The Role of Innovation, Technology, Policy, and Public Health in Shaping the Future of Healthcare
Our team spent last week at HLTH Europe, one of the largest annual gatherings of healthcare practitioners, payors, innovators, entrepreneurs, and policymakers in the world. Speakers included World Economic Forum Head of Health and Wellness Andy Moose, UnitedHealth Group Chief Innovation Officer Dame Vivian Hunt, New York Presbyterian Director of Emergency Medicine Daniel Lakoff, and nearly 400 other leaders. It was an incredible experience.
For our founder Dr. Adam Brown, HLTH Europe also was an opportunity to meet up with former MBA students from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, including Dr. Lara Zibners, founder of a women’s health startup Calla Lilly, and his former co-resident Dr. Alex Mohseni, founder of AskTheHive. Both are physicians. Both are entrepreneurs, and both are solving big problems in the healthcare industry, just like ABIG Health.
Are you a healthcare startup or entrepreneur who is looking to take your marketing to the next level or who needs to enhance your understanding of industry trends to stay ahead of the competition? Get in touch. Know someone who needs ABIG Health. Forward this email!
The Promise And Peril Of Healthcare AI
According to a report from FierceHealthcare, artificial intelligence (AI) deal activity “is dominating healthcare investment.” Specifically, one out of every four dollars invested in healthcare is going to companies leveraging AI and, since 2022, seed and series A pre-money valuations for healthcare companies leveraging AI have outpaced valuations for those not utilizing this tool. The data comes from Silicon Valley Bank.
Despite the heavy interest from investors, practitioners and patients are skeptical.
According to the “Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and Health,” published this past spring, patients are not only a little anxious about this tool, they want no part of it. In fact, the overwhelming majority of patients worldwide told Edelman that they reject the very notion of AI use in healthcare. As Medical Economics reported, that includes about 60 percent of Americans who say they reject the use of AI in healthcare. Nearly half of Americans do not want AI to be used in making a diagnosis, and about one-third even said they would not embrace the use of AI in at-home diagnostics.
Another skeptic: National Nurses United, the nation’s largest nurses’ labor union, which is demanding that AI healthcare tools “be proven safe and equitable before deployment.” (Read more at FierceHealthcare.)
Our BIG Thought: Healthcare tech leaders need help explaining the benefits of AI to the general public. Storytelling matters, and it will help patients and skeptical practitioners understand why, eventually, this tool will be lifesaving, life-lengthening, and life-enhancing.
New Legislation Would Take On Private Equity In Healthcare
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) recently introduced the Corporate Crimes Against Health Care Act of 2024, a bill that s to remove “corporate greed and private equity abuse” in healthcare. If approved by the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives and signed into law by the president, the bill would:
Create a criminal penalty of up to six years in prison for executives who “loot” healthcare organizations like hospitals if that “looting” resulted in the death of a patient.
Require healthcare providers who receive federal funding to publicly report mergers, acquisitions, financial data, and changes in control and ownership.
Give the U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general the ability to claw back all compensation from private equity (PE) and portfolio company executives for the 10-year period before or after a healthcare firm they acquired experienced avoidable financial issues due to their actions.
Require the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General to study the “harms that corporatization causes in healthcare.”
Our BIG Thought: The proposed legislation does not stand much of a chance in the current Congress since Republicans control the lower chamber, but that does not mean lawmakers should not consider some reforms. PE can be a positive force in healthcare by providing capital for innovation, scaling organizations, and driving the adoption of new technologies, but risks must be carefully managed. For example, policymakers should enhance transparency in PE acquisitions, requiring firms to disclose detailed information about their investments and the financial health of their portfolio companies. Read more here.
When It Comes To Public Health, Crafting The Right Message Is Key
In the United States, 2024, is, of course, a presidential election year. According to Politico’s “Pulse” newsletter, one of public health officials’ biggest election anxieties is the impact former President (and current GOP candidate) Donald Trump could have on Americans’ willingness to get vaccines themselves, or to allow their children to get vaccinated. Politico notes that, if he wins the White House this fall, Trump could:
Eliminate funding for public schools with vaccine requirements;
Ask the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to pare back the number of vaccines it recommends children receive or eliminate those recommendations;
Ask the CDC to change the paperwork required to be shared with parents so that paperwork makes vaccines sound less safe than they are; and
Require the Food and Drug Administration to increase the number of years of safety testing required for new vaccines.
Do Americans really want these changes, however? It is possible, in at least some instances.
According to a new report from Harvard University gauging how the U.S. public felt about certain policies put in place to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, 65 percent supported healthcare worker vaccination requirements. The report did not ask about vaccination for the general public, but others have and the news was not as bright. While a Pew Research Center survey from 2023 found that 88 percent of Americans say the benefits of childhood vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) outweigh the risks, fewer than half rated COVID-19 vaccines’ health benefits as high.
Our BIG Thought: Like with AI, crafting the right message is key. The Harvard report concluded, “Discussing both the epidemiological logic of specific policies, as well as acknowledging broader economic and societal impacts — even if public health organizations do not ultimately make the decision about what policies to implement — will be helpful.”
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