Category Archives: Preventative Medicine

MADISON, WI (CNN NEWSOURCE) Smartphones. Smartwatches. Whats next? Smart toilets?!

Yes, the future of flushing is almost here!

So we got very interested in the toilet, Josh Coon, a Biomolecular Chemistry Professor, said.

Some people think were crazy but I think were on to something, Ian Miller, a Staff Scientist, said.

In most workplaces, toilet talk is frowned upon.

Now we need to put that technology in the toilet and we need to make it broadly available, Coon said.

For researchers at UW Madison, flushing is the future.

Our toilet, our smart toilet will have a collection container in the front and then we can have pipes coming out the bottom which will pump the urine away for analysis in our mass spectrometers, Ben Anderson, a UW Madison Student said.

Doctors say urine samples are non-invasive and can tell a lot about a persons overall health. By collecting and processing this data, theyre calling a toilet revolution.

The opportunity to revolutionize toilets once again by allowing it to not just dispose of waste but to give you access to your health information, Anderson said.

Data from the toilet can show caffeine or alcohol intake or how your body metabolizes certain medicines.

But this way you could monitor that throughout the course of your life daily and we think that could really change healthcare and preventative medicine, Coon said.

Scientists are programming the potty to compile the information as a smartwatch would.

I think the reason the watch is so powerful is because you dont have to do anything different, people wore watches before but all of the sudden we have access to this data, Miller said.

Modernizing even the most private of places.

By being able to look at an actual bodily fluid with this sort of resolution, we can get a peek inside the body, Anderson said.

The team says theyre about three months from a working prototype.

Theyre planning another study over the next year analyzing how the technology functions.

See the article here:
Smart toilet could help in healthcare - KRON4

Rae LlandNovember 18, 2019

(Irina_Strelnikova/iStock)

CBD, or cannabidiol, is a compound produced by cannabis and hemp plants. Unlike THC, CBD doesnt produce a feeling of being high.

CBD topicals such as lotions, balms, gels, or creams are infused with CBD to produce skin-friendly products that contain the medicinal properties of CBD. In topical form, CBD is most popularly used for managing pain and inflammation.

CBD topicals penetrate the skin to provide targeted relief, without entering the bloodstream. This makes them a fantastic choice for anyone who wants to focus the healing properties in specific problem areas rather than feel the effects throughout their body. CBD topicals can potentially provide relief for a variety of pain, headache, and skin issues such as:

Lo Friesen, lead chemist for cannabis wellness company Heylo, believes CBD topicals are also a fantastic preventative medicine. She says using these topicals every day, multiple times a day allows the body to not only uptake CBD quicker, but also build a CBD level in those areas and prevent worsening inflammation.

Its just preventative maintenance, says Friesen. For example, people who have arthritis in their hands who use [CBD topicals] on their hands every day are going to have less pain, less inflammation. Theyre going to have less pain in their hands over time than people who use it to treat [the pain as it happens].

Some CBD topicals may have bases such as shea butter, or oils like coconut, avocado, jojoba, or vitamin E. These nourishing ingredients are great for the skin, providing added benefit to the medicinal properties of CBD. Its also possible to find more traditional lotions with CBD or products with an Aquaphor base.

While lotions will be water based, creams usually have a fat or oil base, and balms a thicker base such as beeswax. Water-based lotions absorb more quickly into the skin, but oil based CBD topicals are more easily absorbed and get into the skin deeper. Meanwhile, gels can be useful for easier thicker application, making them possibly preferable for those with reduced hand dexterity, such as arthritis patients.

At the end of the day however, Friesen says, Just take your favorite skin care product and find something with similar ingredients, add CBD, and youve already made it better.

Unfortunately, due to an oversaturated market and lack of regulation, not all CBD topicals will produce the desired results. CBD can be sourced from either hemp or traditional cannabis, but their resulting extracts typically have quite a few differences in terms of the diversity of compounds found within them.

CBD extracts from cannabis tend to include a wide diversity of helpful compounds whereas hemps chemical diversity is more limited. Youll also want to make sure that a hemp-derived product actually contains CBDhemp seeds or stalk dont produce CBD, so its important to understand which part of the hemp plant was used in the extraction process.

Whats more, some products claim to have an abundance of CBD in them, but the reality doesnt always match the label. So how can consumers make sure they are getting a quality product?

