I couldn’t help but laugh at this. What kind of masochist would want to play a computer simulation game in which you have to play the role of a hospital manager?
I’m excited for the level where you negotiate an EMR implementation contract.
I Got Money To Blow
Healthcare and tech corporates are getting some serious $$ to play with following the corporate tax reform and a healthy dose of repatriated cash from overseas.
Almost every single one of the top beneficiaries of repatriation has involvement in the healthcare space. If the money goes to M&A, it’ll be good news for digital health and healthcare companies that have seen a pretty anemic exit environment. Not only have exits in the space been declining, but they’ve been for smaller sums.
Some companies are already getting antsy, with Celgene apparently in talks to acquire Juno Therapeutics right after the $7B acquistion of Impact Biosciences. We analyzed Celgene’s increasing cancer focus, and they’re clearly put their money where their mouth is.
Juno was one of the largest cancer exits already when it went public. You can see our analysis of the others here.
As more corporates continue to move into the healthcare space, they’ll likely start acquiring companies to fill in their expertise gaps. This is one of many 2018 trends were going to be diving into in our January 30th research briefing.
One Flu Over The CDC
Getting exact data during infectious disease outbreaks is pretty hard, so the CDC usually uses some guesstimation tactics. For example, to track the flu they look at how many influenza-like symptoms hospitals note.
The problem is many people don’t actually go to the hospital when they have the flu! They stay at home, eat noodle soup, and binge watch Netflix. So the CDC numbers may not catch them, but new consumer diagnostics tools like smart-thermometer Kinsa can. They let us see the outbreaks in real time and might actually do a better job than government organizations.
We no longer need to rely on speculative monitoring, thanks to measurement tools in consumers’ hands that are getting data directly from the people. Government and corporates that are serious about being population health managers (beyond just the buzzword) should be using more at-home monitoring and diagnostic tests instead of indirect proxies like hospital admissions.
By working with these companies, they can more accurately analyze and respond to public health issues as they come up.
We talked about companies getting more invested in this area in our “Consumerization of Healthcare” research briefing.
But verdict is still out on the efficacy of these companies. A recent pre-print paper is suggesting that using circulating tumor DNA may face some pretty significant obstacles. There’s a lot of money at stake here so definitely worth watching!
