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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

tjcx.me

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Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#181

Post by braddeicide »

As a few people have pointed out now, the insurance companies would be the customer. If your software allows patents with disease X to recover 5% faster and they spend a billion on disease X claims each year your software instantly has 50m value to them. You should be able to find a bunch of examples of how much Americans spend on different medications a year, extrapolate the differences in recovery rates from correct and incorrect prescriptions to that value.

Additionally, I'm sure they audit Dr prescriptions, if you get the insurance companies to use your service in the audits the hospitals will also purchase it to pre-audit themselves. Perhaps the drug companies can mandate its use. If you can't get a business to want your product, make them need it :)

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#182

Post by jkaplowitz »

eightysixfour wrote: post #124
PeterisP wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiit - "You have a mind-shattering headache. [..] What do you reach for? " - isn't this where you're supposed or even required to ask the pharmacist? You know, the person who has the years-long training to know drug effects, limitations and interactions with other drugs?

I'd say yes but the last time I was truly sick (flu) my roommate went to the store and asked the pharmacist what to give me and came back home with a bunch of homeopathic sugar pills. My trust in other humans is pretty low for this sort of stuff.

That's pretty awful. On the flipside, here in Montreal I've been very impressed with my local pharmacists at the nearby chain drugstore. They pay attention to drug interactions to the extent of flagging a risk the doctor missed but in retrospect admitted is valid, give me a consult every time I get a new medicine, remember things well enough that I was once asked how my wife was doing with her own recovery from something, and so on.

I used to live in the US and I'm certainly not used to that either. I wish that kind of great pharmacist care were more widespread as a norm.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#183

Post by jkaplowitz »

fastball wrote: post #143
dkarl wrote: post #109

I'm kind of concerned that people read this as satire but miss the most important part, namely the absence of concern about the safety and validity of the results. You know, the part where he stuck some statistical software in front of a database populated by a "motley crew" of contractors and wanted doctors to use it as a shortcut for making patient care decisions. The part where he implicitly compares the HTML spit…

But... this is peer-reviewed work by professional researchers[1]. He just tabulated them / made them searchable. [1] Given the reproducibility crisis, I'm not sure we should trust these much either, but that's a discussion for another time.

Is his meta-analysis or its methodology peer-reviewed work by professional researchers? Has any suitably qualified professional reviewed his output?

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#184

Post by wolco5 »

loceng wrote: post #105
dan-robertson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversations are surely paraphrased and exaggerated—just look at the style of the rest of the article. The position that doctors should be trying new things to improve their care sounds good but in practice most doctors are strongly biased towards the status quo and usually inaction is preferred to a slightly unknown action, even if that action has better expectancy.

Psychiatrists are simply experimenting on each person they prescribe medications to. The status quo is indoctrination, and in this case, the psychiatrist wasn't even willing to use actual research based data to improve the treatment of their patients - even referencing that they won't make anymore money because the patient won't come back more often or refer more patients because of it. This is abhorrent unprofession…

I've seen this happen and the entire process of adding new drugs and waiting a week or more between visits seems cruel.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#185

Post by wolco5 »

Falling3 wrote: post #38
nickjj wrote: post #9

That was a fun read. I wish the author mentioned how much he was trying to sell the service for. It could have been $59 a month or $599 a month and with doctors you could potentially expect the same answer. I'm not a psychologist but some of the author's quoted text came off extremely demeaning in written form. If the author happens to read this, did you really say those things directly to them? For example, Susan (p…

> you waltz in and tell them what they prescribe is wrong and your automated treatment plan is better. That doesn't really capture the conversation though. Susan specifically said (as you quoted) that it was possible she would use the recommendations of the app. If she took a recommendation that means she agreed it was a better treatment. His question was not whether his algorithm was better than her default prescrip…

Better didn't factor in for the doctor at any cost even free.

This tech could be used to replace the function of this doctor making them less useful.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#187

Post by xiphias2 »

dkarl wrote: post #109

I'm kind of concerned that people read this as satire but miss the most important part, namely the absence of concern about the safety and validity of the results. You know, the part where he stuck some statistical software in front of a database populated by a "motley crew" of contractors and wanted doctors to use it as a shortcut for making patient care decisions. The part where he implicitly compares the HTML spit…

You are on point. For common diseases there are guidelines manually created and periodically updated by 40 doctors. Doctors should just use the last updated protocol for easy decisions.

Even though for headache this is the recommended first line medication:

Ibuprofen 400 mg, ASA 1000 mg, naproxen sodium 500–550 mg, acetaminophen 1000 mg

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4541429/#!po=0....

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#188

Post by nextos »

yoz-y wrote: post #132
pramsey wrote: post #120

It felt like there was a missing chapter! Consumers don't see the value at all. Doctors see the value, but won't pay for it, because it doesn't change their bottom line. Whose bottom line does this change then? HMOs, insurance companies, organizations that want to improve the health of a population in aggregate. They'd pay money to have healthier people (on average) to provide the service to their docs (who see the v…

Insurance companies are the real target here. If they can potentially manage to get doctors to prescribe more efficient medication, then they will end up needing to reimburse less and improve their bottom line.

Exactly. Some 23andme clones are aiming at insurance companies and national healthcare systems. I know at least two of them personally, with investments from big pharma.

If you convince say, NHS, that this service would make their medical practice more efficient they would totally buy it! For this you'd need to hire MDs and play lots of regulatory tricks. Plus, after that, probably private medical offices would follow the lead.

Companies doing genetics-based prediction are trying to fight the same uphill battle, and I think it's one worth fighting. So don't give up!

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#190

Post by aladoc99 »

I have to say, this sounds to me like trying to market an expert system for experienced woodworkers to choose the best chisel for a particular task based on the type of wood, size of the cut, etc. Practitioners have strong opinions regarding the implements they use; they use them in concert with other implements and modalities; and the small differences that may emerge from this kind of analysis are likely to be swallowed up by differences in copay or other things besides pure efficacy.
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