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About Lisa Suennen
Yes, it’s me
Most Popular Posts
- From Russia With Love
- The Secret to Lower Healthcare Costs: Dying Faster
- You Say You Want a Healthcare Revolution
- We Are the 51%!
- Singing a New Tune: Redefining Innovation in the Medical Device World
- Rap Genius: Healthcare to a Hip Hop Beat?
- When “Cloud-based” Means Technology, Not Heaven: Report from AARP Health Innovation@50+
- A Tale of Two Doctor Visits
- Your CEO May Be A Man, But Your Healthcare Customer is a Woman
- Healthcare IT BINGO!
- I’m On A Boat! The Rising Fleet of Incubators
- Employers and Health Innovation: Will They Go Long or Advance One Yard at a Time?
- Give ‘Em That Old Razzle Dazzle
- Never Let Anyone Make You a Carrot
- What’s Done Cannot Be Undone
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Recent Posts
- The Star Thrower, or How Healthcare Looks to Consumers
- Medical Technology and Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief
- There Is No “I” in Team, But There Is In “Win”
- A Soda A Day Keeps Your Lifespan Away
- Investor Comedy Relief: The Missed Investment Opportunity
- Psilos Releases Annual Healthcare Outlook Report: A Golden Age in Healthcare Investing
- Discounts on Two Upcoming Conferences for Venture Valkyrie Readers
- Digital Health: The Cat’s Meow
- School Daze
- Showcase Your Start-up at the AARP Health Innovation@50+ Event-Viva Las Vegas
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Category Archives: Consumer Engagement
The Star Thrower, or How Healthcare Looks to Consumers
It is always interesting how events find ways of connecting themselves together even when they seem so unrelated.
I was at my sister Alexis’ graduation from law school on Friday, where I had gone directly from leaving a several day event organized by Health Evolution Partners. At the event I had occasion to meet with Dr. Charlotte Yeh, Chief Medical Officer of AARP, who will shortly be participating in a very cool panel at the conference I am chairing, the Consumer Health & Wellness Innovation Summit, on June 11 in San Francisco (yes, that was a shameless plug; please attend and use code CHAIRVIP for a big discount).
Anyway, Charlotte and I had been talking about the substance of the panel we will be doing together and I was telling her that what I want most from it is the true voice of the consumer. I told her that I go to too many conferences where we all talk about consumers but no one actually speaks from that point of view. That is why I wanted her, John Santa from Consumer Reports and consumer advocate and Director of … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Reform, Uncategorized
Tagged Charlotte Yeh, consumer engagement, consumer health, consumer health & wellness innovation summit, Dr. Rick Chung, healthcare consumer, John Santa, Kim Whittemore, Loren Eiseley, Star Thrower
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A Soda A Day Keeps Your Lifespan Away
Last week an article was published in the clinical journal Diabetologia that described a significant study performed in Europe. The study demonstrated that people who drink even one can of sugary soda per day raise their risk of Type II diabetes by 18%. The results echoed those of a previously performed U.S. study that suggested a 25% increase in Type II diabetes among those who drank one 12-ounce can of soda per day, on average. There was a huge amount of press about this study, including stories from CBS News, Huffington Post and other major media outlets. Unfortunately there was no immediate call for people to have to submit to background checks before purchasing a six-pack of Coca Cola.
By saying that I am not trying to belittle national gun control efforts, which I fully support. To the contrary, both issues need far greater efforts in the interests of public health in my opinion. There are about 30,000 gun-related deaths per year in the U.S., two thirds of which are suicides and all of which we should work to avoid, in my personal opinion. There are also about 230,000 Type … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Health and Wellness, Healthcare Policy, Healthy Eating, Preventive Health, Uncategorized
Tagged beverage institute for health and wellness, bloomberg soda law, coca cola slogan, diabetologia, dr pepper slogan, one soda per day study, pepsi slogan, psilos, soda and diabetes, type II diabetes and soda, work it out calorie calculator
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Psilos Releases Annual Healthcare Outlook Report: A Golden Age in Healthcare Investing
Hello all. Every year for the last five years Psilos Group, the investment firm for which I work, writes and disseminates a white paper which we call our Annual Healthcare Outlook. Today we released our paper for 2013, which is titled: The Affordable Care Act: Catalyzing a Golden Age in Healthcare Investing. The entire Outlook can be downloaded to read in full HERE.