Dr. Jeremy Riggle, chief scientist with cannabis wellness company Marys Medicinals weighed in:

Not all CBD products are created equal, and consumers should do their research. Ask questionswhat type of CBD extract does it contain: full spectrum, broad spectrum, or isolate? Where is the raw material sourced from? Does the producer use organic and sustainable agricultural practices? Does the supplier have a Certificate of Analysis showing test results for pesticides, heavy metals, residual solvents, microbials, cannabinoid potency, and terpene profile?

Finally, its worth noting that milligram content can make a difference, and with CBD, higher is generally better. Friesen says you get what you pay for, but that this is also why some make the switch over to CBD:THC topical products. Friesen believes these 1:1 or 1:3 ratio products are more effective than CBD on its own, due to the cannabinoids tendency to amplify each others effects. As such, patients may be able to use less to achieve similar effects, than they would with a CBD only product, and save money in the process.

All in all, there are plenty of great topical CBD products on the market for those who want to try a targeted method of delivering these helpful cannabinoids to problem areas and add CBD to their wellness routine.

Rae Lland is a freelance writer, journalist, and former editor for Weedist and The Leaf Online. With a focus on culture, music, health, and wellness, in addition to her work for Leafly, she has also been featured in numerous online cannabis publications as well as print editions of Cannabis Now Magazine. Follow her on Instagram @rae.lland

By submitting this form, you will be subscribed to news and promotional emails from Leafly and you agree to Leafly's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe from Leafly email messages anytime.

More:
A guide to CBD topicals, balms, and lotions - Leafly

Plano primary care practice Village Health Partners has merged with Texas Family Medicine, expanding VHPs reach into Frisco. Both practices are part of the Catalyst Health Network, whose goal is to empower independent primary care physicians while providing comprehensive care.

Village Health Partners is excited for the opportunity to continue to serve the North Texas community through our merger with Texas Family Medicine, said Village Health Partners Chief Operations Officer Patrick Figures via release. We believe this will help bring better services to patients, drawing on the strengths of both practices.

The merger will expand the two practices ability to provide preventative care, manage acute and chronic illness, offer mental health, nutrition, endocrinology, and dermatology services, and more. VHP is one of the largest independent led practices in Texas, and the two practices will serve 90,000 patients in the Plano, McKinney, and Frisco area.

We have long-standing ties to the city of Frisco and are proud to call the rest of North Texas our family, said Brandi Cook, Texas Family Medicine administrator via release.

Village Health Partners has always put the patient first, focusing on compassionate, convenient, and high-quality care, and we believe that Texas Family Medicine shares our values and culture, said Dr. Jamison Albracht, Village Health Partners president via release. We look forward to seeing Frisco as part of our home.

Read the original:
Village Health Partners Merges with Texas Family Medicine - D Healthcare Daily

Its not news that healthcare costs in the US are sky-high. What might be news to some, though, is that year over year, were spending more money to treat illness and disease, but getting less out of it.

According to Asif Dhar MD, Chief Informatics Officer at Deloitte, spending on diabetes alone went up by $75 billion in the five years from 2012-2017. Addictionfrom alcoholism to prescription drugs to illegal drugscosts Americans $740 a year in healthcare, crime, and lost productivity. The suicide rate in the US has gone up 33 percent in less than 2 decades; were 3 times more likely to kill ourselves than we are to be killed.

Of the top ten reasons people die globally, five are inherently related to behaviors: what we eat, how we sleep, the medications we take, Dhar said in a talk at Singularity Universitys Exponential Medicine summit last week. He emphasized that spending more money isnt the way to better health; rather, we should shift some of our focus away from treating sick individuals and towards creating healthy communities.

80 percent of the problem has to do with the way we live, how we engage in healthy behaviors, and what our communities are like, Dhar said. We can move from healthcare to health by expanding the aperture of what were reinventing.

Average life expectancy in the US is declining for the first time since 1918, and if you look at the top causesdrug overdoses, suicide, and liver diseaseit can be pretty easily argued that were dying younger not because we cant cure disease, but because were not living well.

The emperor of all maladies (an apt moniker bestowed on cancer by physician and author Siddharta Mukherjee), is a good example. 42 percent of all cancers are preventable, stemming from factors like an unhealthy diet, smoking, and a lack of exercise. That effectively means that 659,000 cancer cases never needed to happen, Dhar said. Is that a question of care, or is it a question of how we live?

