Nurses Hacking for Health, Addressing Burnout, Workplace Violence, and AI
Three in four nurses working in hospitals care about the success of their institution — “they show up and gown up…yet only 57% feel a sense of ownership in their hospitals, leaving leaders to expect 100% quality to be delivered by about half of the nursing workforce.” This is the key finding in a study from PRC on the implications of nurses’ dis-engagement from their work. That context puts this year’s NurseHack4Health event all the more essential and impactful. This year’s virtual hackathon was sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, SONSIEL, Microsoft, and the ALL
The Omnichannel Imperative for Healthcare: Supporting Telehealth Awareness Week 2023
“What omnichannel really means: hearing the customer wherever they are and making them feel heard, valued, and understood.” That statement comes from Qualtrics’ explanation of omnichannel experience design. The very human needs of feeling one is heard, is valued, and is understood, underpin the rasion d’etre of omnichannel marketing. And these very values are those that underpin the trust between patients and providers and the large healthcare ecosystem. It’s Telehealth Awareness Week, led by the ATA. I celebrate and support the effort; this Health Populi post explains the Association’s mantra that Telehealth is Health, and that
Consumers Continue to Spend on Technology, Seeking “A Happy, Healthy Connected Life”
Most U.S. consumers will continue to spend their disposable incomes on connected consumer devices, but will be looking for more balance in their digital lives according to Deloitte’s fourth annual 2023 Connected Consumer Survey. In this year’s update, the Deloitte Center for Technology, Media & Telecommunications found that most households use five key digital devices daily: above all, smartphones, followed by laptop and desktop computers, tablets, and computer monitors. Most consumers who own smartwatches and health and fitness trackers also use those devices every day, as shown in the household penetration/usage chart
Large Employers Expect More Employees Will Experience Prolonged Health Impacts Due to COVID-19. and a Note About Telehealth Engagement
Due to their delayed return to medical services and diagnostic testing in the COVID-19 pandemic era, U.S. employees are expected to sustain serious health impacts that will drive employers’ health care costs, envisioned in the 2024 Large Employer Health Care Strategy Survey from the Business Group on Health (BGH). Dealing with mental health issues is the top health and well-being impact workers in large companies are addressing in 2023. Looking forward, large employers foresee their workers will be seeking care for chronic conditions and later-stage cancers that are diagnosed due to delayed screenings.
Personalizing Health Means Personalizing Health Insurance for Patient-Members – Learning from HealthEdge
As patients assume more financial skin in their personal healthcare, they take on the role of demanding consumer, or “impatient patients.” HealthEdge’s latest research into health consumers’ perspectives finds peoples’ satisfaction with their health insurance plans lacking, with members seeking easier access their personal health information, high levels of service, and rewards for healthy behaviors. Health plans would also boost consumers’ satisfaction by channeling patients’ access to the kinds of medical providers that align with consumers’ preferences and personal values, and by personalizing information to steer people toward lower-cost care.
Hims and Hers and Hearts – Cardiology Blurs Into DTC Retail Health
Statin therapy has been used for decades to lower cholesterol with the goal of reducing mortality and preventing cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes. Hims & Hers announced a new service offering for health consumers and clinicians concerned about heart health called Heart Health by Hims. This is Hims & Hers’ first foray into cardiovascular health, working in collaboration with the American College of Cardiology (ACC). ACC clinical guidelines will inform the Hims’ provider platform for the program. “Prevention is the ideal mechanism to decrease cardiovascular events and ensure optimal heart
Patients Don’t Trust Big Tech with Personal Health Information Much Preferring Healthcare Providers as Data Stewards
Nearly all patients are concerned about their medical records getting leaked or breached, which is The State of Patient Privacy, the title of a consumer study from Health Gorilla with a headline finding that “Patients don’t trust Big Tech with their health data.” With trust the “backbone” of health information exchange, Health Gorilla calls out, we have to face a big challenge here as health care enters its own sort of industrial revolution embedded AI and data analytics across the health/care ecosystem. How to re-build trust with the very technology that can help health care,
Aging and the New Home Health, Tech-Enabled – Learning from Nature
“Digital technologies offer tremendous potential for shifting from traditional medical routines to remote medicine,” with the role of wearables playing a growing role in the new home care for healthy aging. But what are the challenges of deploying this promising tech with older people keen to be independent at home? We learn a lot about prospects and challenges in Digital health for aging populations, a Perspective report in Nature Medicine‘s July 2023 issue. An experienced team affiliated with the University of California San Diego shares their insights in this essay, which
Happy Amazon Prime Days, When You Can Get 25% Off a Year’s One Medical Membership
Now in Aisle E(commerce) – get your one-year membership to One Medical for $149. Today and tomorrow are Amazon Prime Days, 2023 style, when you can fetch bargains on lots of electronics (esp. deeply-discounted Amazon-branded devices), sporting goods, kitchen gear, pet supplies, and even groceries (saving with Amazon Fresh getting $20 off $100+ orders on Prime Day). And among a vast menu of health, medical, and well-being offerings from collagen to gym equipment and blood pressure monitors is that One Medical membership good for a year of services. “On-demand
Technologies That Bolster Health Will Be Baked Into the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Listening to the World Economic Forum
The technologies that will drive the Fourth Industrial Revolution have health baked into most of them, based on the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023, a flagship report from the World Economic Forum, Two of the ten technologies making up this forecast directly speak to health and health care” AI-facilitated healthcare, and The metaverse for mental health. But seven of the remaining eight all address health somewhere in their discussions, and even the tenth non-obvious tech — #3, sustainable aviation fuel — would resonate with many researchers working on the opportunity
A “Great Re-Set” for Telehealth and Remote Monitoring? Panda Health Says That’s a “Yes”
The fast-growing adoption of telemedicine and remote patient monitoring from the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic led to hospitals and health systems launching new or expanding existing virtual care programs to accommodate a new reality for work-flow and patient care. Now that the worst of the coronavirus acute impact is in our rear-view mirror, it appears medical care providers are reassessing these implementations and may “rip [out] and replace” those systems, according to The Great Shakeup, a survey report from Panda Health. Panda Health collaborated with Sage Growth Partners
It Will Be a “Meh” Year for Consumers Buying Connected Health Devices, Based on CTA’s 2023 Forecast
In 2023, U.S. consumers’ purchases of technology in their households will contract this year. Consumer-facing health-tech categories won’t be spared, we learn in the 2023 U.S. Consumer Technology Ownership & Market Potential Study, an annual update from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). On the upside, smartwatch market penetration held steady in 2023, as this favorite form of wearable technology is “providing consumers a personalized digital health and fitness dashboard at their fingertips.” Many of these new smartwatch purchases will be cellular-enabled, blurring the space between smartphones and watches. One in five households intends to purchase
Patients-As-Health Care Payers Define What a Digital Front Door Looks Like
In health care, one of the “gifts” inspired by the coronavirus pandemic was the industry’s fast-pivot and adoption of digital health tools — especially telehealth and more generally the so-called “digital front doors” enabling patients to access medical services and personal work-flows for their care. Two years later, Experian provides a look into The State of Patient Access: 2023. You may know the name Experian as one of the largest credit rating agencies for consumer finance in the U.S. You may not know that the company has a significant footprint
Searching for Health/Care Touchpoints in the 2023 Axios Harris Poll 100
