“I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV”–Peter Bergman playing Dr. Cliff Warner of All My Children The trials and tribulations of doctors have long been a television staple. While plentiful, the shows were typically limited to comedy/dramas about doctors and hospitals where the medical scene was more of a backdrop to the […]
You Say You Want a Healthcare Revolution
“You say you want a revolution,Well, you know,We all want to change the world”—The Beatles I had the pleasure of attending a “salon” type dinner hosted by Xconomy and its chief correspondent and San Francisco editor Wade Roush last week (and graciously sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank and Alexandria Real Estate Equities). The dinner included […]
Everything Goes Better with Bacon
In a country where it is estimated that 1 in every 3 people born today will get Type II diabetes and where there are already an estimated 19 million people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, another 6 million individuals with undiagnosed type 2 diabetes, and 79 million with pre-diabetes, all resulting primarily from a lifetime […]
Does This Augmented Reality Make Me Look Fat?
Much has been made lately in the tech press about Google’s Project Glass, an effort underway at Google to develop and sell a pair of glasses equipped with an on-board cell phone, camera, display, and microphone. One of the latest entries in the “augmented reality” movement, the Google glasses are meant to allow you to […]
A Tale of Two Doctor Visits
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”–Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities We all talk about how wonderful patient engagement in the healthcare system is, but in today’s flawed healthcare system there is almost nothing worse than […]
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
Back in February I chaired the IBF’s Consumer Health and Wellness Innovation Summit. When I wrote about it on my blog, I closed by describing a tongue-in-cheek conversation I had with a fellow investor about how the company pitches kept veering to the pet food/service market. To excerpt myself: As I and my table-mate, a well-known […]
War is Hell
The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. –John F. Kennedy Despite what JFK once said, it seems that the way our American culture faces into crises is by declaring war against the perceived perpetrator. Even when no guns are fired or troops deployed, we have adopted the language […]
Driving My Life Away, Looking for a Better Way…to Engage Consumers
Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance–Plato Let’s just say you own a car. You have undoubtedly purchased insurance for the car and if you are diligent and worried about value and performance, you also are diligent about maintenance. You get the oil changed according to schedule, you fill it with the right kind of […]
Choosing Elephantoplasty Wisely
On April 4, 2012, American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) together with 9 other leading physician societies launched the Choosing Wisely® program, which they describe as, “an initiative of the ABIM Foundation to help physicians and patients engage in conversations about the overuse of tests and procedures and support physician efforts to help patients make […]
Give 'Em That Old Razzle Dazzle
I frequently am in a position to tell young companies that our firm is not ready to invest in them because their business model is, at least in the current world, overly dependent on consumers paying for the product or service being offered. While there are a few examples of successful consumer-pay healthcare companies, they […]