To be sure, our healthcare system is flawed. Medical error rates are high, care is absurdly expensive, and there are curable diseases that havent been cured, Dhar pointed out. But by the time people get to a doctor or hospital, theyre already sick; the damage has already been done. So why arent we trying harder to dig down to the roots where that damage starts? How do we figure out where those roots are? And how big of a difference could it make if we focused on nourishing roots rather than bandaging or reviving dying trees?

Dhar and his colleagues think communities are at the root of our health, and that if we focus on building healthier communities, the payoffs in quality of life, years of life, and dollars saved will all be significant. A team at Deloitte came up with five consistent themes for how communities can reduce costs while improving the health of their people.

1. Empower proactive health and well-being management

2. Foster a sense of community and well-being

3. Engage digital technologies with behavioral science

4. Meaningfully use data to improve outcomes

5. Enable new innovative models for the way these societies work

For a concrete example of what it looks like to apply these steps, Dhar pointed to Oklahoma City. After it was designated Americas fattest city in 2007, the citys mayor decided to fight back by implementing a program called This City Is Going on a Diet. A website was created to track progress, with around 47,000 people signing up to report their weight loss. The government poured money into building sidewalks, bike trails, parks, and wellness centers, encouraging people to ditch their cars and use more active modes of transportation. Within five years, the citys residents collectively lost a million pounds.

The one thing we know that gets people to walk is to create places that are enticing so they want to walk there, said Dick Jackson, a UCLA medical professor and former director of the Centers for Disease Controls National Center for Environmental Health. Telling people to exercise, to go to the gym, doesnt seem to work. You have to build it into daily life.

Geisinger Health System (serving Pennsylvania and New Jersey) used a community focus in a slightly different way than Oklahoma City. After realizing they were spending more on treating type 2 diabetes patients but outcomes werent improving, the health system decided to take another route and zeroed in on patients diets. They started thinking about food as medicine, Dhar said, asking if they could start prescribing food. They did, and the results were astounding.

Geisinger created a Fresh Food Farmacy, sourcing food from local food banks and providing patients with two meals worth of food per day, five days per week, for as long as they need it. Among pilot participants, there was a reduction of 80 percent in treatment cost and an average 2.1 percent reduction in patients HbA1C levels.

When it comes to the social determinants of health, we know there are many more causes impacting the health of a population than access to quality medical care, said David Feinberg, Geisingers former CEO. We want to transform healthcare at its core by focusing on preventative care, behavioral health, and economic growth.

Creating health-focused communities and empowering people to take their wellness into their own hands will have huge implications for the American healthcare system. Dhar emphasized that while people dont always make optimal health choices for themselves, theyre far more likely to engage in healthy behaviors when theyre in an environment that enables, encourages, and models healthy choices.

Examining the root causes of poor health in a community then transforming those factors from the ground up will require larger up-front investments, but will save cities, health systems, and individuals millions of dollars over timeand give everyone a higher quality of life in the process.

What was thought of as completely impossible is completely doable today, Dhar concluded.

Image Credit: Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay

See original here:
To Reinvent Healthcare, Stop Treating Patients and Start Building Communities - Singularity Hub

Editors' Note: This is the transcript of the podcast we published last week on Invitae (NYSE:NVTA). We hope you enjoy.

Daniel Shvartsman: Welcome to the Razor's Edge. I'm Daniel Shvartsman. I'm joined by Seeking Alpha author Akram's Razor on this show. Each episode we take an investing idea or theme that Akram has been looking at for his personal investing as well as the Seeking Alpha marketplace service he runs, also called The Razor's Edge. We look at the ideas themselves, stress test them, try to figure out where they might go right or wrong, talk about what's been going on, and talk about the research and analysis that led to this take.

The idea to share some current investing ideas here into consideration, but also get the ins and outs of deep fundamental market research today. This week's topic has a lot behind it. The ticker symbol is NVTA. The stock is Invitae. Akram released a short case on the company on Seeking Alpha on October 11th, that went long in terms of breaking down why the genetic testing company was more like a WeWork than an Amazon. In other words, the company has had prodigious revenue growth, but it's come at a cost of increasingly negative cash flows and limited competitive advantage, in Akram's view. Was a thoroughly researched short case and as is often the case it's attracted a lot of attention, both positive and negative.