Patagonia, Costco, John Deere, and Trader Joe’s are loved; Twitter, Fox Corp., FTX and The Trump Organization? Not so much. Welcome to 2023 Axios Harris Poll 100 list of companies U.S. consumers rate from excellent in terms of reputation to very poor and, one in particular, “critical.” Exploring the list, we can find insights into consumers’ preferred touchpoints for health, health care, and well-being curated in their daily lives. In this, today’s, Health Populi blog, I consider The 2023 Axios Harris Poll 100 reputation rankings in light of what we learned from the Morning Consult Most Trusted Brands 2023 study
Retail Clinics’ Growing Role in Health Care and Prescription Drug Sales
“It seemed like an odd pairing: shampoo and a throat swab,” observes a new report on the growth of retail health from Definitive Healthcare. But retail clinics are no longer, as the paper explains, “an experiment of a few grocery stores….they’re becoming a major force in the U.S. healthcare system,” asserts the thesis of Retailers in healthcare: A catalyst for provider evolution. While the use of emergency departments fell by 1% in the past five years, the use of retail clinics expanded by 70%, Definitive Healthcare calculated. Most retail clinics are owned by
Getting Health Care at a Retail Pharmacy vs a Retail Store: Consumers May Be Favoring the Pharmacist Versus the Retailer
Not all “retail health” sites are created equal, U.S. consumers seem to be saying in a new study from Wolters Kluwer Health, the company’s second Pharmacy Next: Consumer Care and Cost Trends survey. Specifically, consumers have begun to differentiate between health care delivered at a retail pharmacy versus care offered at a retail store — such as Target or Walmart (both named as sites that offer “health clinics in department stores” in the study press release). While 58% of Americans were likely to visit a local pharmacy as a “first step” when faced with a non-emergency medical situation and 79%
Health Systems Must Move “Beyond the Walls” to Support Consumers’ Well-Being
Hospitals’ and health systems’ core competencies have been serving patients “within the walls” of their organizations and institutions. As health systems continue to evolve value-based services while meeting patients’ consumer-oriented demands for convenience and personalization, digital transformation is required, enabling care “beyond-the-walls.” We learn more about this vision and how to map the journey to getting there in the report Integrating digital health tools to help improve the whole consumer experience from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and the Scottsdale Institute. This report is based on detailed interviews with experts in 30 US health
Three More Signposts on the Road to Retail Health – Weight Loss Drugs, OTC Birth Control and Fashion-Meets-the-Flu
We continue to track to evolving, expanding landscape of retail health — which we see as the expanding ecosystem of health/care accessible to people-as-health consumers. This week, three intriguing examples are resonating with us: The ever-evolving weight-loss industry FDA favors OTC use for Perrigo’s Opill daily oral contraceptive birth control pill The convergence of fashion and health — specifically, how an over-the-counter medicine converges with clothing that helps us feel better. Let’s start with weight-loss, as several aspects of health/care come together in the consumer’s retail health sandbox. Dr. Eric Topol
Consumers’ Use of Digital Health is Just Part of Mainstream Life Now
Using the Internet and mobile health apps are as mainstream as swiping left for a date and researching features in a new car, based on the Digital 2023 Global Overview Report from Meltwater. The broad coverage of this kind of research can’t be accomplished by just one entity, and Meltwater acknowledges the partners who brought them to this research-party: these included data.ai, GSMA Intelligence, GWI, Locowise, Ookla, PPRO, SemRush, Similarweb, Skai, and Statista. In this 400+ page report, you can find most datapoints you’re interested in covering the global consumers’ use of the internet, mobile apps, and social media. I
Virtual Health Care Can Reduce Carbon Emissions: the Environmental ROI on Telehealth
As implemented in the COVID-19 era and its immediate wake, the most obvious environmental benefits offered by telehealth visits replacing in-person patient encounters have been achieved through reduced patient travel, considering The Role of Virtual Consulting in Developing Environmentally Sustainable Health Care, a systematic literature review published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. This study, led by researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, and the University of Oslo, Norway, identified over 1,600 scientific papers, narrowing the most rigorous and relevant to 23 papers focusing on virtual consulting and carbon emissions. This is an important question for two major
“Your care, your way:” Learning from the Philips Future Health Index 2023
Consider the key drivers of supply and demand in health care, globally, right now: On the medical delivery supply side, the shortage of staff is a limiting factor to continuing to deliver care based on the usual work-flows and payment models. On the demand side, patients are taking on more demanding roles as consumers with high expectations for service, convenience, and safe care delivered closer to home — or at home. This dynamic informs The Future Health Index 2023 report from Philips, launched this week at HIMSS 2023. This is the eighth annual global FHI report, with detailed country-specific analyses to
My Health, My Data – Thinking Consumers, Privacy and Self-Care at HIMSS 2023
The Washington State legislature passed House Bill 1155, aka the My Health, My Data Act, last week. Governor Jay Inslee is expected to sign this into State law later this year. The bill expands privacy protections for Washington State’s health citizens beyond HIPAA’s provisions. The My Health, My Data Act defines “consumer health data” as “personal information that is linked or reasonably linkable to a consumer and that identifies a consumer’s past, present, or future physical or mental health.” The ethos of the name and the intent of this law is a perfect vision for
Patients Have AI-Disconnect When it Comes to Their Health Care – Pew Research Center Insights
Most U.S. health citizens think AI is being adopted in American health care too quickly, feeling “significant discomfort…with the idea of AI being used in their own health care,” according to consumer studies from the Pew Research Center. The top-line is that 60% of Americans would be uncomfortable with [their health] provider relying on AI in their own care, found in a consumer poll fielded in December 2022 among over11,000 U.S. adults. Most consumers who are aware of common uses of AI know about wearable fitness trackers that can analyze exercise and sleep
The Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for 2023 Are About Social, Mental and Behavioral Health
Ten years ago, ECRI named the top 10 health technology hazards for 2013: they were alarm hazards, medication administrative errors using infusion pumps, unnecessary exposure and radiation burns from diagnostic radiology procedures, patient/data mismatches in EHRs and other HIT systems, interoperability failures with medical devices and health IT systems, and five other tech-related hazards. In 2014, ECRI pivoted the title of this annual report to “patient safety concerns,” a nuance away from health technology. Fast forward to 2023 and ECRI’s latest take on the Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns 2023. While technology is embedded in this list, the headlines have more
Growing DTC for Health Beyond the Rx – the New Health/Care at Home
As our homes and health care services continue to converge, we can see signposts of direct-to-consumer strategies from the pillbox (where DTC is a mature thing) to clinical care in peoples’ hands (and on their preferred technology platforms). Some examples this week make this point, which taken together demonstrate the portfolio of ways more people – as health consumers and caregivers – can engage in their health, well-being, and clinical care. Start with Best Buy’s announcement that they will collaborate with the health system Atrium Health to bolster hospital-to-home effectiveness and activation between hospitals
How Consumers and Physicians View Digital Health – An Update from the Consumer Technology Association
Most consumers are bullish on the benefits that digital health technologies can play in their health. Most health care practitioners are also positive about the potential of digital health — recognizing room for improvement for better data integration, interoperability, and the opportunity to bridge gaps to achieve health equity and bolster access. So assesses the Consumer Technology Association in the report, Driving Consumer Adoption of Digital Health Solutions, To paint this profile, CTA engaged Ipsos to poll 1,000 U.S. consumers 18 years and older, 300 health care providers (HCPs), and 12 health tech company stakeholders in August and September 2022.