In that my partner, Al Waxman, has authored a nice post summarizing our 2013 Healthcare Outlook, I will let his words tell the story instead of mine today:
Now that President Obama has been reelected and the Supreme Court has upheld the Accountable Care Act, healthcare reform is here to stay. So what does reform mean for healthcare investors? I believe it will usher in a fertile period for innovative, venture-backed companies that can navigate the brave new world of healthcare delivery and management.
The Accountable Care Act’s impact on healthcare IT investing is already being felt. Venture investment in 2013 is showing significant growth from last year. In 2012, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the life sciences sector, which includes healthcare IT, accounted for 25% of all … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital
Tagged al waxman, extend health, health insurance exchanges, healthcare investing, healthedge, patientsafe solutions, psilos group, psilos outlook, seechange health
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The Napster-ization of Healthcare, Coming to a Theater Near You
Two weeks ago I had the good fortune to be invited back to the South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) to participate as a judge of a digital healthcare start-up competition. SXSW, which takes place in Austin, TX, is historically an indie music gathering that has evolved into a massive mainstream music conference as well as a monumentally huge film festival, like Sundance times twenty. There are literally hundreds of bands and films featured around town. There has now evolved alongside this a conference called Interactive that draws more than 25,000 people and focuses on technology, particular mobile, digital, and Internet.
In other words, SXSW has become one of the world’s largest gatherings of hoodie-sporting, gadget-toting nerd geniuses that are way too square to be hip but no one has bothered to tell them. Imagine you are sitting at a Starbucks in Palo Alto, CA among 25,000 people who cannot possibly imagine that the rest of the world still thinks the Internet is that newfangled thing used mainly for email and porn. SXSW is a cacophonous melting pot of brilliance, creativity, futuristic thinking, arrogance, self-importance, ironic retro rock and … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Digital Health, Healthcare Information Technology, Innovation, Uncategorized
Tagged apple healthcare, Chilmark, CommonWell Health Alliance, downloaded, Epic, health data interoperability, healthcare IT, healthcare technology, innovator's dilemma, jody holtzman, napster, open systems, psilos, sxsw interactive health, the movie, Wang, x/open
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Smoking and the Law… of Unintended Consequences
No one argues about whether smoking is bad for you anymore; even the cigarette companies have kind of thrown in that towel. And yet, despite this rare unanimity on this one particular healthcare issue, smoking continues to be controversial at all levels of state and federal government healthcare policy. No where is this more obvious than in my own fair state of California, considered to be the 2nd lowest smoking state in the nation, but still spending over $17.7 billion/year on direct medical costs and lost productivity due to smoking.
Back in 1998 California passed Proposition 10, which led to the establishment of the First 5 California Program administered by the California Children and Families Commission. According to its website, First 5 “supports programs for children from prenatal to age 5 by creating a comprehensive and integrated system of information and services to promote early childhood development and school readiness.” The funding for this program came from a share of a $.50 per pack tax on cigarettes and similar tobacco products levied in 1998. When the tax was first passed, there were nearly 50 million smokers in California and … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Health and Wellness, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Reform, Preventive Health, Uncategorized
Tagged campaign for tobacco free kids, childhood smoking, cigarette tax, fast five california, obamacare and smoking, proposition 10 california, smoking in california, smoking tax, stop smoking campaign, teen smoking, tobacco tax
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Give Me Mediterranean Food or Give Me Death!
On Tuesday I flew on a business trip from Germany to Boston. As with all these long flights you can never have enough to do to keep yourself occupied when sleep eludes, so on the way into the plane I grabbed the International Herald Tribune (which announced this week it will be henceforth be known as the International New York Times), it being the only paper plane side where every word didn’t start and end with “furter”.
I was captivated right away by the top front page story called “Diet Brings Clear Benefits for the Heart, Study Finds,” which details a recently completed scientifically validated study that demonstrates that the so-called Mediterranean diet is not only delicious, but may reduce heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease by as much as 30%. Viva Italia! is what I have to say to that. (here is a link to the companion story at the NY Times site).
