Good morning, Huddler! I have around one week until I marry my high school sweetheart—I’m so excited 😊. What advice do you have for newlyweds? Huddle Up: -
Amazon expands their healthcare footprint.
- Wake-up call: global warming.
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Amion puts physicians’ and their colleagues’ schedules at their fingertips. 250,000+ physicians are already using it, and you should, too. Download Amion for iOS or for Android to try it out. |
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Amazon to Acquire One Medical |
Amazon will acquire hybrid primary care company One Medical for $3.9B. This is one of Amazon’s largest acquisitions to date, furthering their healthcare footprint. The Deets
One Medical is a membership-based primary care platform transforming the consumer experience by putting health tech at the forefront of care. They’re essentially modernizing the healthcare experience. Their state-of-the-art facilities and patient-centered care models are attractive to consumers and employers alike. They have around 740,000 members and partner with Google and health networks. Back in 2021, One Medical acquired Medicare primary care company Iora Health, giving them access to an entirely new population of consumers.
Such a modern, tech-focused, fast-growing company in an ever-so antique, slow-moving healthcare system is what makes One Medical so attractive to Amazon. Amazon isn’t new to healthcare, though. The company has slowly been chipping away at different healthcare verticals over the years. |
One Medical’s acquisition adds to Amazon’s basket of healthcare services and products, expanding its patient care abilities. |
Dash's Dissection 👨🔬
Amazon is creating a fully integrated healthcare platform. Their healthcare products and services include fitness wearables, caregiver services, pharmacy, patient care and groceries. Now, they’re deepening their patient care vertical. Amazon has the potential to transform the consumer—the patient—experience by streamlining its logistics, consumer data, technology and omnipresent footprint. |
Think about it. You visit a One Medical physician. There, they aggregate health data from your Halo watch and plug the numbers into a model, which outputs the risk of heart disease or stroke. The doctor prescribes you a statin and tells you to eat more fruits and vegetables. Amazon Pharmacy will quickly ship your meds directly to your home and Amazon-owned Whole Foods will drop off fresh groceries. Weeks later, you run out of meds and tell Alexa to refill them, who then relays the message to your physician. Your physician at One Medical signs a new prescription, and the process repeats.
This is what the future of care should be: the patient is part of an integrated and frictionless process that minimizes gaps in the care journey.
While I admire the transformation of the patient care journey, I fear that Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical will exacerbate health inequities. One Medical provides this “modern” type of care for employees with health insurance and Medicare beneficiaries. The Medicaid population is left out—the ones who can benefit the most from modern health tech and frictionless processes. While One Medical’s consumer base is a minute fraction of the U.S. population, such inequities may appear as the company scales. However, One Medical’s model isn’t for everyone and that’s OK. There’s more than one way to deliver high-quality care to different types of populations.
Also, that Amazon is a trillion-dollar, profit-generating company stepping into patient care, with troves of patient data, concerns me. How will One Medical now balance scaling their consumer base vs. deepening patient-doctor relationships, one of the fundamentals of primary care? I’m unsure what One Medical’s physician turnover looks like, but preventing such turnover must be a significant part of One Medical’s objectives to establish patient-physician relationships.
What’s Next for Amazon? Amazon could build an insurance company or health system. At that point, we’d truly be living in Amazon’s world.
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Western Europe experienced an unprecedented heat wave. Fires ensued, high ozone levels exacerbated respiratory illnesses and airport runways melted. Is this a one-off occurrence? Absolutely not. |
The Deets
In Western Europe, places that considered 80 degrees to be “hot” dealt with temperatures well over 100 degrees. As I write this article in my NYC apartment, it’s 95 degrees outside. I have my AC blasting, though. Given Western European countries infrequently experience such heat waves, they were unprepared for such temperatures—only three to five percent of Britons have air conditioning, for example.
These heat waves cannot be ignored given their health impact. In Portugal alone, 1,000 people died due to the extreme weather. Unfortunately, extreme heat events are just firing up.
Climate Change Refresher
Human-induced climate change is a world crisis. And, we humans—specifically those in industrialized countries—are largely to blame, given our reliance on fossil fuels that increase the concentration of greenhouse emissions. Ironically, U.S. hospitals are the world’s thirteenth largest emitters of greenhouse gasses, contributing 10% to global emissions (higher than the entire UK).
Since 1900, earth temperatures have increased 1.1° Celsius (1.9° Fahrenheit). Studies suggest maintaining increases of less than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) is necessary to prevent devastating impacts on human health. It looks like we’ll surpass that limit within 20 years. The impact on health and societies will be devastating, causing excess morbidity and mortality.
We’re already seeing such adverse health effects: one-third of all heat-related deaths within the past 30 years are directly due to climate change. Last year, the U.S. Pacific North West experienced a heat wave reaching 46° Celsius (116° Fahrenheit). Emergency Department visits increased 69-fold for heat stroke, heat exhaustion and exacerbation of chronic conditions.
Heat is particularly worse in urban settings because of the Urban Heat Island Effect, where roads and buildings in urban areas absorb and reemit heat. This causes urban temperatures to be around 10° Celsius (18° Fahrenheit) higher than in non-urban areas. As such, extreme heat won’t affect everyone equally. Low-income urban neighborhoods are at increased risk of adverse health consequences from extreme heat, as are children, pregnant people, older individuals, and those who are housing insecure.