Enabling better health care, everywhere – my conversation with Microsoft
I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to brainstorm omnichannel health care for people to enable better health care for all, anywhere and everywhere, with Team Microsoft. Key opinion leader Molly McCarthy and I covered a lot of ground in this webcast conversation as part of Microsoft’s series of three “Expert perspectives on trends driving change in healthcare.” Molly and I covered a lot of ground here, starting with the key forces shaping and accelerating virtual care across the continuum. While these were in place before the COVID-19 pandemic, the public health
People Using Health Apps and Wearable Tech Most Likely Track Exercise and Heart Rate, Sleep and Weight – But Cost Is Still A Barrier
Over one in three U.S. consumers use a health app or wearable technology device to track some aspect of their health. “The public’s use of health apps and wearables has increased in recent years but digital health still has room to grow,” a new poll from Morning Consult asserts, published today. Among digital health tech users, most check into them at least once every day in the past month. One in four use these tech’s multiple times a day, the first pie chart illustrates. Eighteen percent of people use their digital
The American Hospital Association Looks at Retail and Tech Health Care Disruptors
Ever since Clayton Christensen explained the concept of disruptive innovation in 1995, health care became one of the poster children emblematic of an industry ripe for disruption. Nearly 30 years later, disrupting health care continues to be a theme which, in 2023, seems open for those slow-moving tectonic driving forces to finally re-form and re-imagine health care delivery. So in today’s Health Populi we turn to a new report, Health Care Disruption 2023 Outlook, part of AHA’s “The Buzz” market scan initiative. The American Hospital Association is taking disruption seriously right here, right now, as the U.S. hospital sector is
Bayer at The Big Game LVII: the Heart Health Ecosystem is Ripe for Self-Care and DIY Health at Home
Joke if you must about Big Game cuisine being typically packed with calories and fat and carbs….and as such, not-so-great for health. For me, the ads are the attraction during The Big Game (along with the Philadelphia Eagles). In this year’s ad line-up, health will be featured in high-priced spots as it has for the past few years. Last year, I was intrigued by a female-focused 30-second spot from Hologic, educating viewers on cervical cancer, discussed here in Health Populi. This year, my eyes are on Bayer Aspirin’s campaign “encouraging sports fans to keep their heart
What Are Patients Looking for in a Doctor? It Depends on Who You Ask…and Their Race
While the same proportion of Black and White patients say they are looking for a doctor with empathy and compassion, there are relatively large differences between patients based on their race, found in the Everyday Health-Castle Connolly Physician-Consumer study. The survey was conducted in December 2022 among a group of 1,001 U.S. consumers and 277 Castle Connolly health care professionals. As the first bar chart illustrates “where patients differ, “Black people were nearly twice as likely as white people (41 percent versus 22 percent) to completely agree that they would be more comfortable and
Integration is the New Innovation for Healthcare in 2023: Reflections on CES2023 and JPM2023
The peak of venture investment for digital health was in 2020 and 2021, precipitously declining later in 2022. And the outlook for 2023 is practical and Show-Me: that is, demonstrate clinical outcomes and return-on-investment before “I” (for investors) can take a leap of faith to spend a dollar, a Yen, a Euro, or British pound on a shiny new-new healthcare thing. If it’s January, then CES and JP Morgan convene their influential annual meetings which feature health technology for globally engaged health industry stakeholders — investors, surely, but also providers, innovators, analysts, and insurers. In my January
Record Numbers of People in the U.S. Putting Off Medical Care Due to Cost – A New “Pink Tax” on Women?
More people in the U.S. than ever have put off medical care due to cost, according to Gallup’s latest poll of patients in America. Gallup conducted the annual Health and Healthcare poll U.S. adults in November and December 2022. This was the highest level of self-rationing care due to cost the pollster has found since its inaugural study on the topic in 2001. This was also the most dramatic year-on-year increase of postponing treatment due to cost in the study’s history. Note the substantial difference in women avoiding
Digital Health Funding Updates from FINN + Galen and Silicon Valley Bank – Context for JPM2023
As we enter the week’s brainstorms and deal-making prospects this week at the annual JP Morgan meet-up for healthcare, I’m kicking off Health Populi’s posts this week by diving into two major reports published in sync with this meeting that’s so pivotal and important for the digital health community: the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) 2022 Annual Report on Healthcare Investments and Exits and the 2022 Global State of Digital Health Report from FINN Partners and Galen Growth SVB notes that venture funding in healthcare fell in terms of both deals and dollars each quarter
The Heart Health Continuum at #CES2023 – From Prevention and Monitoring to Healthy Eating and Sleep
“Are we losing the battle against heart disease?” asks the lead article featured in the January 2023 issue of the AARP Bulletin. “Despite breathtaking medical advancements since President Harry Truman declared war on heart disease 75 years ago, researchers have observed a disturbing trend that started in 2009: America’s death rate from heart-related conditions is climbing again,” the detailed essay explains. AARP is in fact a very visible stakeholder in the 2023 CES, collaborating on the AgeTech content track at the tech conference. The track covers all aspects of aging well, from financial health to entertainment,
Consumers Continue to Lean Into Digital Services: Beyond Tech and Hardware at #CES2023
While CTA forecasts a sobering consumer technology revenue picture for 2023, one of the few bright spots is health and fitness technology services, expected to increase by 9 percent in 2023. For the forecast, CTA looked at various spending categories, including gaming, automotive and transportation tech, video and audio streaming, consumer electronics (like big-screen TVs), and fitness and health devices. The chart illustrates that consumers’ spending on software and services is expected to hold steady in 2023, still above pre-pandemic levels. On 3 January, in the annual #CES
Your Home as Clinical Lab: Withings Brings “Your Urine, Your Self” to #CES2023
We’ve all been morphing our homes into our personal HealthQuarters since the start of the coronavirus era. Millions of global health citizens have taken to telehealth who never used a health care “digital front door” before. Other patients adopted remote health monitoring to avoid perennial visits to doctors for managing chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease. From the kitchen to the bedroom, our homes have become our health hubs. And now, to the bathroom and specifically, the toilet. Withings, maker of my personally favorite connected weight scale, announced U-Scan, a direct-to-consumer lab test platform that analyzes our urine from
Can Consumer Electronics Help Stem the Decline of U.S. Life-Years? A Preface for #CES2023
Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped nearly three years between 2019 and 2021, from close to 79 years down to 76. We ended 2022 with this new, sobering statistic from the Centers tor Disease Control (CDC). We begin 2023 with the opening of CES 2023, the world’s largest annual meet-up of consumer electronics innovators, companies, and retailers. How can digital health and other consumer-facing technologies help our health? First, consider the stark data point(s), and then we can better respond to the question’s answer in the Hot Points, below. In case you
In 2023, We Are All Health Consumers in Search of Value
Every health/care industry stakeholder will be in search of value in 2023, I explain in my latest post written on behalf of Medecision. In this essay, I forecast what’s ahead for hospitals, digital health innovators and investors, employers, pharma, and patients-as-consumers — all firmly focused on value in the new year. “Inflation may make consumers and the healthcare system sicker,” Deloitte expects, signaling a sort of “unrest” for the healthcare ecosystem. One of the most telling data points I include in my assessment of 2023 comes from GSR Ventures, which polled major health care investors on
