I love hearing about startups in emerging nations – I think there is so much potential for cross pollination. Here are five from India focused on blood supply, preeclampsia, kidney health, ECG, and chronic disease detection, among other applications.

The NHS in England shows good results with a pilot for the early detection of sepsis, plans a nationwide roll-out.

A fortnight ago I wrote about Deepmind’s progress in detecting kidney failure. Here’s a bit of pushback, citing some challenges for AI in healthcare in general. This phrase jumped out at me: “(clinicians) also rely heavily on human judgment to diagnose…a level of subjectivity that would be nearly impossible to program into every AI algorithm”. It was well argued almost 10 years ago by very respected clinicians that removing some subjectivity and standardizing care processes (free registration required) would help deliver higher quality care at lower cost.  In other industries, we grow productivity by selectively substituting technology for labor. And we do that in healthcare too. In pockets. Just not enough yet to make high quality, lower cost care repeatable at scale. More on that a little further down the page….

Deepmind, on the other hand, is a half a billion dollar deep hole for Alphabet by the way…

Talking of pushback, Visibly has had to pull its mobile app eye test from the market. The American Optometric Association has apparently lobbied hard against Visibly. Taking a big step back, this might be something of a moral dilemma that we need to figure out over the next 10-20 years. The cost of healthcare is still rising. If that continues, an increasing number of people in the US are going to be priced out of conventional healthcare (i.e consulting a doctor, one on one). Telehealth could be an option.  But pushing the argument further, what happens when people can’t afford to see a doctor at all, even virtually. Are we really going to deny them the opportunity to have their health evaluated solely by an algorithm? Even if that offers a less comprehensive examination than a doctor. If the only options you can afford are diagnosis by algorithm, or no diagnosis at all, which would you choose…?

The American Heart Association is launching a pilot with LifePod Solutions to help care for people with chronic cardiac conditions at home. Also in the remote patient monitoring game, Biotricity reports strong quarter to quarter growth.

Rumors abound that all is not happy in the world of Apple health. But, that hasn’t stopped it expanding use of Apple Health Records to embrace Allscripts. And in not unexpected news, AliveCor has dropped its KardiaBand accessory for the Apple Watch. AliveCor has been pushing into more specialized territory with its 6-lead ECG anyway. But does a 6-lead ECG take AliveCor away from the direct-to-consumer (D2C) model…? I think it might. Meanwhile, if you do see anyone with both hands on a device – while simultaneously pressing it to their left knee or ankle –  you’ll know exactly what they’re doing…

Things seem to be quite peachy at not for profit hospitals, with Mayo growing profits by almost 300%.

Researchers are working on a biosensor that uses interstitial fluid and might be used in place of blood draws in the future.

Biobeat gets FDA clearance for cuff-less non-invasive blood pressure. This has potential. First of all, cuff-less non-invasive BP should mean it’s more comfortable for the patient. That could be especially great in the home for chronic conditions. Second, in my experience there aren’t many wireless BP devices cleared for use in the hospital. There are two unknowns for me that are crucial to success down the road. First, does it fit easily into the clinicians workflow? If not, that’s going to make adoption in the hospital an uphill battle. And second, do the economics work? If it’s more expensive overall than existing approaches, it’s probably not going to fly, however much more comfortable it may be for patients.

In the land of mobile appointment bookings, doc’s choke on Zocdoc’s new pricing model.

I think Remedy Partners really needs this merger with Signify Health. Remedy Partners is arguably the most important player in Medicare bundled payment pilots. It “owns” more episodes of care than any other entity, and in some cases took on the financial risk instead of the providers. But, most of the cost variation in each bundle is driven by post-acute care (slide 16 onward). That is, what happens after the patient is discharged from the hospital. Without a good way to monitor patients post-discharge, that creates a huge financial risk for Remedy. This merger with Signify Health can help to fix that. 

Two chairs aims to take the stress out of finding a therapist.

Strong preventative healthcare is woefully lacking in the US. As Amy Brown of SpringBuk says, incentives for preventative care are not aligned. Honestly, I think there are limits to how much analytics can help with that. There are two massively fragmented, multi-trillion dollar industries here (payers and providers are two different industries, they just share a value chain). There’s a bigger piece here about preventative care that needs to come together in my head, I’ll try and get it written in the next week or two.

And last but not least, Isansys pilot shows that heart rate variability could predict 90 day mortality in patients with cirrhosis of the liver.