On today's Razor's Edge, we're going to talk about what brought Akram to this case, what investors are missing, and some of the reactions since he went public on Invitae. We're also joined by a colleague of Akram's, James who can add some insight on this topic based on research he's done on the stock as well.

Before we begin a quick disclaimer and disclosure; The Razor's Edge is a podcast on Seeking Alpha's The Investing Edge channel. The views discussed belong to either Akram, James in this case, or me respectively, and nothing on this podcast should be taken as investment advice. We'll disclose any positions in any stocks discussed at the end of the podcast, though upfront I can say I have no positions in any of the stocks we plan to discuss, Akram is short Invitae and long Myriad Genetics, and James is short, Invitae. We're recording this on the morning of November 4th.

Listen to or subscribe to The Investing Edge on these podcast platforms:

All right, guys. Good morning. Welcome.

Akram Razor: Good morning.

James: Good morning. Thanks.

DS: So let's just go really basic, why Invitae? What brought -- why does your radar get on this stock? Where did they come up?

AR: That's definitely an interesting part of the story. I guess the starting point was, there was people shorting Myriad. So I follow the Southern Investigative Reporter. And they've done a couple short pieces on that. And I kind of have taken a look at it briefly, which caused me to take a brief look at Invitae, and that was probably like, May or June. And then Ilumina missed big time on earnings, and I've traded Ilumina several times of the year. I've never traded any of these other stocks in terms of that. But it kind of got me interested in the space. And I guess what kind of, I mean, like, I think I had pinged James on it a couple times being like this is like this is worth looking into, but like neither of us had really gotten that excited about it.

And then there was a report that came out by a short seller, recommending the stock is an amazing long idea, which I read, because I know the short seller and his work. Once I read that, I was like, I need to look at this company a little closer. And then just the typical process, like pulling up their filings, seeing exactly what's going on financially, and I was just like, wow, this is just an incinerator. What are they doing? Why is -- like, what's the business model?

And that brought me to, there's an author on Seeking Alpha who had published a lot on this over the years, capital markets, laboratories and read their work, and they made these Amazon compares where, obviously, that's where you get a little bit of a heightened radar, when a laboratory diagnostic company is being compared to Amazon, which I mean, I don't know also if you know -- and I had like a brief experience with Theranos in 2000 it was say like, early 2014, like back when it was like -- I was picking on the Decacorns then, my favorite, like when I used to write my market commentary and I'd have a little bit of fun with it.

At the time, the two I was having fun with were Zenefits and Theranos. But I mean in Theranos' case, like I was just curious as far as what like -- I mean, it was a private company, $10 billion, obviously a lot of hype. I was like, wow, do I short Quest and LabCorp, right? I mean, I can't make -- I can't invest in Theranos. But if this company is so revolutionary like it, there's this pretty simple thesis out there in the public markets where I mean, if they're going to stick a lab in a box, I should go short Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp.

And I have, on the medical side, an extensive network of friends and family. So I ended up doing just one call with someone who'd been at Quest and in the laboratory diagnostic space, pretty senior for about 20 years. And like, I mean, it was like a 30 minute conversation. I felt stupid by the time it was over. It was just like, he's like, are you an idiot, you can't stick a Lab-in-a-Box. It was like -- it was literally like that, after like being very polite for a little while. So that type of stuff kind of intrigued me. And Theranos ended up being Theranos. I never really did much more with it after that. And then Wall Street Journal came after it, and it became this cautionary tale. I don't know if James -- did you follow Theranos very closely, I don't even know if we really discussed that?

J: No, I had heard from some VC friends who were very skeptical of it all the way through. But I wasn't that close to the name myself.

AR: Yeah, I mean, neither of us I would say, I would characterize myself as close to it. But I mean, I did take the time to literally be like, hey, do I short these stocks because of Theranos, right? It was like an investment idea at the time.

So yeah, I mean, I guess that's what started it, right. I mean, like Theranos had this -- and then the message was just kind of just like affordable blood testing for all, a social cause being compared more to, like technology differentiating companies and I mean, Elizabeth Holmes like to associate herself when she talked about things, when she compared herself to the Google Founders and Facebook and like, I mean, if you saw the documentaries like here we were at, in Brazil, and this is where we -- who was sitting there, and the Google guys, and the Amazon and Facebook, and we are the stars of the show, right?