When Household Economics Blur with Health, Technology and Trust – Health Populi’s 2023 TrendCast
People are sick of being sick, the New York Times tells us. “Which virus is it?” the title of the article updating the winter 2022-23 sick-season asked. Entering 2023, U.S. health citizens face physical, financial, and mental health challenges of a syndemic, inflation, and stress – all of which will shape peoples’ demand side for health care and digital technology, and a supply side of providers challenged by tech-enabled organizations with design and data chops. Start with pandemic ennui The universal state of well-being among us mere humans is pandemic ennui: call it languishing (as opposed to flourishing), burnout, or
Our Homes as HealthQuarters – Finding Health and Well-Being at CES 2023
For over ten years, digital health technology has been a fast-growing area at the annual CES, the largest convention covering consumer electronics in the world. When the meet-up convenes over 100,000 tech-folk in Las Vegas at the start of 2023, we’ll see even more health and self-care tools and services at #CES23 — along with new-new things displayed in aisles well outside of the physical space on the Las Vegas Convention Center map labeled “digital health” at this year’s CES in the North Hall. Some context: my company has been a member
Site-Shifting: the Consumer-Driven Pressure on Traditional Healthcare Utilization
While overall U.S. consumers’ utilization of health care has been pretty stable, the type of visit encounters is shifting away from hospital inpatient cases to ambulatory care, urgent and retail health care sites, data from Kaufman Hall and Sg2 tell us. The companies shared insights in a session on Building Relationships with the Modern Healthcare Consumer last week, warning that hospitals are facing economic challenges with implications on how they should engage and interact with patients in the coming months and years. Wearing a consumer-centric lens, Dan Clarin of Kaufman Hall and Charlotte Brown-Zalewa
Show Me The Evidence and The ROI: Digital Health Investing in 2023 via GSR Ventures
With valuations of digital health companies expected to decline in 2023, investors in the sector are Missourian in spirit in “Show Me” mode: here, it’s all about the clinical evidence and ROI, according to a survey from GSR Ventures. conducted among over 50 major digital health venture capital investors. Most of the 50+ responses to the survey expect that in 2023, valuations for digital health companies will decrease by over 20%: that’s a net of 83% including 60% expecting valuations to fall 20-40%, and 23% anticipating declines of over 40% of valuations in the next
Digital Tech Holds Great Promise for Expanding Patient Access, Health System Leaders Say
Among all of the challenges health care providers will face in 2023, digital health tools could have the greatest potential to improve patient access, according to the issues most Top of Mind for Top Health Systems 2023 from UPMC. the Center for Connected Medicine, Nokia and KLAS Research. KLAS surveyed the views of 61 health system leaders to assess their perspectives on health care access, costs, telehealth, and artificial intelligence looking toward the next year of health care operations. The challenge of patient access is emerging as top-of-mind for CxOs some of
Omnichannel, Hybrid Health Care Is Happening – Let’s Bake It with Access and Equity
In just the past few months, we’ve seen the launch of Amazon Care, Instacart adding medical deliveries, and The Villages senior community welcoming virtual care to their homes. Welcome to the growing ecosystem of hybrid health care, anywhere and everywhere. In my latest post on the Medecision portal, I discuss the phenomenon and examples of early models, focusing in on Evernorth, a Cigna company. As we add new so-called “digital front doors” to health care delivery, we should be mindful to design in access and equity and avoid further fragmentation of an already-fragmented
The Tik Tok’ing of Medical Mis-Information: Doctors’ and Patients’ Roles in Curating Healthy Advice
Doctors in the U.S. believe that the medical mis-information problem is worsening, learned in survey research from Merck Manuals. Doctors and patients, both, have roles to play in addressing medical misinformation online. Less than half of consumers, 44%, said that that there is more medical mis-information online than previously. That’s less than half of the percentage of doctors saying so — 98%, virtually all U.S. physicians, citing the problem. There were several disconnects noted in the Merck Manuals study showing starkly different perceptions of health information online between doctors and patients:
Dr. Santa Intends to Deliver Consumer Health-Tech for the 2022 Holidays
Even as consumers’ confess a tighter spending economy for 2022 holiday shopping, peoples’ intent to buy wearable tech for health and fitness and other wellness devices appear on gifting lists in the U.S., according to the 29th Annual Consumer Technology Holiday Purchase Patterns report from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). In general, technology will be a top-selling category for 2022 holiday gift-giving, somewhat tempered by inflation and the increased cost of living that challenge household budgets in the fourth quarter of 2022. Tech spending will be down about 6% in 2022 according to CTA’s
In Search of Clinical Effectiveness, But “Investment Exuberance?” Not So Much. Insights From FINN Partners and Galen Growth at HLTH 2022
While venture funding for digital health technology declined globally by 35% in the first three quarters of 2022 compared with 2021, this marks a “return to normal” based on the assessment in the Global State of Digital Health Report from FINN Partners and Galen Growth, published today and launched during the HLTH 2022 conference. The report analyzes data from over 12,000 digital health ventures tracked by Galen Growth’s HealthTech Alpha platform. The first chart illustrates the change in venture funding by therapeutic area, showing downturns in four of the five areas called
Health Is Social, With More People Using Apps for Physical and Emotional Wellbeing
People who need people aren’t just the luckiest people in the world: they derive greater benefits through monitoring their health via apps that make it easier to make healthy choices. Channeling Barbra Streisand here to call out a key finding in new consumer research from Kantar on Connecting with the Health & Wellness Community. Kantar polled 10,000 online consumers in ten countries to gain perspectives on health citizens’ physical and emotional health and the role of technology to bolster (or diminish) well-being. The nations surveyed included Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Singapore, South Africa, Spain,
Wearable Tech for Health Tracking, Online Dating and Banking: Exploring the “Fluidity” of Peoples’ Data Privacy Views
“The security of online data is the top consideration for consumers across many forms of online activities including email, search, social media, banking, shopping and dating”….and using health apps. A new poll from Morning Consult, explained on their website, explains that For Consumers, Data Privacy Has a Fluid Definition. Those privacy nuances and concerns vary by activity, shown in the first chart here from the study. For online banking, the most important consideration among most consumers (55%) is the privacy and security of their online data. Privacy and security of personal data was
Consumers’ Trust In Pharmacists As Providers Grows Along with Omnichannel Health Care
What is a “pharmacy” these days? You might have recently walked into a brick-and-mortar retail pharmacy. Or, you might have refilled a prescription to help you manage a chronic condition, online. Or, perhaps, you asked the pharmacist staffing your favorite grocery store Rx counter to give you the latest vaccine to keep COVID-19 variants at-bay. The pharmacy is all these things, and increasingly digital-first, we learn in The Rx Report: A new day in retail pharmacy, a consumer survey from CVS Health. CVS Health, one of the two largest pharmacies operating in the U.S. in 2021
How Will Consumers’ Declining Trust in Technology Impact Health Tech?