The Mediterranean diet is basically what they eat–wait for it–in the areas around the Mediterranean Sea, and includes such staples as olive oil (4 tablespoons per day believe it or not), certain … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Health and Wellness, Healthcare Policy, Healthy Eating, Preventive Health, Uncategorized
Tagged diet reduces heart attacks, diet reduces heart disease, healthy eating, medicaid heart disease, mediterranean diet, mediterranean diet study, psilos, rachael ray evoo
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Are We Having Fun Yet?
People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.–Dale Carnegie
Exercise. To some people the word is an inspiration–it is what they want to go out and do and it turns them on. But for most people the word “exercise” strikes fear in their hearts and makes them try to rationalize how opening and closing the refrigerator door can count as a form of bicep curl.
One of the main reasons people hate to exercise is they perceive it as NOT FUN AT ALL. They view standing inside a glass enclosed building space walking on a treadmill or stairmaster as something best left to hamsters in habitrails. In fact, if you look at a hamster habitrail cage, the exercise features in it actually look fun, whereas the stairmaster looks like something you might sentence someone to when capital punishment isn’t enough.
Judge: You are guilty of the crime and I am sentencing you to one hour per day on the stairmaster.
Criminal: No, anything but that! Please just kill me now.
Or that’s how I imagine the dialogue goes.
I saw a clip on CNN about how … (read the rest)
Consumer Reports: Medical Journal for the Masses
In the March 2013 issue of Consumer Reports, sandwiched between an article called “Best TVs” (just in time for Super Bowl) and one called “Microwave Mystery: When do wayward ovens warrant a recall?” is an article entitled “Save Your Life.”
This article, ensconced as it is in the most widely respected national consumer advice magazine, is about what cancer screening tests are out there and which you, as a patient, should and shouldn’t bother seeking out. Wow. I guess this whole consumer engagement in healthcare thing is for real. You can’t get more “consumerish” than Consumer Reports.
In this particular article, which starts with the premise that “cancer screening remains stuck in a 1960s view of the disease,” there is a rating scale that helps the reader determine whether a variety of commonly prescribed cancer screening tests have benefits that outweigh the harms of having such tests. Just like they do with TVs, microwaves and interior paints (all reviewed in the same issue), Consumer Reports uses a 5-point scale illustrated with red or black dots to help consumers navigate through the tests most commonly prescribed. It is … (read the rest)
Online Diagnosers Exceed Number of Words With Friends Players–Go Figure
This piece also ran today in Healthcare IT News.
We all like to think we are one-of-a-kind, but the truth is, not so much. In the past month I have found myself among the (estimated) <5% of women who attended the JP Morgan conference, the <10% of women who are partners in private equity firms, and, apparently, one of the 100% of working people who play Scrabble-related games during working hours, but today I find myself one of the 35%. According to a new a Pew Research Center survey of about 3,000 people, released today, about 35% of Americans are “online diagnosers,” meaning people who consult the Internet to self-diagnose a medical condition. See related article HERE.
Not looking for sympathy, seriously, I am feeling sorry enough for myself to cover all of us; but I found myself, after weeks of media hysteria and the most congested head on earth, reading this article entitled How to Tell If You Have the Flu. I read this as I helped the Kimberly Clark Corporation have a record quarter due to extreme Kleenex consumption. Here is a tip: go out … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Diagnostics and Screening, Digital Health, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Medical Devices, Uncategorized
Tagged cold or flu, deloitte mobile health, flu or cold, JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, mhealth, mobile health, online diagnosis, pew internet health, quantified self, self diagnosis, tricorder xprize
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An Apple a Day Keeps the Fiscal Cliff Away
At the end of each year the Internet magazine Xconomy asks its self-selected “Xconomist” panel to respond to one of a series of prompts that represent “big questions” for the coming year. As one of their panel members, I was asked to respond to the question, “What makes you optimistic?”
My first reaction, as this was asked of me as we were still heading for the fiscal cliff, was that I was optimistic that, since I am really short, it would take me slightly longer than others to hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Beyond that I was thinking that my primary source of optimism for the coming year derived from the SF Giants setting themselves up for a World Series three-peat by re-signing Marco Scutaro and Angel Pagan.
But as I was driving to work one day pondering on this question of what, at least professionally, makes me optimistic, the answer became clear to me as I cruised past McDonalds, and here it is below, as reprinted with permission from Xconomy:
As a person who has worked in the healthcare field for over 25 years, … (read the rest)