And if you look at Invitae, I mean, like on the surface, it's like there's a social enterprise element to it, right? Where it's just like, we have a mission, and this mission is to make genetic testing affordable for all. I mean, like, they don't care, they don't describe themselves as like a laboratory diagnostics company, right?

DS: Well, they --

AR: That was a genetic information company. Go ahead.

DS: Yeah. I mean, if you look, I have got their 10-K open, their last one and it's -- our goal is to aggregate a majority of the world's genetic information into a comprehensive network that enables sharing of data among network participants to improve healthcare and clinical outcomes. So it's this.

AR: Yeah, so what does that mean?

DS: Right. You know, it is this very -- it is very big mission, right. It is very big.

AR: Yeah, I mean, James, obviously has some views on this. Like, I mean, what do you think of that part?

J: Well, I think that really comes down to the crux of the investment case here, which is, just because something sounds good as a sound bite doesn't mean that it actually makes sense in business. And so the idea of accumulating the world's genetic information, you would argue, seems like if you could do that would allow you to capture rents on that database. But there are very real issues with that. Namely the company has said that they won't do that. And then when they're pressed about how -- whether or not they will do that, they kind of seem to give non answers what I can tell.

So that's one of the questions right that that I think would be very helpful for the company to lay out there, very specifically, which is, if we gather all this data up, and specifically what data is being gathered? Are they -- is that data, they've also released to a common database, like they say they have been doing, is there additional data that they're not releasing?

AR: Well, I mean, the data that they're sharing with the common database is the variant of unknown significance data, right? So I mean, that's what they're contributing to Clinvar. We don't really know. But like, I mean, I'll be honest, like if I was to go in and have hereditary cancer test, I would have never thought once about, like, who the lab doing the test is or ask the oncologist anything, but like literally now knowing this business, I mean like, make sure you're not using Invitae, because I have no clue what they're going to do with that data.

Like my DNA is a product for them to figure out somewhere down the road just to do something with it, I mean, it's so -- like James just said, it's very bizarrely unclear, which is decidedly convenient when you're running a business model like this.

DS: So step back for a second. So the thesis -- the company's thesis is that they're providing genetic tests. And then they're aggregating that, they provide it at -- arguments are they providing it for below the cost that they actually have to pay to their providers to actually deliver the test but low cost testing that they can then -- if we're going to use the Silicon Valley jargon, that they get the flywheel of more genetic data and improve, they get a lot of volume, and eventually, that's both going to give them scale to lower the costs, but then also they're aggregating this huge genetic database, which as you kind of point out, Akram, they're going to have to do something with to make it reasonable, which raises concerns in of itself. But the idea is that eventually they'll get scale from offering at cost that will allow them to become a profitable business, I think. That's how I understood the company's take and the company's argument.

AR: I mean, like James just said the company hasn't explained that. So if you look at this company's history, this isn't like a startup, number one, right. So this company was founded in 2009. They've been at this for a decade, okay. Initially, they were kind of rare disease focused, right?

Like where they're deriving the revenue, if they were to actually describe themselves accurately, they would be like, we do hereditary cancer testing far cheaper than Myriad, right? And I mean, like, I think that's an important thing to look at this. I mean, there are sources of revenue, which is generally speaking what has attracted people to the stock, it's not science, right. It's not like you've developed a test or you're like Foundation Medicine and you've got this companion diagnostic clinical trials and you are about to do something where you're going to earn a high margin, because you've developed something nobody else has. That's typically, what people get excited about in science and biotechnology, right?

You get rewarded for R&D, okay. These guys have approached the market that Myriad discovered the BRCA mutation in 1994, okay. That's like what the indication of hereditary cancer right? I understand cancer, 90% of it is not hereditary. So you're looking -- when you talk hereditary, there's a less than 10% chance that it's something hereditary. That's helpful from a clinical standpoint, as far as your treatment for cancer diagnosis, whether it's early or late stage or whatnot.

So this company came into this space in the sense that Myriad had a monopoly on this gene, right? They started doing their first BRCA testing lab kit was like 1996. They had the patent on that gene till 2013 when the Supreme Court struck it down, right. So these guys entered this space, essentially, from that standpoint as a competitor against Myriad. And once that space kind of opened up in hereditary cancer testing, I mean like, well, you can't patent these genes, right? Which is great for competition, but what's the flip side of it?