Americans’ trust in technology as “plummeted” in the past decade, according to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer’s focused look on trust and technology. How might this play into U.S. health citizens’ trust in digital health technology? To answer that, let’s start with the macro-view on trust in tech. Richard Edelman convened a virtual meeting launch for the Trust Barometer’s tech perspectives yesterday, looking broadly at the global study findings. For these trust-tech insights, Edelman surveyed 15,000 citizens between August 31 and September 12, 2022, residing in 12 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany,
Home Is Where the Health Is: An Update on Connectivity, Food, and Retail
Virtually every closed-door meeting I have had in the U.S. with a client group in the past several months has had a line item on the agenda to brainstorm the impact and opportunity of care-at-home, hospital-to-home, or Care Everywhere. This has happened across many stakeholders in the evolving health/care ecosystem of suppliers, including hospital systems, health plans, grocery chains, retail pharmacy, consumer technology, digital health and tech-enabled providers, pharma and medical supply companies. On October 10, Dr. Robert Pearl, former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group, published a provocative post on Forbes noting that Amazon, CVS, Walmart Are Playing Healthcare’s
Telehealth-As-Healthcare Is a Mainstream Expectation Among Consumers, J.D. Power Finds
Telehealth has increased access to mental health services, I’ve highlighted this Mental Illness Awareness Week here in Health Populi. But telehealth has also emerged as a preferred channel for routine health care services, we learn from J.D. Power’s 2022 Telehealth Satisfaction Study. Among people who had used virtual care in the past year, telehealth-as-healthcare is now part of mainstream Americans’ expectations as a normal part of their medical care. That’s because 9 in 10 users of telehealth in the U.S. would use virtual care to receive medical services in the future, J.D. Power found in
Connected Wellness Growing As Consumers Face Tighter Home Economics
“Consumers are using the Internet to take their health into their own hands,” at least for 1 in 2 U.S. consumers engaging in some sort of preventive health care activity online in mid-2022. The new report on Connected Wellness from PYMNTS and Care Credit profiles American health consumers’ use of digital tools for health care promotion and disease prevention. The bottom-line here is that the most connected 10% of consumers were 1.65 times more likely to be engaged in preventive digital health activities than the average person. Peoples’ engagement with digital health
Big Tech + Digital Health: Even Big-Ticket Mistakes Won’t Dissuade Companies From Healthcare
“Big Tech has the capability to disrupt healthcare, though the complexity of healthcare ecosystems is not making it easy for these companies,” according to Big Tech & Digital Health, a detailed update from HealthXL published last week. The pace of activity among Big Tech companies partnering with, investing in, and acquiring health technology and provider organizations has been dizzying, accelerating in and beyond the pandemic. This report profiles the current state and prospects for so-called “Big Tech” companies in the broad health/care ecosystem. For context, “Big Tech” in this report covers activity among eight companies
Health is Everywhere, and Telehealth Is Health – And It’s Personal
If health is nurtured and made where we live, work, play pray, learn, and shop, then healthcare should be everywhere. That’s the promise, increasingly a reality, of telehealth. We are in the middle of Telehealth Awareness Week, an advocacy program launched by the ATA (American Telemedicine Association) whose mission I share — that #TelehealthIsHealth. Follow that hashtag on Twitter and other social media channels, and you’ll find lots of folks who believe, know, and live this. My personal telehealth journey began with an online encounter in December 1996 when my husband and I were
The Direct Link Between Value-Based Health Care, Digital Transformation and Social Determinants – Insights from Innovaccer and Morning Consult
Only 4% of health care payments in the U.S. are pure fee-for-service (FFS) these days. “The end of pure FFS is near,” according to The State and Science of Value-Based Care, a report-out of survey research from Innovaccer and Morning Consult. Innovaccer, a health cloud/data analytics company, worked with Morning Consult to do deep-dive interviews with 75 senior health care executives; research was conducted in November and December 2021, so these perspectives represent those of health system leaders at the start of 2022. The full report is worth your read; my focus in this Health
Physicians More Bullish On the Benefits of Digital Tools for Patient Care, the AMA Tells Us
Most doctors see the advantages of digital health tools like telehealth, consumers’ access to their health information, and point-of-care workflow solutions, the American Medical Association found in a survey of 1300 physicians, published in September 2022. The AMA first conducted research with physicians and their views on digital health in July 2016. This year’s study was designed to compare current clinicians’ perspectives with those garnered in the 2016 and 2019 studies. There is a clear and positive shift of doctors’ adoption of and appreciation for digital tools, with “growth in enthusiasm” concentrated in tele-visits, the
As Walmart Allies with LLENA (AI), Food-as-Medicine Blurs with Digital Health Tech and Equity
In a busy week of news in the health care and digital health world, it would be easy to miss a press release published on 23rd August on the food-as-medicine front. But don’t blink this snippet away. It is another strong signal about the growing blur between grocery stores, food, digital tech, and population health. The digital health platform LLENA (AI) announced its collaboration with Walmart to support people managing diabetes with personalized nutrition support from data tracking pulling through to healthy food delivery. Note LLENA (AI)’s tagline: “where AI meets GI for better health.” “LLENA” is
Partnering Up in the Health Care Ecosystem to Drive Transformation – for Organizations and Health Consumers Alike
“Partnerships, including JVs and alliances with other healthcare organizations and with new entrants, are just one way to access new capabilities, unlock speed to market, and achieve capital, scale, and operational efficiencies” in health care transformations. “In an environment with continued competition for attractive assets and significant capital in play from institutional investors, these partnerships may also be the most accessible way for organizations to capture value in expanding healthcare services and technology value pools,” we learn in Overcoming the cost of healthcare transformation through partnerships from a team of health care folks with McKinsey & Company.
