I recently saw a statistic from Rock Health that said that women comprise only 4% of healthcare industry CEOs. For those of you who are slow at math, this means that 96% of the people running pharmaceutical, medical device, healthcare IT, healthcare service, provider system, health insurance and all of the other healthcare enterprises out […]
Suicide Squeeze or Sudden Death? A Day at the Ballpark
“When we lose I eat. When we win I eat. I also eat when we’re rained out.”–Tommy LaSorda, former Los Angeles Dodgers Manager As a rabid baseball fan I get to the ballpark as often as possible. I love the pace and intricacies of the game, the sports history associated with it, my team (Go Giants!), […]
What do Richard Gere, Pop Rocks and the PPACA Have in Common? Urban Legends
While I was time-wasting on Facebook or Twitter or whatever it was the other day, I came across a Kaiser Family Foundation quiz about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, now commonly known as the ACA. Since I spend at least 94.7% of my time dealing with issues related to the ACA, I figured […]
I'm Not a Doctor But I Play One on TV
“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 […]
