#20 The shark tank of healthcare 🦈

Also: no car no care, empathetic ChatGPT & period tech.

May 9, 2023

Top of the morning to you. Today’s newsletter is 500 words long, or a 2-minute read.

Think about it 💡

🚣 New Sifted piece dives into European healthtechs looking to cross the pond to the US. But they'll need more than a paddle to navigate and scale the shark tank that is the world's largest healthcare market. While European companies tend to cozy up to public healthcare systems, their American counterparts are known to be commercially cunning, and expanding to the States comes with a heavy price tag - including people, legal, and marketing costs. With funding tricky to come by, some startups are delaying their Stateside debut altogether. Recent high-profile flops, such as Pear Therapeutics, are a reminder that success in AmErIcA is no 🎂🚶‍♀️.

🏎️ 1 in 5 car-less or transit-less Americans skipped medical appointments last year, and telehealth can't replace all in-person care. 5% of non-elderly adults missed necessary care in 2022 due to transportation hurdles, with low-income, disabled, and public health program recipients particularly affected. To bridge the gap, Medicaid could cover non-emergency medical transport, or telehealth could expand in transit-poor areas. Research further highlighted how socioeconomic factors, including transport availability, can account for up to 40% of a person's health.

Doctors vs. Chatbots ? ⚔️

📓 A study in JAMA Internal Medicine compared the responses of ChatGPT to those of physicians in terms of quality and empathy. Turns out the AI model's responses were significantly better, indicating that generative AI could improve patient-physician relationships by promoting empathy and communication.

💡 Although the study has limitations, such as using questions and answers from uninvolved physicians on social media platforms, the results demonstrate the potential of AI to enhance patient experience and quality of care. Read Eric Topol's perspective, it will be better than anything we've come up with.

Neat News 🗞️

🌍 In case you missed it, the WHO declared the end of the COVID-19 global health emergency. Neat.
💸 Mi Alma raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding for its bereavement support platform. Super neat.
⚖️ Anti-abortion bills failed to pass in conservative states of Nebraska and South Carolina. Ultra neat.

Clean Content 🧼

🩸 Read on the radical and expansive future of period technology.
📺 Private equity's role in healthcare: the good, the bad and the ugly.
✍️ Nabla's CTO, Martin Raison, talks about building our digital medical scribe with GPT-4 to the Medical Futurist.

This is what you came for 🍑

🔞 Ah, the age-old taboo of sexual history. It's so hush-hush that a staggering 32% of us might be tempted to switch up our digits when the time comes to divulge our past escapades. But fear not, my friend - the beer goggles are known to be a universal predicament. The real question is: is your sexual history as impressive as you secretly believe it to be? Find out by taking the test here. And, after you’ve lied, you can take it again.

Good day,