Category: Health Policy

“Are we losing the battle against heart disease?” asks the lead article featured in the January 2023 issue of the AARP Bulletin.

“Despite breathtaking medical advancements since President Harry Truman declared war on heart disease 75 years ago, researchers have observed a disturbing trend that started in 2009: America’s death rate from heart-related conditions is climbing again,” the detailed essay explains.

AARP is in fact a very visible stakeholder in the 2023 CES, collaborating on the AgeTech content track at the tech conference. The track covers all aspects of aging well, from financial health to entertainment, mental acuity and of course, physical health.

And that includes heart health, which is ubiquitous at #CES2023 if you consider the holistic journey of the consumer and her heart, from prevention and fitness to tracking and treatment, and care at home — clinical, social, and nutrition.

To give you a visual idea of what

We’ve all been morphing our homes into our personal HealthQuarters since the start of the coronavirus era. Millions of global health citizens have taken to telehealth who never used a health care “digital front door” before. Other patients adopted remote health monitoring to avoid perennial visits to doctors for managing chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease.

From the kitchen to the bedroom, our homes have become our health hubs. And now, to the bathroom and specifically, the toilet. Withings, maker of my personally favorite connected weight scale, announced U-Scan, a direct-to-consumer lab test platform that analyzes our urine from the POT – the point-of-toilet.

I’m not being cheeky (sorry again, just too tempted) here — I’ve extolled the promise and virtues of our bathrooms as health destinations for many years, meeting up with tech and home innovators at CES over the past decade+, and keeping track of toilet innovations

Every health/care industry stakeholder will be in search of value in 2023, I explain in my latest post written on behalf of Medecision. In this essay, I forecast what’s ahead for hospitals, digital health innovators and investors, employers, pharma, and patients-as-consumers — all firmly focused on value in the new year.

“Inflation may make consumers and the healthcare system sicker,” Deloitte expects, signaling a sort of “unrest” for the healthcare ecosystem.

One of the most telling data points I include in my assessment of 2023 comes from GSR Ventures, which polled major health care investors on the now and future state of digital health funding.

This piece chart demonstrates that investors have value-based care on their minds, coupled with the consumerization of health care.

Read more on how (and why) we will all be value-minded consumers of health care in 2023 on the Medecision site.

Last night, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to both Houses of Congress, both parties, and all of us.  He spoke eloquently and passionately, describing the suffering of his people and their total commitment to defeating Russia and reclaiming all Ukrainian lands stolen by Putin.

What Zelenskyy knows – and I mean KNOWS – is the more Putin bombs Ukrainians, the stronger those Ukrainians become, and the more committed they are to seeing this through to Putin’s bitter end.

Net – Putin’s attack on civilian targets will strengthen Ukrainian resolve, not weaken it.

Here’s why.

I had long thought that the horrific bombing campaigns of World War II helped bring the war to a close by battering Germans and Japanese into submission. [full disclosure – my father was a machine gunner, bombardier, and armorer in the 8th Air Force in England during the second World War.]

Boy was I wrong.

Credible