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- Where The Boys Are…And Not The Girls: Tales from the 2012 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
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Category Archives: Random Thoughts of the Day
Friday Medical Comedy Relief
Just thought that the world could use the laugh while attempting to keep it healthcare-relevant. That way we can all pretend it is work-related. Who doesn’t love Ali G? The guy kills me. Here he is interviewing C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General. Best line, “Do all of us really have bones or is that what the media wants us to believe?” Have a great weekend and a laugh on me (ps–slightly blue content so don’t watch if you are of the sensitive persuasion).
Posted in Random Thoughts of the Day
Tagged c everett koop, da ali g show, medical comedy
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Safe Travels?
I am writing this from seat 13F on Southwest’s flight to Orange County, CA, headed to my role as chairman of this year’s IBF Conference on Consumer Health and Wellness Innovation. Ironic, I think, as I have become increasingly confident that air flight is the antithesis of health and wellness. Some people believe that the most dangerous place on earth is Somalia or Syria or the inside of Newt Gingrich’s brain, but in terms of places I am likely to go, I think that the inside of one of these flying tubes ranks right up there.
As I read my notes for the conference while standing in the line to board the plane, I noticed that the sign at the plane’s door informs you that the jet fuel fumes that permeate the jetway are known to cause cancer and birth defects. That was, of course, the first note of irony in my day, as I was reading about the kinds of activities individuals can and should do to minimize the risk of such afflictions as diabetes and cancer. The lists always includes eating broccoli and getting proper sleep, but no … (read the rest)
Not Quite a No-Brainer
I just read an article entitled 25 Things You Didn’t Know About the Human Brain. As a lay-person who works in the medical field, I love these stories that attempt to turn the true mysteries of science and medicine into pop culture style information digestible by the masses. While some of the facts in the brain article were more to the structural (the brain has 100,000 miles of blood vessels in it), others were more intriguing and got my imagination wandering.
My favorite factoid in the article was this: your brain generates between 10 and 23 watts of power at rest, enough to power a light bulb. I wonder if this is what led to the convention of showing a light bulb above the head to connote the formation of an idea. Perhaps this is a revelation that might lead to a solution to our nation’s demand for clean energy (excepting those with dirty minds, I suppose). Is there any way to harness the wattage of sleeping people to power their iPads and iPhones for tomorrow’s business day? Just think: no more slumming at Starbucks to use the free … (read the rest)
Posted in Health and Wellness, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized
Tagged brain, brain science, gelology, human brain, laughter, psilos
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Come Forth into the Light of Things
Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher–William Wordsworth
So here it is, the last day of my winter vacation, and I am sitting inside watching people play ball outside at the Rose Bowl. It might not seem so crazy to those of you who either love football or live in a cold climate that one would spend January 2nd indoors; but where I live it is about 60 degrees and sunny. While I do love watching football, there is no legitimate weather-related excuse for being indoors, particularly since I have TIVO.
In addition to watching large men smash into each other on TV, I also used today to catch up on old magazines that are currently forming a looming architectural structure in my home that is getting large enough to require a light to alert approaching airplanes. The fact that I am staring into a screen (while my daughter is next to me playing Temple Run on her iPhone) and not frolicking out in nature became particularly poignant as I finally got to a November 7th Newsweek article entitled “Don’t Let the … (read the rest)
11:59 and Not a Second Later
Okay, I know it’s kind of cheating, but I am re-posting my column from New Year’s 2011 where I turned Auld Lang Syne into an ode to venture capital. Why? you ask. Because I haven’t been able to come up with another decent New Year’s song to parody and I have been drinking far too much this holiday season to come up with something entirely new. Let’s hope that some of that cell regeneration stuff that my colleagues are funding will help me out in the year to come.
As for potential alternative New Year’s songs to work with, there is an unfortunate dearth of options. Unlike Christmas, which is full of good music that everyone knows, New Year’s has been left in the dust. There is, of course, Barry Manilow’s Just Another New Year’s Eve, but I deemed that too depressing; plus it has become remarkably unhip to admit you know the words to Barry Manilow songs. There’s also Dan Fogelberg’s Just Another Auld Lang Syne; you remember–the one that starts, “I met my old lover in the grocery store…” Had to ding that one for being … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Private Equity, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged auld lang syne, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, new year's songs, psilos, venture capital
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Croaking in a Winter Wonderland
If you are reading this, you have already dodged 2/3 of the bullet.
