muddled, there are indeed legitimate questions about some of the Dartmouth research, raised by serious academics (including on the august pages of THCB), but few of those made their way into the hodgepodge that was that original article. And now in their response to the response, Abelson & Harris have descended further into the mire.

The new argument is basically this. Yes, the Dartmouth academics have done all the corrections to regional data that the NYTimes duo accuse them of not having done. But they’re not available on the website within a click, not always portrayed in the maps in the Atlas, and (horror of horrors) you’d have to read Health Affairs to find out what they’d done. And that some of the academics who read Health Affairs hadn’t carefully looked at the maps which showed unadjusted data.

So now it’s not an academic issue or a misstatement. It’s an issue of poor user interface design! Well I guess we’re used to that in health care!

Making (sh)it up as they go along

Dec 9, 2009• 9

By Matthew Holt

So today’s news is that the gang of ten have come up with something. (If you haven’t been following along, the gang of ten are the five “liberal” Democrats and the five DINOs asked by Harry Reid to come up with something to break the deadlock and get some type of compromise that will pass the Senate). More details are here from Brian Beutler at TPM

So it might vanish like a Clinton-era trial balloon, or it might be a stayer, but the core of the new concept is to allow the 55–64 crowd to buy into Medicare, and to ask/allow/mandate a non-profit insurer(s) to provide a substitute public option. Exactly what the second point means is unclear to me. It may turn out to be some collapsing of Kent Conrad’s notion of the cooperative with an extension of the Federal Employees’ Plan (presumably minus the for-profit carriers) and somehow cramming that into the exchange. Of course providing something like the choice among private plans that Federal Employees now get was at the heart of Ron Wyden’s plan. We’ll see if it can last a couple of days scrutiny, or the wrath of the House Democrats.

The Medicare buy-in seems both sensible politics and half-decent policy.

Silly Season: Monty Python Policy Making

Oct 19, 2009• 5

By IAN MORRISON

Editor’s Note: Ian Morrison today makes his first contribution to THCB. Ian was President of Institute for the Future where I learned my health care consulting trade in the 1990s. A more amusing boss one couldn’t have hoped to have and he never minded me (or half of health care) shamelessly stealing his jokes–although his Scottish brogue always gave them a zing none of us can quite match. Ian’s now a full time speaker/writer/futurist and he gave THCB his view of the health care debate, interpreted logically through the lens of Monty Python’s Flying Circus–Matthew Holt

Now we are down to the really fun part of healthcare reform, when they actually write the final bill and figure out ways to pay for it. And to honor the 40th Anniversary of Monty Python’s Flying Circus’s debut, Congress and the Administration have entered the silly season where final policy is turned into law.

I love the American healthcare system, not because it is the best in the world, but it is the funniest. The laughs keep coming. Here are a couple of my latest favorites.