If I make a major discovery on gene X correlates to disease Y, right? And I can't patent it and I'm running like a test that kind of identifies that historically, kind of tough to build a very profitable business around it. So when we go back to like what you were saying about like this whole genetic information and whatnot, the most interesting thing about this business is look at the rest of the landscape. Nobody's selling the story, like Myriad's still the revenue leader in hereditary cancer testing.

The other space the company is in deriving revenue from is reproductive health, carrier screening, non-invasive prenatal screens. And that's the most crowded market ever. It's got Ilumina and Sequenom, which is owned by LabCorp, like pretty much, they control the IP there. And then there's like a half a dozen other competitors owned by large companies.

So like, in hereditary cancer, you've got Myriad. And then you kind of have this like at a huge, huge, huge discount to Myriad prices, Invitae, right? I mean, like now they're running what, $99 tests, okay? So you look at it and you can sit here we can just, like figuring out what they want to do data wise and the fact that it's Vegas kind of important. It's also important in the context of -- well, there's a whole industry here, right? I mean, this is at least what -- we got some heat when we cautioned this like, some of this has attracted obviously a lot of retail investors by using the Amazon compare. And, in the initial thesis it was like a cautionary mention at the end, like that the laboratory diagnostic space doesn't need another Theranos.

And at least in Theranos' case, what they were selling to investors was we're building a better mousetrap essentially, right? Like we've got -- we've engineered something that's going to change the way we are able to do testing. And that's not the story here. The story here, I mean, if you go back to the founder in 2016, there's a couple of interviews with him. And he literally says like, we're providing the same test that everyone else is providing, we're just making them more affordable. That was that's their initial story, right.

So I mean, you do kind of run into something like that, which is where, like some people may think it like, you know, oh, it's very, self-serving or opportunistic to compare this to WeWork. It is, exactly like WeWork from a business standpoint. Like you can't get around that fact. And I think the Amazon like -- and this is not like some guy writing a really bullish Seeking Alpha article and using hyperbole, the management sticks to compares. I mean, they -- literally they have a slide in their investor deck, what we can learn from Amazon, and they make statements like our competitors -- what did they say, James, is like the competitors margin is our opportunity or

J: Yeah, something that effect. Yeah, you've heard a lot of ground there, Akram. I think the important aspect of what you've said and the commonality among all those points is that the management team has made some very high level statements about the promise of this industry and the promise of their company. And they could really answer a lot of these questions if they wanted to, right? They could say, okay, here is our revenue breakdown from cancer or nips [ph], kind of other panels, which don't have necessarily the clinical efficacy.

Or they could say, here's our -- here's what we're getting from the various cost cutting or network effects or economies of scale that we promised. And here's how this is going to develop, but they don't they just say, trust us, it's all going to work out. And the way that it's not [ph] going to work out is that it worked out for Amazon. So it's there's not much transparency, there's a lot of just kind of big picture verbiage I would say.

AR: Yeah. I mean, 100% and like, I mean, you get the Amazon story, Daniel, right. I mean, if you look at it, people like, if you look, well, come on, Amazon was losing money. No, Amazon was improving operating cash flow from literally from day one. I mean, people forget, like, you make money selling DVDs and books online, particularly if you don't pay your suppliers for 100 days, right? I mean, like, where was Amazon after a decade? It was already a behemoth, right?

So when you look at it, Amazon had someone else, i.e., their suppliers funding their growth. It's free, cheap capital. This company went and IPOed in 2015, at $16 a share, had like 25 million shares outstanding. They're at 100 now, four years later, right? I mean, it's like, they keep going back to the well. So if you're an investor and you're looking at it from a return on investment on money, you're giving them. I mean, you have a serious problem. And if you look at it, and you say, hey, I'm going to compare myself to Amazon. Well, Amazon had a cost structure that attacked this cost structure of brick and mortar, okay?

They benefited from so many things. We didn't have sales taxes, if you were paying on Amazon as a consumer. They benefited from the fact that they went into markets with huge existing volume already, books and DVDs. They didn't have to convince people to buy X, Y and Z. They were already huge volume markets. I mean, I'm sorry, but like hereditary cancer testing. It's not something people get excited about to go online or buy as a gift for a friend.

