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Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

nytimes.com

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Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#121

Post by delhanty »

rayiner wrote: post #100
blhack wrote: post #7

Good. I spent a few years working in a medical IoT startup, and the current state of the "mainstream" medical monitoring technology is not inspiring. During a brainstorming meeting, I asked one of our cofounders, a physician, to tell me about some of the problems he had seen in health. Don't try and solve it, just lets talk about problems. He said that by far one of the most common causes for re-hospitalization is co…

> Can you imagine my frustration at hearing this? It's this massive problem with an obvious (CHEAP!! SO FUCKING CHEAP!!) solution. I suspect the nurse is there to perform the “getting the patient on the scale” function, not the “reading out the weight and tracking it” function.

Perhaps the scales could be built into the bed somehow?

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#122

Post by mxwll »

opportune wrote: post #99
mxwll wrote: post #41

There are some major hurdles for these SV companies to overcome if they want any level of success in this arena. EPIC and Cerner together hold over 50% market share of EHR systems in American hospitals. Their interoperability and patient facing applications are a joke. EPIC actively makes it difficult for third parties to build on top of their system. Sure, these SV companies have figured out how to build great tech…

Apple and Samsung entering the healthcare space to compete with Epic (their name isn't all-caps) and Cerner, in reality, is going to be closer to this: https://xkcd.com/927/ Most of the employees at Epic and Cerner in the healthcare space are actually operations. Like, at least 60% of their workers are operations. Not only that, but they're not traditional IT workers who go out and get certs, they're really closer to…

Fair points - I don't believe that Apple / Samsung are necessarily going to build out their own EMR systems. Rather I think the bottom up approach they are taking by creating an enormous amount of personal health data -- heart rate and exercise activity now with a growing ecosystem of third party devices -- that is up to FHIR specs is a step in the right direction.

Your second point really resonates with me. I have spent the last few months working within a large healthcare organization and it is extremely difficult to make necessary changes. There is a lot of distrust of our team to the point of hostility. Very frustrating

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#123

Post by aviv »

rco8786 wrote: post #84
aviv wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need technology to help improve lives when so many diseases (type 2 diabetes, Crohn's, IBS, high blood pressure, arthritis, and dozens of others) can already be reversed and prevented by simply changing a person's diet and lifestyle habits? It's really quite insane that people would rather take pills for the rest of their lives to treat symptoms of a disease than actually getting rid of it altogether by giv…

Accusing physicians of being dismissive of nutrition by being dismissive of technology is sort of ironic, no?

The reason many physicians are dismissive of nutrition is because they only get about 20 hours of total education on the subject.

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#124

Post by ams6110 »

darkerside wrote: post #117
aviv wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need technology to help improve lives when so many diseases (type 2 diabetes, Crohn's, IBS, high blood pressure, arthritis, and dozens of others) can already be reversed and prevented by simply changing a person's diet and lifestyle habits? It's really quite insane that people would rather take pills for the rest of their lives to treat symptoms of a disease than actually getting rid of it altogether by giv…

Sad that you get down voted when you make so many valid and useful points. Galileo was in the same boat at one time! I don't think you can blame traditional physicians. Most of them really didn't go to school for a decade to tell fat people to eat less. They want to solve medical problems, not play life coach. Maybe there is a role for technology here. People accept statements from a machine that they'd take great of…

Is this a new thing? When I was a kid, we still had what was called a "family doctor." I'm not sure these really exist anymore. He never hesitated to tell my mom she needed to lose weight or my dad he needed to stop smoking. Maybe the fact that he wasn't a specialist allowed him to be more practical with his advice.

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#125

Post by ep103 »

blhack wrote: post #7

Good. I spent a few years working in a medical IoT startup, and the current state of the "mainstream" medical monitoring technology is not inspiring. During a brainstorming meeting, I asked one of our cofounders, a physician, to tell me about some of the problems he had seen in health. Don't try and solve it, just lets talk about problems. He said that by far one of the most common causes for re-hospitalization is co…

Is there any chance you would be up for talking about where one could go about working in tech on problems like these? Every time I've looked, I usually just find hospitals maintaining poor IT infrastructure and CRM-type systems. I would love to work in this space.