I read a sobering statistic this week that heart attacks are more prevalent in December and January than any other time of year in the U.S. More specifically, if you are seeking to experience the full religious effect of Christmas, you have a great chance of seeing God personally on that day since December 25th is one of the three most common days of the year to die of a heart attack. If the heart attack doesn’t kill you on Christmas proper, don’t despair; you will have an equally good chance to watch year-end football from inside the Pearly Gates since the next two most common heart attack death days are December 26th and New Year’s Day. Place your Rose Bowl bets early and hand the ticket off to a loved one just in case. Prediction: Badgers make Oregon quack like a duck.
Doctors don’t have a full understanding of why the heart decides not to go on during these specific days, but they have several hypotheses. Much to my surprise, none of them include:
- The
Age is a High Price to Pay for Maturity
Age is a high price to pay for maturity—Tom Stoppard
So it’s my birthday this week and each year it is getting just a little harder to be excited (yay! It’s my birthday!) vs. horrified (oh crap, am I really that old?).
As I perused my nearly age-appropriate issue of AARP Magazine this week I noted that one of the articles in it said that cultivating feelings of gratitude can lead to physical changes that improve health (and therefore, I am sure, lead you to feel younger). I must admit, I have a tough time feeling grateful about those lines around my eyes. Maybe it’s just because my memory has become so age-impaired that I can’t remember to feel grateful about having the opportunity to get older. Whenever someone says to me, “Getting older isn’t so bad, it beats the alternative!” I want to beat them to death with a pair of dentures. Mark Twain once said, “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been,” but he’s dead so what the hell does he know?”
I guess there must be some people out there who revel in their aging process. … (read the rest)
Do You Believe in Magic?
As health and science have entered the popular discourse in a greater way these past several years, there has been an upsurge in scientific literature delivered in an accessible pop culture format-science for the Everyman, if you will. Especially popular among the books that have migrated from the lab to the NY Times Bestseller list have been those about the way humans think and why. Over the last few years I have noticed a myriad of what I will dub pop science books out there about the brain and cognition. There have been books that illuminate How We Decide and how we make decisions in the blink of an eye (Blink). I have seen books about how kids brains develop (very slowly, I might add) and how the brains differ by gender. The Female Brain has been a big bestseller among the pop culture-inclined, with it’s 187 pages telling the tale of how a woman’s brain changes as she matures and how that affects her parenting, sexual and partnering experiences. Perhaps none of you will be surprised to learn that the companion book, The Male Brain, … (read the rest)
Well, Well, Well
A couple of months ago the Gallup organization, together with Healthways, Inc., released a preliminary report from their upcoming 2011 Well-Being Index report. The annual Well-Being Index score, which I have written about before (see prior post HERE), is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities. The January through June 2011 aggregate, highlighted here, includes more than 177,000 interviews conducted among national adults, aged 18 and older.
The focus of this preliminary Well-Being Index report was to tell all of us which of the U.S. states’ citizens are feeling the best about themselves. In a time when the economy is putting financial and emotional pressure on the nation as a whole, there are still some places where people are still feeling pretty good. I am guessing these are places where it is hard to get the network news on TV.
As pretty much anyone with a brain could have surmised without a survey to prove it, the state with the highest Well-Being score, and the highest physical and mental health sub-scores, is … (read the rest)
Eye on the Prize
There has been a lot of talk in healthcare circles about the concept of “gamification,” a super-annoying made-up word that means turning health tasks into games so they are more engaging and people are more willing to do them. People and companies are coming up with all sorts of games for kids with asthma and diabetes to learn good medical compliance and for adults who need the extra incentive to do their exercise and comply with their chronic care regimens, among others. Michelle Obama even sponsored a big contest to foster the creation of games to sponsor healthy eating and virtually every large health insurance company is now offering various forms of incentive game and points programs for taking better care of oneself. You can get frequent flyer points for taking United Airlines and “personal rewards” points, that you can turn into cash, for being insured by United Healthcare.
We Americans just love our games and nothing sells like a healthy competition. Just witness the insanity of prime time television and you will see people attempting feats that they never would have done (losing hundreds of pounds, surviving extreme … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Innovation, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized
Tagged CIMIT Prize, gamification, healthcare innovation, healthcare IT, healthcare reform, Heritage provider network prize, i2, Investing in Innovation program, Office of the National Coordinator, psilos, san diego venture group, Sekou Andrews and Steven Connell, wendy schmidt oil cleanup x challenge, X Prize
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