Ned Anderson: The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Update ⋅ Paul Sonnier ⋅ Feb 5, 2018 ⋅ #312

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The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Update ⋅ Paul Sonnier ⋅ Feb 5, 2018 ⋅ #312

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I’ve published one issue of my newsletter since last week’s group announcement, which you can read below and via the following link: The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Newsletter for Feb 4

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The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Newsletter for Feb 4

There were two noteworthy news items emanating from Amazon this week.

First, Amazon—along with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase— announced plans to form a joint venture that ambiguously promises to leverage technology and “check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes” for their “U.S. employees, families and, potentially, all Americans.” As Lydia Ramsey at Business Insider reports, a similar effort called the Health Transformation Alliance (HTA) was formed in 2016 by 20 companies, including Coca-Cola, American Express, and Macy’s. The HTA now covers 6 million people and includes more than 40 companies. By comparison, the combined number of people employed by Amazon, Berkshire, and JPMorgan is just over 1 million. For perspective, the total U.S. population is 325 million.

Even more air was let out the hype bubble resulting from this announcement by several analysts, who mostly don’t see this proposed new venture as being a big disruptor to the overall healthcare system. According to Piper Jaffray’s Sarah James: “We do not expect this JV to be a meaningful disruptor to the industry, despite the stock reaction indicating that it is.” And analysts from Barclays don’t see: “the consortium approach as the right one when we look at technology disrupting an incumbent sector.” RBC Capital Markets analyst George Hill echoed these sentiments: “At first glance this initiative seems to have little market clout with respect to impacting healthcare costs and would not seem to have the capability to displace established players. We believe that the power to drive change at a rapid pace resides only in Washington, where we see little chance of regulatory directed change emerging in the near term.”

The second notable Amazon news was that the company has been granted two patents for a wearable and IoT radio device system that tracks workers’ movements with the aim of improving labor efficiency and reducing labor costs. However, since the system utilizes haptic feedback vibrations to guide employees, some critics point out that the wristbands raise privacy issues and “could result in employees being treated more like robots than human beings.” In response, Amazon issued a statement claiming that: “The speculation about this patent is misguided.”

A 2015 article reportedly described the company’s workplace culture as “hurtful” and a “Darwinian setting in which employees were pitted against one another to the point of tears to improve productivity.” CEO Jeff Bezos reportedly said he did not recognize this depiction of Amazon as “a soulless, dystopian workplace.” A recent investigation by an undercover reporter showed Amazon workers falling asleep standing up and claimed that they had to process a parcel every 30 seconds. Also, ambulance crews were called after workers collapsed “when they were unable to cope with the relentless targets.”

SPORTS AND FITNESS

Despite many efforts, technology reportedly can’t save football players’ brains. Safer, custom helmets, helmet-based sensor systems (that can measure impact data), and ‘smart’ mouth guards can help, but it’s the game that needs to change, according to Engadget Senior Editor Edgar Alvarez.

INNOVATION

In a medical first, a deep brain stimulation ‘pacemaker’ for Alzheimer’s is helping give life back to patients. U.S. surgeons implanted electrical wires into the frontal lobes of a small group of three patients. The system stimulates brain cells much like electrical signals from a pacemaker regulate the heart.

LIVING AND SOCIETY

In this fascinating video posted on Twitter, CNET reporters take a look at innovations in automobile and aerial transportation that will provide for more autonomous vehicle travel plus be more in sync with your brain, which can help to improve safety.

While some don’t see its utility, a new ‘Human Uber’ could be useful if you are unable to walk around at all and can benefit from having someone dress as you and walk around with a computer screen strapped to their face that shows your face.

WEARABLE TECH

“Smart glasses are coming this year, and I’m not ready“, says TNW’s Abhimanyu Ghoshal, who points out that its been roughly 5 years since Google Glass came out and brands are now introducing more consumer-friendly versions of smart glasses. One example is Vuzix ‘s $1,000 Blade glasses.

The U.S. military is reviewing security practices following revelations that the Strava fitness app’s public tracking data showed heat maps of people’s exercise habits that plainly revealed U.S. military base locations.

FUNDING

Hello Heart app reported completion of an undisclosed amount of new funding.

Ireland’s Fire1 has raised a $50M Series C to develop a heart failure (HF) patient monitoring system.

GENOMICS

A new report by James M. Wilson, MD, PhD, and other researchers at the University of Pennsylvania indicates that, when given super-high doses of gene therapy, monkeys and pigs died or suffered disturbing behavioral changes. According to Wilson, “What is remarkable is we have not seen it before. We were surprised but shouldn’t have been. If you push the dose of anything high enough, you are going to see toxicity.” The study raises questions about gene therapy efforts underway by several companies to cure muscular dystrophy in children. As Antonio Regalado at MIT Tech Review reports, “To attack the disease, researchers replace patients’ damaged copies of a gene called dystrophin by introducing viral particles that carry a correct copy. Reaching the countless muscle cells in a boy’s body requires extremely high doses of these particles—400 trillion or more per pound of body weight.” The method has been used successfully to treat people for hemophilia and blindness.

Searching for inherited causes of insomnia in the DNA of 1.3 million people, scientists at Vrije University in Amsterdam found 956 different genes linked to the sleep disorder. The results may help explain what causes insomnia and lead to new ways to treat it. This type of genome-wide association study (GWAS) involves comparing the DNA of people with a disease and those who don’t have it to discover which DNA mutations, if any, are responsible for the disease. According to Guillaume Lettre, a geneticist at the Montreal Heart Institute, “I know of several that are breaking a million people. It’s going to become very frequent. I think two million is within reach. We realized the easiest way to make discoveries is to increase the sample size. The genes we are finding have small effects.”

Researchers from the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, University of Birmingham, and other institutions have reported using the Oxford Nanopore MinION handheld device to successfully produce “the most complete human genome ever assembled with a single technology.” According to Prof Nicholas Loman from the University of Birmingham: “We’ve gone from a situation where you can only do genome sequencing for a huge amount of money in well equipped labs to one where we can have genome sequencing literally in your pocket just like a mobile phone. That gives us a really exciting opportunity to start having genome sequencing as a routine tool, perhaps something people can do in their own home.”

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Paul Sonnier
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