Strangely, I've been able to find startups in the education space, but not in healthcare. I imagine 90% of the problem would be integration into the behemoth that is medical administration, but that's something I also have the skillset for.

Hacker news has a limit on replying to responses with less than a few votes, but my email is in my profile

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#126

Post by grzm »

ams6110 wrote: post #124
darkerside wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad that you get down voted when you make so many valid and useful points. Galileo was in the same boat at one time! I don't think you can blame traditional physicians. Most of them really didn't go to school for a decade to tell fat people to eat less. They want to solve medical problems, not play life coach. Maybe there is a role for technology here. People accept statements from a machine that they'd take great of…

Is this a new thing? When I was a kid, we still had what was called a "family doctor." I'm not sure these really exist anymore. He never hesitated to tell my mom she needed to lose weight or my dad he needed to stop smoking. Maybe the fact that he wasn't a specialist allowed him to be more practical with his advice.

From what I've seen, family doctors have been replaced by primary care physicians. There's still a place for generalists in the medical profession.

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#127

Post by aviv »

ams6110 wrote: post #124
darkerside wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad that you get down voted when you make so many valid and useful points. Galileo was in the same boat at one time! I don't think you can blame traditional physicians. Most of them really didn't go to school for a decade to tell fat people to eat less. They want to solve medical problems, not play life coach. Maybe there is a role for technology here. People accept statements from a machine that they'd take great of…

Is this a new thing? When I was a kid, we still had what was called a "family doctor." I'm not sure these really exist anymore. He never hesitated to tell my mom she needed to lose weight or my dad he needed to stop smoking. Maybe the fact that he wasn't a specialist allowed him to be more practical with his advice.

You know how in technology we like to say "no one got fired for buying Cisco?".

Well, for them it's no one got fired for selling Lipitor.

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#128

Post by grzm »

aviv wrote: post #118
grzm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's some chicken/egg going on here? On HN, members will downvote based on tone as well as message because many do value civil discourse and recognize that regardless of the value of the substance, the manner in which a member communicates that substance can drag HN down. And deciding not to couch your comments as constructively as possible is much more likely to result in downvotes, if that's what you're…

I agree, I may come off as a troll. I get your point. It's too bad if I do though, my intention is to point people in a direction that will help them and one that they've likely never come across before because no one in the traditional medical world will ever suggest this as a viable option. I will make it a point to phrase my comments differently in the next health-related thread.

> "I will make it a point to phrase my comments differently in the next health-related thread."

Why wait? Why not start now?

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#129

Post by Trav5 »

darkerside wrote: post #117
aviv wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need technology to help improve lives when so many diseases (type 2 diabetes, Crohn's, IBS, high blood pressure, arthritis, and dozens of others) can already be reversed and prevented by simply changing a person's diet and lifestyle habits? It's really quite insane that people would rather take pills for the rest of their lives to treat symptoms of a disease than actually getting rid of it altogether by giv…

Sad that you get down voted when you make so many valid and useful points. Galileo was in the same boat at one time! I don't think you can blame traditional physicians. Most of them really didn't go to school for a decade to tell fat people to eat less. They want to solve medical problems, not play life coach. Maybe there is a role for technology here. People accept statements from a machine that they'd take great of…

I could see a computer calculated life expectency with weight loss as an option to increase it.

Being told you are fat is not a good reason to loose wight. People probably already know they are fat. Maybe there are other reasons that could be communicated...

Re: Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

#130

Post by ams6110 »

delhanty wrote: post #121
rayiner wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine my frustration at hearing this? It's this massive problem with an obvious (CHEAP!! SO FUCKING CHEAP!!) solution. I suspect the nurse is there to perform the “getting the patient on the scale” function, not the “reading out the weight and tracking it” function.

Perhaps the scales could be built into the bed somehow?

Modern hospital beds do have scales built in.
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