Hacking Health Care, Your Top Health-Tech Summer Read
“Tom Lawry reminds us that the health care industry can shift from glacial to warp speed when it needs to. Given the right tools, we can evolve from health systems to systems of health, baked with Responsible Intelligence to do good while embedded with respect, inclusion, and transparency. Health citizens deserve Tom’s vision to emerge,” I wrote in a quote on the back of Tom’s new book, Hacking Health Care: How AI and the Intelligence Revolution Will Reboot an Ailing System. Tom knows whereof he speaks and writes and opines: he has
Consumers’ Blurring Digital Worlds of Health, Learning, Shopping, and Living
“Almost overnight, lines blurred between consumers’ physical and digital worlds, and home became the headquarters for virtual working, learning, fitness, health care, shopping, socializing, and entertaining.” That blur has reshaped peoples’ Everyday Normal we learn in Mastering the new digital life from Deloitte, a survey conducted among 2,005 U.S. consumers in the first quarter of 2022. The report is part of Deloitte’s ongoing Connectivity and Mobile Trends research in this third iteration. The report covers peoples’ new digital transformations for work, school and health; in this post, I’ll focus on the last element,
“Beyond the Bubble Bath,” Self-Care Must Be Rooted in Science To Build Trust Among Consumers
The goal of self-care for health-making is to improve lives by scaling health-and-wellness accessible to all, Bayer believes, giving people more control over their personal health. Self-care work-flows must be based in science to ensure products and services are trusted and deliver on their clinical promise, Bayer explains in Science-Led Self-Care: Principles for Best Practice, a paper published this week which the company intends to be a blueprint for the industry. Bayer recognizes that self-care is growing among health consumers around the world — albeit underpinned by peoples’ cultures, demographics, and “readiness”
The Retail Health Battle Royale, Day 5 – Consumer Demands For a Health/Care Ecosystem (and What We Can Learn from Costco’s $1.50 Hot Dog)
In another factor to add into the retail health landscape, Dollar General (DG) the 80-year old retailer known for selling low-priced fast-moving consumer goods in peoples’ neighborhoods appointed a healthcare advisory panel this week. DG has been exploring its health-and-wellness offerings and has enlisted four physicians to advise the company’s strategy. One of the advisors, Dr. Von Nguyen, is the Clinical Lead of Public and Population Health at Google….tying back to yesterday’s post on Tech Giants in Healthcare. Just about one year ago, DG appointed the company’s first Chief Medical Officer, which I covered here in
The Retail Health Battle Royale, Day 4 – Tech Giants in Healthcare, U.S. Lessons from Europe
“Tech giants are the primary forces driving digital transformation forward,” and this is especially the case for health care systems re-imagining how health care services are delivered and “consumed.” This observation comes from a new report, Tech Giants in Healthcare, written by four European-based experts in healthcare and bioethics. The 200-page paper details the activities of sixteen global technology companies in the health/care ecosystem, followed by a so-called “ethical analysis” of these companies’ work with health data. The report was published in Germany by Bertelsmann Stiftung, a not-for-profit think tank addressing broad political, social and
The Retail Health Battle Royale in the U.S. – A Week-Long Brainstorm, Day 3 of 5 – Apple as “Intelligent Health Guardian”
Apple wants to be your “intelligent guardian for health,” based on a 60-page paper shepherded by Jeff Williams, the company’s Chief Operating Officer. Published last week, the paper is one of the big signals trumpeted this U.S. summer marked by the BA.5 omicron subvariant of SARS-CoV-2, inflation pressures on our household budgets, social/political tensions, and hot-hot weather. I’m folding the report into my coverage this week on the Retail Health Battle Royale today, Day 3 of my week-long series updating us on the health/care ecosystem. For the previous two days’ posts, see… Day 1
The Retail Health Battle Royale in the U.S. – A Week-Long Brainstorm, Day 2 of 5 – Amazon and One Medical
Today we review the various viewpoints on Amazon’s announced acquisition of One Medical (ONEM, aka 1life Healthcare) which has been a huge story in both health care trade publications, business news, and mainstream media outlets. Welcome to Day 2 of The Retail Health Battle Royale in the U.S., my week-long update of the American retail health/care ecosystem weaving the latest updates from the market and implications and import for health care consumers. The deal was announced on 21 July, with Amazon striking the price at about $3.9 billion. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley put the deal together,
The Retail Health Battle Royale in the U.S. – A Week-Long Brainstorm, Day 1 of 5
I’ve returned to the U.S. for a couple of months, having lived in and worked from Brussels, Belgium, since October 2021 (save for about ten days in March 2022). Work and life slow down in Europe in July and August, giving us the opportunity to return to our U.S. home base, reunite with friends and family, and re-join life and living this side of the Atlantic. The timing of my return to the U.S. coincides with a retail health hurricane of big announcements shaking up the health/care ecosystem. Among these events are Amazon’s plan to acquire One Medical, Apple’s publication of
The Old Gays Working with Walgreens on TikTok: Breaking Down Stereotypes and Having Fun with Health
How much do I love this media campaign from Walgreens, collaborating with the foursome The Old Gays who have a growing multi-million person fan base on TikTok? How much? A whole lot! Kudos to Walgreens for creating engaging, informative, and fun! content to learn about how people can benefit from using the company’s app ….for, Ordering prescriptions (90-day supply) Receiving delivery same-day 24/7 pharmacy chat on pricing, prescription drug information, and medications. The plotline kicks off with 3 of the 4 quartet (Jessay Martin, Robert Reeves and Mick Peterson) looking for their friend Bill Lyons, who is missing from their
In A Declining Consumer Tech Spending Forecast, Consumer Health Tech Will Grow in 2022: Reading the CTA Tea Leaves
Supply chain challenges, inflation, and plummeting consumer economic sentiment are setting the stage for a decline in consumer electronics revenues for 2022. However, there will be some bright spots of growth for consumer tech spending, for 5G smartphones, smart home applications, gaming, and health technologies, noted in the Consumer Technology Association’s CTA U.S. Consumer Technology One-Year Industry Forecast, 2018-2023. Underneath the overall industry spend of $503 billion, a 0.2% drop from 2021, CTA expects software, gaming, video and audio streaming spending will grow by 3.5% and hardware to fall by 1.4% this year. With
Living La Vida Hybrid, for Work, Shopping, Entertainment and Healthcare – Emerging from the Pandemic
With only 1 in 10 people in the U.S. thinking their lives are the same as they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, about one-half of Americans believe that remote work, virtual community events, and telehealth should continue “once the pandemic ends.” As of mid-May 2022, most people in the U.S. have resumed activities like socializing with friends and neighbors in person, going to restaurants and bars, traveling, meeting with older relatives face-to-face, and returning to exercising in gyms. But a return-to-nearly-normal isn’t a universal phenomenon across all people in America:
Consumers’ Dilemma: Health and Wealth, Smartwatches and Transparency
Even as spending on healthcare per person in the United States is twice as much as other wealthy countries in the world, Americans’ health status ranks rock bottom versus those other rich nations. The U.S. health system continues to be marred by health inequalities and access challenges for man health citizens. Furthermore, American workers’ rank top in the world for feeling burnout from and overworked on the job. Welcome to The Consumer Dilemma: Health and Wellness,, a report from GWI based on the firm’s ongoing consumer research on peoples’ perspectives in the wake of
The Legacy of COVID-19 Is Shaping Consumers’ Purchases for Health-At-Home
While inflation and financial stress is depressing consumer demand for many purchases the “legacy of COVID-19” is having lost-lasting impacts on how people see their homes — especially as sites for health and wellness. GfK highlights the growing interest in wellbeing and device demand in The State of Consumer Technology and Durables 2002 insights from GfK. In 2021, peoples’ spending on technology and durable goods (like home appliances) grew by 15%, with several categories seeing spectacularly high growth rates — most notably entertainment and health, a category in which core wearables purchases
Consumers Intend to Invest in Technology — With Budget and Value in Mind
