Liquid biopsy reimbursement. Vitamins & Supplements. Health employment.
AI AI Captain
We just released our Automation Report, which looks at how AI and robotics are slowly unbundling functions from certain jobs and doing them more efficiently. One area analyzed were nurses and home-aides, which we found were at pretty low-risk for automation due to the unpredictable nature of the job and high priority for human touch in the field.
Healthcare is a huge source of jobs in the US, employing more than 12M people. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics recently put out its report about employment, with education & health showing the most job growth (though it’s slowed down since last year). This is an area where we still have a shortage of caregivers, and AI + software can help extend care to those that need it.
That’s the patient-facing side of things. There are A LOT of back-office jobs in healthcare at risk of automation, including insurance, pharmacies, admin, etc. These exist in part because of systemic inefficiencies, as many of the tasks include double-checking forms, converting paper to electronic records, etc.
As AI introduces consumer-friendly efficiencies, we’re also going to have to grapple with potential job losses associated with a smoother system. The solution could be rerouting back-office personnel into more patient-facing roles, where there’s still a massive and growing demand for care. That said, automation could take a while, I mean healthcare is one of the only industries with an occupation that still has “scribe” in the title.
Supplemental Reading
We analyzed the most well-funded companies in the vitamins & supplements space, identifying key trends, business models, and differentatiors between them.
As we start to learn more about our health predispositions and shift health to “prediction,” we can expect to see a lot more prophylactic health solutions hit the market. Vitamins have been claiming to do this for decades and have largely fallen into an FDA gray area except for egregious cases. But as more of these vitamins and supplements claim “science” and hook onto genomics and predictive health markers, will the FDA finally have to address this entire “wellness” industry?
