How too much knowledge sharing can suppress innovation
When Josh Sommer was an undergraduate at Duke, he was diagnosed with a rare cancer called a chordoma; fortunately, the skull base tumor was successfully removed surgically, though these malignancies...
View ArticleWhere is healthcare’s breakout data science company?
The basic strategy of almost every emerging healthcare technology company is: collect data, parse subgroups, individualize treatment.No matter where you look, the message is the same: to effectively...
View ArticleEight themes from the corner of interoperability and precision medicine
This week, I had the opportunity to attend (and participate in) a policy conference focused on interoperability and precision medicine sponsored by the HL7 standards association. Below, I briefly...
View ArticleA nuanced take on healthcare consumerism
At its most extreme, our national healthcare debate can seem like a battle between those who would empower consumers and trust the free market versus those who, as athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush...
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The science — or lack of it — behind genetic tests offered in the workplace
All genetic tests are not created equal.That’s the key point missing from a high-profile article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal examining companies that offer genetic tests to employees– not as a...
View ArticleThe last, best chance to achieve interoperability?
Can an impassioned band of savvy, battle-tested techno-optimists save our healthcare system from its worst instincts, and deliver at least a soupcon of real interoperability?That’s the question I found...
View ArticleData scientists = research parasites?
Note: This is Part 1 of 3 of my short series on the NEJM/parasite controversy; Part 2 looks at incentives, Part 3 asks whether data gathering should be separated from data analysis.In just four years,...
View ArticleBiden cancer project: An opportunity to implement data sharing incentives
Note: This is Part 2 of 3 of my short series on the NEJM/parasite controversy; Part 1 offers an overview, Part 3 asks whether data gathering should be separated from data analysis.The firestorm ignited...
View ArticleDo we really want to separate clinical data gathering and data analysis?
Note: This is Part 3 of 3 of my short series on the NEJM/parasite controversy; Part 1 offers an overview, Part 2 looks at incentives.At the core of the controversy ignited by the recent New England...
View ArticleLessons from La Jolla: The complexity of patients, the value of entrepreneurship
Two important and related takeaways from the recent “Future of Genomic Medicine” Conference that Eric Topol, Director of The Scripps Translational Science Institute, organizes annually in La Jolla were...
View ArticleAcademia and industry do not need to be at odds with each other
“People hate pharma,” my Forbes colleague Matthew Herper observed recently–and at times I can understand why. There’s not much to admire about executives like Martin Shkreli, or businesses like...
View ArticleFrom one old guy to another: What Dan Lyons misses about Silicon Valley
I can’t get Dan Lyons out of my head.Lyons is the author of Disrupted, the buzzy new book about what happens when a curmudgeonly fifty-ish tech writer gets unceremoniously dumped from a plum role at...
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Math camp: where Silicon Valley innovators begin
I’m not sure everyone can pinpoint their key life inflection point, the moment things went from crummy to hopeful, but for me, it was the summer during middle school when I first went to math camp.We...
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Can Apple teach Silicon Valley to think different about health?
I was thrilled this morning to learn that Stephen Friend, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit open data platform Sage Bionetworks, has accepted a role at Apple and is stepping away from day-to-day...
View ArticleFirsthand account: The Biden Moonshot Summit
Yesterday’s Moonshot Summit, convened by Vice President Biden at Howard University, brought together cancer researchers, patients, providers, data scientists, caregivers and advocates in effort to...
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Are makers rebranding home-ec or reimagining It?
When my maternal grandparents immigrated to America, they worked in the garment industry on New York’s Lower East Side; grandma was a seamstress, grandpa was a dress cutter. I’m told both were...
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Biotech Exec Miralles describes living in translation
Figuring out how to translate promising science into medicine preoccupies both academic and industry researchers – yet few express the distinct challenges as eloquently as Dr. Diego Miralles, a...
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Evolving notions of the right stuff — in spaceflight and in medicine
Consider the popular conception of firefighters: brave, selfless, strong enough to haul an incapacitated person from a burning building. A few years ago, at a conference, I learned that many women were...
View ArticleActivity trackers fail — but that’s not what’s most surprising about new...
Perhaps the normally measured physician-economist Aaron Carroll best captured the reaction and sentiments of the healthcare community in response to a recent JAMA article demonstrating that subjects in...
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On Silicon Valley, immigration and American greatness
I am increasingly struck, and concerned, by the contrast between the portrayal of immigration on the news (often framed as “how dangerous is it?”) and my lived experience in Silicon Valley, where...
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