Consumers continued to invest in and use several technologies that supported self-care at home in 2021, with plans to purchase connected health devices, sports and fitness equipment in the next year. But these purchases will be made with greater attention to budget and value consumer mindsets firmly focused on (and stressed by) inflation. The 24th Annual Technology Ownership & Market Potential Study from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) tells us that Americans in 2022 will have to manage challenging economic headwinds, shopping for technology is preparing people for their new normal —
The Care Crisis – Robots Won’t Save Us
Among the many lessons we should and must take emerging out of the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding and addressing the caregiver shortage-cum-crisis will be crucial to building back a stronger national economy and financially viable households across the U.S. And if you thought robots, AI and the platforming of health care would solve the shortage of caregivers, forget it. Get smarter on the caregiver crisis by reading a new report, To Fix the Labor Shortage, Solve the Care Crisis, from BCG. You’ll learn that 9 of 10 new care-sector jobs will be in-person for
Jasper, Scaling a Human Touch for People Dealing with Cancer, Now With Walgreens
Each year, the first Sunday in June marks National Cancer Survivors Day. This year’s NCSD occurred two days ago on Sunday, 5th June. When you’re a cancer survivor, or happen to love one, every day is time to be grateful and celebrate that survival of someone who has come through a cancer journey. We all know (or are) people who have survived cancer. We know that the recipe for battling cancer goes beyond chemotherapy. We know of the resilience and grit required in the process: body, mind, and spirit. “Celebrate Life” is the mantra of NCSD, as this year’s campaign
Food, Cars, and Tech: Here’s How U.S. Consumers Rank Companies’ Reputations – the 2022 Axios-Harris Poll
We’re all about food and cars and our technology, looking at the 2022 Axios Harris Poll 2022 Reputation Rankings published this week. I’ve curated the logos of the top 30 companies based on the Poll’s survey of 33,096 U.S. adults conducted in March and April 2022. The survey assessed peoples’ awareness of companies that either “excel or falter in society,” according to the study methodology. Here you see the top 30. The COVID-19 pandemic bolstered consumers’ awareness and call-to-action for peoples’ basic needs: food, working-from-home (thus, tech as a determinant of health and wellbeing),
Mental Health Risks in Mid-2022 Related More to Global Anxieties and Safety, Not-So-Much COVID
With peoples’ anxiety about COVID-19 at its lowest point since 2020, folks are most anxious in spring 2022 about current global events and the safety of their families, based on the latest Healthy Minds study from the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Morning Consult conducted the poll for the APA in March and April 2022 among 2,210 U.S. adults. The survey covered peoples’ perspectives on mental health care, anxiety, COVID-19, children’s mental health, and the workplace. The results were published May 22, 2022. The key findings of the study were that, 3 in 4 people are
Digital Health Adoption Across Communities is Uneven By Rurality, Race, Health Plan, and Gender
While telehealth, mobile health apps, and wearable technology are all growing for mainstream consumers, there are gaps in adoption based on where a person lives, their health insurance plan type, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender. Thanks to the team at Rock Health, we know more about these gaps explained in their report, Startup innovation for underserved groups: 2021 digital health consumer adoption insights, published this week. The report examines three areas of digital health adoption: Live video telemedicine Wearable technology ownership, and Digital health tracking. We all know the mantra that our ZIP code impacts our
Reimagining Health Care Without Walls – Deloitte’s Vision
Delivering health care during the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic proved to both patients and their clinicians that virtual care was not only a viable channel for care, but very often a preferable “place” to collaborate for treatment. Even before the coronavirus pandemic emerged in early 2020, telehealth and the hospital-to-home movement were beginning to become part of a portfolio of delivery modes across the continuum of care. Deloitte spells out the current and future prospects for the Hospital in the future “without” walls in a new report that spells out driving forces, future scenarios, and impacts on a business long
Three in Five People 50+ in the US Will Likely Use Telehealth In the Future – An Update from AARP
“Telehealth certainly appears to be here to stay,” the AARP forecasts in An Updated Look at Telehealth Use Among U.S. Adults 50-Plus from AARP. Two years after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, one-half of U.S. adults over 50 said they or someone in their family had used telehealth. In early 2022, over half of those over 50 (the AARP core membership base) told the Association they would likely use telehealth in the future. This future expectation varies by race, the implications of which I discuss below in
Telehealth Update from the AMA – Setting the Context for ATA 2022 [Spoiler Alert: Doctors Want to Keep Using Telehealth]
Four in five U.S. physicians were using telehealth to care for patients at the end of 2021. Among those doctors who were not providing telehealth by late 2021, just over one half never did so during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the 2021 Telehealth Survey Report from the AMA. This report provides insightful context for the upcoming annual ATA Conference for 2022, being held in-person in Boston kicking off May 1st. The meeting will be a strategically important, as the title of the conference asks: “What Now? Creating An Opportunity in a Time of
What Person-Centered Interoperability Looks Like: Seqster
He had me at the statement, “I believe health data is medicine.” Those were the words of Ardy Arianpour, CEO and Co-Founder of Seqster, when sharing with me how his company was founded. We met up last week at the DIA Europe 2022 meeting (Drug Information Association) in the cool SQUARE Conference Center in Brussels, Belgium (my current home base for work and life). It was a rare opportunity to sit still with this on-the-go guy with whom an hour spent is the equivalent of three hours with most other folks. Ardy and the team call Seqster “the operating system
Can a Food-As-Medicine App Extend Chronic Health Management at the Grocery Store?
Foogal, a recipe app designed to support patients’ healthy cooking and eating, launched on 24th March. In its initial version, Foogal addresses several specific diet paradigms: for patients demanding a wellness protocol, an autoimmune protocol, or wanting to address insulin resistance. Foogal got my attention via a tweet @FoogalApp on 25th March. The snippet featured a photo of a delectable Salad Lyonnaise, one of my favorite things to eat, which adds a soft-cooked egg and bacon lardons to the greens for an easy light (and delicious!) meal. Foogal was developed by Todd Knobel, who has worked in law, in plastics,
People in the U.S. Without the Internet Were More Likely To Die in the Pandemic
Access to the Internet has been a key determinant of health — or more aptly, death — during the COVID-19 pandemic. Americans lacked Internet access were more likely to die due to complications from the coronavirus, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open this month. The study’s key finding was that for every additional 1% of people living in a county who have access to the Internet, between 2.4 and 6.0 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 were preventable. The paper asserts that, “More awareness is needed about the essential asset of technological access to reliable information, remote work, schooling
Thinking About Telehealth Through the Lens of Real Estate – Listening to JLL
If you made your living in commercial real estate — and especially, working with hospitals’ and health systems’ office space — would the concept of telehealth be freaking you out right now? If you heed the words of JLL’s 2022 Patient Consumer Survey, you’d chill (at least a bit). The tagline on this paper is, “Convenience and choice drive patient decisions as new digital options take hold.” I was particularly keen to dig into this study based on its sponsoring organization: JLL is a real estate services company serving over a dozen vertical markets — including health care, life sciences,
Techquity: How Technology Can Help to Scale Health and Digital Equity, Live from VIVE 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed long-systemic health disparities in the U.S. and in other parts of the world. Income inequality, sickly environments in homes and communities (think unclean air and water), lack of public transportation and nutritious food deserts combine to limit peoples’ health and well-being., Beyond the traditional social determinants of health, such as these, we’ve called out another health risk that became crucial for life in the coronavirus pandemic era: digital connectivity, Indeed, WiFi and broadband represent the newest social determinant of health to add to a growing list of risk factors that challenge health citizens’ health. Kudos to
“Talk to me, Teladoc”
