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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
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Category Archives: Medical Marketing and MediA
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)
Singing a New Tune: Redefining Innovation in the Medical Device World
This piece also appeared on November 6, 2012 in PE Hub.
In the world of medical devices, innovation has traditionally been defined as the invention of a new device or a new technology that can be packaged into a device, expanding the number of possible medical procedures or at least replacing old ones with those that are new, improved and lemon-scented. For the past several decades, a parade of medical device entrepreneurs has led a drumbeat of new product development, accompanied by a chorus of venture capitalists saying, “Hey look, a new thingamajig! You’re playing my song!”
In today’s healthcare economy, those same entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are spending far more time facing the music than dancing to it. We have reached the point where those that pay for healthcare are more than willing to turn down the volume on innovation that does anything other than reduce medical procedures and costs. The medical device industry has felt the repercussions of this changing tune in a big way.
Last week I attended my 2nd and the Cleveland Clinic’s 10th Annual Innovation Summit and it was very interesting to … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Medical Devices, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized
Tagged cleveland clinic, cleveland clinic innovation summit, healthcare cost savings, healthcare economics, healthcare innovation, Kevin Lobo, Mark Froimson, medical device investing, medical device venture capital, medical devices, medical technology, omar ishrak, psilos, William Petty
5 Comments
Your CEO May Be A Man, But Your Healthcare Customer is a Woman
Women don’t want to hear what you think.
Women want to hear what they think – in a deeper voice. – Bill Cosby
I recently saw a statistic from my friends at Rock Health that said that women comprise only 4% of healthcare industry CEOs. For those of you who are slow at math, this means that 96% of the people running pharmaceutical, medical device, healthcare IT, healthcare service, provider system, health insurance and all of the other healthcare enterprises out there are men. Despite 51% of the American population being female, this has been a persistent fact since anyone bothered checking. In fact, I bet the number of women CEOs in healthcare has more than doubled—to 4%–in the last 10 or 20 years. I don’t have a citation on that, but I bet I’m not far off.
Since it has been lamented and documented to death, I don’t want to talk here about how the above-stated statistic is either pathetic (which it is) or ill-advised for maximizing financial value (which it also is). Rather, I would like to direct you to pay rapt attention to Women in Healthcare … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, General Business Issues, Girls Rule!, Healthcare, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity
Tagged healthcare CEO, healthcare marketing, healthcare social media, men marketing to women, psilos, Rock Health, selling healthcare to women, women doctors, women healthcare CEO, women in healthcare week
22 Comments
Suicide Squeeze or Sudden Death? A Day at the Ballpark
http://vimeo.com/28176150
“When we lose I eat. When we win I eat. I also eat when we’re rained out.”
–Tommy LaSorda, former Los Angeles Dodgers Manager
As a rabid baseball fan I get to the ballpark as often as possible. I love the pace and intricacies of the game, the sports history associated with it, my team (Go Giants!), the ballpark (can’t beat the bay view at AT&T Park), and all of the rituals of the sport. Everyone knows that one of those rituals is the ceremonial eating of junk food and drinking of beer. Seriously, what would a day at the ballpark be without mustard on your jersey?
The game itself is an interesting exercise in contradiction when it comes to good health. In that my Giants play in San Francisco, home of the sprout-eaters and tree-huggers, you can get your wellness on by eating sushi and farmers market salad at the ballpark; alternatively you can mainline churros and garlic fries as if you were in the real world. Interestingly the primary sponsors advertising at the ballpark represent both ends of the healthcare spectrum. Blue Shield and hospital system … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Health and Wellness, Healthy Eating, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized
Tagged baseball fitness, baseball food, cepeda cha cha bowl, evergood kielbasa, healthy eating, krazy krab sandwich, psilos, sausage races, sf giants sponsors, sfgx, tony horton, tyler florence
1 Comment
What do Richard Gere, Pop Rocks and the PPACA Have in Common? Urban Legends
While I was time-wasting on Facebook or Twitter or whatever it was the other day, I came across a Kaiser Family Foundation quiz about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, now commonly known as the ACA. Since I spend at least 94.7% of my time dealing with issues related to the ACA, I figured I’d take the 10-question quiz and see how I’d do. Thankfully I got them all right, which was an extreme relief to me since I am asked to talk about it frequently and I don’t want anyone to mistake me for a FOX news commentator. You can take the quiz yourself by clicking HERE.
I sent the quiz around to a bunch of my healthcare-focused friends too. I got lots of emails from friends who them got 9 or 10 out of 10 right; of course, I didn’t get any emails from healthcare pals who did worse, probably because they are still re-reading the law to brush up.
What was particularly interesting to me about the quiz is that it touches on 10 areas of the law about which there has been much hype, … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Reform, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized
Tagged ACA, affordable care act, apps for healthy kids, consumer engagement, darwin awards, death panels, health insurance, health reform, health reform quiz, healthcare, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, kaiser family foundation quiz, PPACA, psilos, snopes
2 Comments
I’m Not a Doctor But I Play One on TV
“I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV”–Peter Bergman playing Dr. Cliff Warner of All My Children
The trials and tribulations of doctors have long been a television staple. While plentiful, the shows were typically limited to comedy/dramas about doctors and hospitals where the medical scene was more of a backdrop to the doctors’ personal lives than an effort to educate the masses about true medicine (Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby, General Hospital, Doogie Howser, MASH, St. Elsewhere, Cosby Show, ER, Grey’s Anatomy. Scrubs, House–the list goes on and on–who knew doctors were so damn interesting?).
This diversified slightly over the years with the advent of “realish” doctor advice shows, such as Dr. Ruth, Dr. Drew, Dr. Phil, and Dr. Oz, among others. The gist of these doctor advice shows was and is eternally the same: one or two very hand-selected patients getting “real world advice” from a doctor with all the answers. While the patients certainly volunteer for this publicity, proving my own personal assertion that people value fame and self-affirmation over medical privacy, those shows’ focus has typically remained squarely on the doctor as celebrity/expert. In … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Diagnostics and Screening, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized
Tagged crowdsourcing diagnosis, Diagnosis dead or alive, Doctors on tv, facebook diagnosis, forbes shaywitz, Medical mystery, Medical reality tv, Medical tv show, Mystery diagnosis, psilos, Tv doctor
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But Wait, There’s More!
Two momentous events took place on Thursday, June 28th, the day I am writing this post. First, the Supreme Court of the United States Upheld the legality of the Affordable Care Act, setting the stage for continued massive healthcare industry change including nearly universal health insurance coverage. I could have written in depth about this topic, I suppose, but so much has already been written that I can hardly think what new angle one might take to make that reportage interesting. I did see a quote from Rush Limbaugh saying he would leave the country if the ACA was upheld, so I was hoping to cover his departure, but so far I have not seen him at the Border. One can dream.
The second news story of the day that caught my eye was the obituary of Barry Becher, the guy who made famous the late night infomercial phrase, “But wait, there’s more!” Becher was an advertising pioneer who brought a combination of sophisticated marketing techniques and Barnum-style grandiosity to the advertising of otherwise mundane and often barely useful household products. Perhaps most famous for selling ginsu knives, Becher … (read the rest)