Home is where the health is
Monday, May 03, 2021 Issue 112 Breathe. Breathe in the air. Don’t be afraid to care.Pink Floyd As a young engineering student in the eighties, my first summer internship was at a factory that produced liquified gases – oxygen, nitrogen, and others – for industrial use. Decades later, one of my engineering school friends who […]
The FOMO-fueled frenzy of digital health funding
Monday, April 26, 2021 Issue 111 Forget crypto. If you are desperately trying to unwind your position in Bitcoin and watching Coinbase shares swoon in the aftermath of the IPO, you can always turn to digital health. VC firm Rock Health’s quarterly report on digital health funding pointed to another blowout performance by digital health […]
In search of the holy grAIl
Monday, April 19, 2021 Issue 110 ‘tis the season of AI in healthcare. Microsoft dropped a cool $16 billion on voice-recognition software provider Nuance last week. The news dominated the airwaves the entire week. Microsoft, which hasn’t had much success with its own Cortana offerings, has been partnering with Nuance in the past couple of […]
Information blocking? What’s that?
Monday, April 12, 2021 Issue 109 There is a saying among Indians about the struggles of narrators and their listeners in telling or hearing a long story. The saying references the great Hindu epic Ramayana about the 14 years that Lord Rama spends in exile with his wife Sita. Loosely translated, the frustrated narrator asks […]
A billion doses now
Monday, April 05, 2021 Issue 108 Vaccine production hit an important milestone last week – a billion doses produced. In America, vaccination queues are opening up rapidly and eligibility is expanding to cover more and more individuals. Pretty soon, anyone who wants a vaccine would have had one. However, that is not the case in […]
Where is the puck headed?
Tuesday, March 30, 2021 Issue 107 It’s hard to keep track of the multitude of marketplace initiatives that traditional health systems and their emerging competitors are launching these days. A number of new initiatives announced last week by health systems and tech firms point to an industry transforming itself rapidly and pushing the boundaries. Providence […]
Appetite for Disruption, anyone?
Monday, March 22, 2021 Issue 106 This past week saw several new announcements that could redefine healthcare as we know it. Amazon Care declared that it would offer virtual primary care and home care in all 50 states starting May. Read my piece in Healthcare IT News where I describe why this is a big […]
One year after
Monday, March 15, 2021 Issue 105 It’s exactly a year after the world officially declared a pandemic. During the initial months, we extensively covered the response in my podcast as a series titled Coronavirus Conversations. The entire healthcare ecosystem responded heroically to the crisis. Technology-enablement of care delivery took a leap forward […]
Taking stock of Amazon in healthcare
Monday, March 8, 2021 Issue 104 Among the big tech firms in the healthcare space, no one piques as much interest and speculation as Amazon, not least because the company says very little about its healthcare strategy. Last week, a report in STAT News laid out Amazon’s quiet expansion of its Amazon […]
Digital deserts and the new social determinant of health
Monday, March 1, 2021 Issue 103 As we hurtle towards a virtual care era, a sharp and growing digital divide threatens to exacerbate disparities in access to care. An article in Modern Healthcare points to startling findings among lower income populations in “digital deserts” who often have to make choices between paying for broadband […]
