The Digital Health Update by Paul Sonnier ⋅ Dec 10, 2016 ⋅ #251

I made this announcement to 52,548 members of the Digital Health group on LinkedIn. If you’re on LinkedIn, please do join the group, which allows you to opt in to receiving these announcements in addition to connecting with thousands of other global stakeholders in digital health. Note that I will continue to update this announcement up until sending out the final version via LinkedIn.

The Digital Health Update by Paul Sonnier ⋅ Dec 10, 2016 ⋅ #251

Dear Group,

I happened across a really amazing short video documentary on the NY Times website featuring photographer Phillip Toledano’s experience with genetic testing for his disease risks and his ensuing recreation of his “worst” and “best” future self. He actually worked with a movie makeup artist to create different versions of himself, the result being a visually stunning journey. I tweeted Phillip asking him if he planned to take things further, and he replied that “the whole journey begins and ends in the movie“. So it seems that there won’t be a “The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano Part 2”.

In other genomics news, the court case to determine ownership of the CRISPR gene editing patent commenced in Virginia. MIT’s Broad Institute and Harvard University are up against the University of California, Berkeley. CBC News (Canada) has a fascinating video segment reviewing the various genetic tests on the market and the disparity in results provided to users. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book “The Gene: An Intimate History” was reviewed by Bill Gates, who also did a video interview with the author. DNA biohackers created a DIY kit that brews glowing beer. The FDA took notice (but not literally because of the glow, which is faint) and the story took an interesting twist.

According to a new report by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)), nominal healthcare spending went up 5.8% last year (2015), reaching $3.2T. This is equivalent to 17.8% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 17.4% in 2014. While the increase is frustrating, it’s worth remembering that in 2009, CMS projected that healthcare spending would take up a whopping 19.3% of GDP in 2016. That could still happen, of course, but such a steep rise is probably unlikely, even with the changes we’ll likely see under a Trump administration. Speaking of which, Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel says that Trump has an opportunity “to do enormous good” or create “chaos”. For example, unlike the present situation, if the healthcare system had a better balance of many more healthy people buying insurance–in order to pay for the fewer people who become sick–then we would see the classic and more viable insurance business model occur in the healthcare system. The superior alternative, of course, is single payer government insurance that gets rid of the middle man (private health insurance companies), but that is highly unlikely to come about.

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Paul Sonnier
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Founder, Digital Health group on LinkedIn ⋅ 50,000+ members
Creator, Story of Digital Health
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Twitter @Paul_Sonnier
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