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Dash's Dissection 👨🔬 The best we—people in healthcare—can do now regarding climate change is to prevent further temperature changes and prepare for extreme weather events.
Preventing further temperature changes means lowering greenhouse emissions. As I mentioned above, U.S. hospitals significantly contribute to greenhouse emissions. The government can further incentivize hospitals to reduce energy demands. For example, hospitals can add green or reflective rooftops which can be 30°-40° Fahrenheit lower than conventional rooftops. Hospitals can also invest in urban greening projects, which have several benefits: increasing tree canopies and vegetation-covered surfaces may decrease daytime air temperatures and reduce population exposure to heat.
Preparing for extreme weather events means making sure hospitals and public health organizations are equipped to manage extreme weather emergencies and health complications due to extreme weather. This may involve creating, or refurbishing, community centers with air conditioning, allowing people without homes to pass the day in such settings to avoid heat exposure. Public health officials could also launch public health campaigns, educating the public on what to do when the forecast includes extreme heat. They may even go a step further and preemptively prepare vulnerable populations for extreme heat. New York City, for example, has a climate and health hub, where you can find heat maps of different areas within the city.
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Residents of Harlem and Queens will be disproportionately affected by heat waves, so public health groups could intervene before health consequences are realized, for example.
There are a plethora of interventions to combat climate change. It’s just a matter of getting everyone on board. We can’t wait any longer to do something. Look how it turned out for the frog who didn’t realize it was in boiling water. |
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1) Premium Hikes in 2023 Insurers on the ACA Marketplace are prepping to increase premiums on average 10% next year. Inflation and impending policy changes influence such premium hikes. |
2) Buy vs. Build in Healthcare
Rik Renard dives into the thought processes around building a feature or outsourcing it. He touches on the Steve Jobs mindset, where you choose one thing and focus solely on that one thing—everything else is a distraction. In Rik’s words: Focus only on the attributes of your product that your customers are going to care about. Everything else (e.g infrastructure) you should outsource. The second point here is that being a utility company is an exceedingly great business (but that’s food for another blog).
3) Talk the Talk vs Walk the Walk
Researchers at Rock Health analyzed the clinical robustness and public claims made by digital health companies. Often, digital health companies make claims on their website such as “reduces no shows by 50%!” How true are such claims? Well, they may be true but the evidence to show that is lacking. The researchers found that many digital health companies don’t perform clinical validation efforts to support their claims.
4) Apple Health Pats Itself on Back
Apple shared a new report a new report showing how the company’s products are taking patient-centered care to the next level. It’s a thorough report, detailing all the good they’re doing for healthcare. I won’t deny it, they continue to launch amazing features to better health. 5) Climate Tech and Western Europe’s Heat Wave
Nick Van Osdol covered the heat wave that hit Western Europe. He discusses how climate tech can help society adapt to extreme weather events while we work to reduce greenhouse emissions. This tech includes window-mounted heat pumps, recycling water and genetically engineering crops to be resistant to high temperatures.
6) The Price You Pay
A new JAMA article finds substantial variation in payer-negotiated prices for common cardiovascular procedures between renowned U.S. hospitals. Surprised? I’m not. I recently covered unwarranted clinical variation, explaining how the same type of patient with the same type of complaint may receive completely different care depending on where they go in the U.S.
7) Epstein-Barr virus infection: the leading cause of multiple sclerosis
Perhaps one of the most groundbreaking findings of the year: the Epstein-Barr virus is necessary to cause multiple sclerosis, although not sufficient. With a key ingredient of MS now identified, scientists can design a vaccine to target antigens on EBV, thereby preventing, or eliminating, the disease. Check out this review article highlighting the key findings of the research.
8) Sickle Cell Disease: A Review
A review on Sickle Cell Disease published in JAMA highlights important disease pathophysiology and management. One aspect the authors touched upon was the inequities around SCD funding. For example, cystic fibrosis gets 10x more funding than SCD, even though CF has a lower prevalence than SCD in the U.S. (30,000 vs. 100,000). Unsurprisingly, most of those with CF are white while those with SCD are Black.
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Here are some jobs that I’m curating for the healthcare industry. Use this link to submit your role to be featured if you’re looking to hire.
Patient Experience Navigator (Remote), Kindbody
Kindbody is leading the fertility and family-building benefits provider space. They offer fertility assessments and education, fertility preservation, genetic testing, in vitro fertilization (IVF), donor and surrogacy services, and adoption, as well as physical, mental, and emotional support from preconception through postpartum. Registered Nurse Care Coordinator (Remote), Hinge Health
Hinge Health is the digital health leader treating chronic musculoskeletal conditions such as back and joint pain. They’ve raised over $1B and continue growing.
Remote Telemedicine Physician (Remote), Found Found is a weight loss management platform, taking a holistic approach to weight loss. They're a new—but fast-growing—company. |
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🏀 Sixer’s New Stadium: The Philadelphia 76ers published a potential project to build a new stadium in Center City. Pretty neat, huh? 💩 Different Ways to Use Sh*t: Who knew there were so many ways to use the word sh*t? Check them out here. 🎵 Song of the Week: Heat Waves by Glass Animals
🐦 My Fav Twitter Account: The Wolf of Franchises. Every day, the Wolf dives into a wild story about how a franchise came to be. From McDonald’s to Chuck-E-Cheese, these stories are great. Check them out here.
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Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts by replying back to this email! Keeping it simple, Jared |
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