Voice technology has become a mainstream household Internet of Things thing for consumers, used to streamline and ease peoples’ daily tasks to hear about the weather, listen to favorite tunes, or seek information. At the same time, the pandemic fostered growing experience with and appreciation for virtual care platforms and on-ramps to health care when needed. Patients have come to accept telehealth in their health care workflows when they value virtual care’s virtues: convenience, access, availability among other features. A leading provider of virtual care is Teladoc, whose most recent explanation of corporate strategy is shown in the first graphic
Doximity Study Finds Telehealth Is Health for Every Day Care
There’s more evidence that doctors and patients, both, want to use telehealth after the COVID-19 pandemic fades. Doximity’s second report on telemedicine explores both physicians’ and patients’ views on virtual care, finding most doctors and health consumers on the same page of virtual care adoption. For the physicians’ profile, Doximity examined 180,000 doctors’ who billed Medicare for telemedicine claims between January 2020 and June 2021. Telemedicine use did not vary much across physician age groups. Doctors in specialties that manage chronic illnesses were more likely to use telehealth: endocrinology (think: diabetes), gastroenterology, rheumatology, urology, nephrology, cardiology, ENT, neurology, allergy, and
How Social Media Can Get Public Health So Wrong
This week, public health truths have collided with social media, the infodemic, and health citizenship. First, I read in Becker’s Health IT on February 16 that the peer-reviewed policy journal Health Affairs was prevented by a social media outlet from promoting its February 2022 issue themed “Racism and Health.” The company said the topic was too controversial to feature in this moment. “Google and Twitter are blocking its paid media ads to promote the content, flagging racism as ‘sensitive content,'” Molly Gamble explained in Becker’s. I myself used the blogging platform you’re on now to promote the February ’22 issue of
Love and Health: The Education of Abner Mason, SameSky Health
It felt super appropriate that I met up with Abner Mason, Founder of SameSky Health, on Valentine’s Day 2022. While we conversed via Zoom, Abner’s positive energy vibrated over the 5,600 miles between him in LA County and me in Brussels, Belgium – nine hours apart, but in the proverbial same room in the conversation. My initial ask of Abner was to discuss the re-branding of ConsejoSano to SameSky Health, but I first wanted to hear the man’s origin story. And that, you will learn, has everything to do with loving parents, the power of education from a young age,
Only 1 in 4 People Over 50 Use a Mobile Health App – And They Tend to Be Healthier and Wealthier
Just over 1 in 4 people over 50 in the U.S. use at least one mobile health app, and 56% of older people have never used one. Among seven mhealth tools, the most commonly-used is to track exercise. Among older people who do not use health apps, half say it is because of their lack of interest, we learn from the research in Mobile Health App Use Among Older Adults from the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging, sponsored by AARP. The project is part of Michigan Medicine, U-M’s med school, and directed by the Institute for Healthcare
The Wellness Economy in 2022 Finds Health Consumers Moving from Feel-Good Luxury to Personal Survival Tactics
The Future of Wellness in 2022 is, “shifting from a ‘feel-good’ luxury to survivalism as people seek resilience,” based on the Global Wellness Institute’s forecast on this year’s look into self-care and consumer’s spending on health beyond medical care — looking beyond COVID-19. GWI published two research papers this week on The Future of Wellness and The Global Wellness Economy‘s country rankings as of February 2021. I welcomed the opportunity to spend time for a deep dive into the trends and findings with the GWI community yesterday exploring all of the data, listening through my health economics-consumer-technology lens. First, consider
How Twitter Revealed Consumer Health Care Trends in the Pandemic
During the pandemic, millions of people connected with Twitter to share thoughts and feelings about the pandemic…and their health. Three mega-trends bubbled up on the platform for health — telemedicine and virtual care, broadband access, and mental health, discussed in a Birdseye Report Industry Deep Dive into Health from Brandwatch, partnering with Twitter. For this report, Brandwatch utilized only English-language public Twitter data. Brandwatch collated and analyzed tweets between January 1st 2019 and November 20 2021, that mentioned any of the following phrases: telemedicine, telehealth, virtual care, digital medicine, digimedicine, mental health, doom scrolling, trauma dumping, and meeting fatigue. Tweets
How Virtual Care Will Play Out in 2022 – a Look Post-CES and JPM
A new study from CIGNA and its subsidiary MDLive touts the cost-effectiveness of telehealth to improve health outcomes, reducing the need for unnecessary lab work, reducing duplication of care, and connecting patients with high-performing providers. It is expected that one in three patient visits will be virtual, CIGNA quotes from an Accenture forecast. As more consumers used telehealth channels during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, patients experienced virtual care. For many people, these visits matched or exceeded expectations compared with in-person encounters with clinicians, as well as satisfying on convenience and access values. How will virtual care play
From Better for Me to Better for “We” — NielsenIQ’s New Consumer Hierarchy of Health
People around the world have made health a “proactive priority,” most important to live a longer, healthier life, to avoid preventable diseases, to protect against disease, and to look and feel healthier, according to NielsenIQ’s latest health and wellness report. As the triangle here illustrates, NielsenIQ has turned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs upside down, shifting protective and physical needs to the top rung and altruistic — the “me-to-we” ethos — at the base. Note the translations of these needs, on the ride, into the “care” flows — moving from urgent care down to self-care, preventive care, innovative care, and selfless
Human-Powered Health: How Abbott Is Unlocking the “Possibility of You” at CES 2022
Yesterday, we heard all about autonomous cars and sustainable mobility from Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Autos, TVs, and telecomms are the usual fare of the big stage speeches at the annual big show of consumer electronics. Gary Shapiro, President and CEO of CTA, introduced today’s CES keynote speaker, Robert Ford, as the “first-ever keynote speaker from health care” at CES, calling out the fact that Abbott’s Freestyle Libre System garnered one of CES 2022’s Innovation Awards. Ford is the Chairman and CEO of Abbott, one of the largest global life sciences companies. Ford let us know up-front that
Consumers Embrace Tech But Privacy Remains a Concern – The Morning Consult Poll of Consumers and Tech
With the collective pandemic-era pivot of people working from home, remote schooling at home, repurposing our homes for entertainment and fitness, and showing off home-baked goods on Instagram, has consumers’ comfort with new technologies accelerated? Morning Consult assessed this question in a poll timed to coincide with CES 2022, the annual conference dedicated to innovations in consumer electronics. “Is the public ready for the innovations coming out of the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show?” the Morning Consult team asked. “While brands may enjoy the initial buzz over these launches, it often takes a while for the public to become comfortable enough
The CES 2022 Tech Trends to Watch Have Everything To Do With Health/Care
The four top trends to watch for this week at CES 2022 are transportation, space tech, sustainable technology, and digital health, based on Steve Koenig’s annual read-out that kicks off this largest annual conference featuring innovations in consumer electronics. Last night, Steve discussed these trends for media attendees, of which I am one (gratefully) participating in #CES2022 virtually from the hygienic comfort and safety of my home health hub (more on that later in this post). All four of these mega-themes impact health and well-being in some way. “Space Tech?” you might wonder. Yes. My friend Dorit Donoviel can be
I'm looking forward to brainstorming digital health and AI at the annual Cain Brothers private company healthcare conference in New York City.
Can't wait for 2024 CES to brainstorm and share perspectives on health consumers, digital health, and the new HomeCare and retail health closer-to-home. See you in January 2024 for a great start to the New Year....
Health tech is now mainstream at the annual CES (aka Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas #CES2024 and I'll be there collaborating with clients and innovators starting with the Media Days and into the conference and convention floor meeting up with the latest digital health goodness -- as well as smart home, smart cars, and, well, pretty much smart-everything that helps us make health at home.