I mean, like, we get the DTC space, and even that has already slowed down drastically, and that's Ancestry. And if Ancestry slowed down at like 30 million tests, right, like, you really think people are going to be super excited as individual consumers to be like, I really need to figure out whether I have a history of cancer right now. I mean

J: Well, and more importantly, more importantly, I think there's a healthy amount of skepticism in the medical community whether or not these tests are useful, right? Like the issue with any test is, if you find something, an indicator of a disease. Does that help you catch the disease? Does it help you catch it earlier than existing testing or physical exams, or other ways of seeing the diseases there? And then can you do anything about it?

So, I think one of the issues here is even if you were to send your saliva [ph] sample out, and you came back with saying indication that you might have liver cancer potentially. A, you wouldn't know, if that were real, because it's really just a correlation at this point. There's not enough data. B, even if you knew, it was real, there's really not much to do except worry about it. And so you have a lot of additional burdens on the patient and the healthcare system in terms of emotional and financial burdens, without any clear benefit.

And so I think within -- as I'm saying, within breast cancer, that there is a clear benefit in terms of efficacy and outcomes. But for the rest of the space, it's really not clear. And that's why, if you look at the treatment protocols for most of the commercial payers, they don't pay for all these tests, because the research doesn't demonstrate that they should.

DS: So one of the things I'm -- as we're throwing around these comparisons. I'm thinking about the -- there's a notion in Silicon Valley and sort of abroad, the market, the idea of tech, tech as a category is becoming less and less meaningful, because companies are adopting online models or tech models to different verticals. And what I think about with Theranos and Invitae, specifically, healthcare is a very complicated sector, both in terms of the way payers work and we can get into Medicare in a little bit, but the way the payment system works.

And I'm not talking even about what might or might not happen in the future with changes to insurance. But just -- that's, I think, always been fairly -- you have to really work through it. And the articles for example, there's looking at the different reimbursement codes and that sort of thing. Like, it's more than you have to do to figure out, well, are they going to buy this software tool or not?

And then also, Theranos is a problem, because they were actually -- there were issues of fraud around people, things that were supposed to help people's health. And so I guess I'm just kind of, I guess, I wanted to hear a little bit more about like, because -- a lot of the response.

AR: Well, I mean, look -- let's, I mean, if you think about Theranos, where really was the fraud. The fraud like, I mean, if you read the indictment, what she's really on the hook for the biggest time is misleading investors, okay. I mean, that's the biggest part.

Yes, correct, like at the end, there was issues with the lab testing and they were getting inaccurate results because by the time she did that deal with Walgreens, and clearly they were at a point where they were desperate for showing meaningful revenue, because they need to raise more cash, right? Because they still haven't made the Edison work, right? They're trying to engineer a problem. They're working on it.

She didn't set out to commit fraud, right? She set out to build -- to stick a Lab-in-a-Box, right? But she had bigger aspirations. She wanted to take -- that she wanted to aggregate your data. She wanted to stick it in this cloud called Yoda, right? I mean, if you look today, you still have people who defend -- I mean, what's his name?

DS: Yeah.

AR: Tim Draper has really defended her. And what does he defend her on the point, and his point is that look, she had this vision to give you a movie of your health, i.e. like look, I get my blood work once a month, and that goes into a cloud, right? And my physician can track it. And I'm building a historical picture of a trend, by having more real time information on my blood work, cholesterol, everything right? So that creates preventative medicine in their view, right? Like your ability to have an earlier and more accurate versus a snapshot, right?

So he's like, look, she had that and was great and I genuinely have discussed this with James. I believe if she had IPOed this company and the company had started out as like, hey, she's got this Edison and this finger stick. It would have been just like binary tech play, right? She either makes it or she doesn't. And people would have debated that and thought that out there would been the believers. And then there would have been the skeptics, but she would have had plenty of time, as she gauged how that was working, okay?

To find something that generates revenue, which investors are willing to pay for, like with her inflated market cap on the Edison optimism, where she could just do regular lab testing like Quest and like LabCorp, but she would obviously do it at a lower price, right? But she would sell you the story that I'm going to stick this in the cloud, and you're going to pay a subscription fee, right? And that subscription fee to that cloud, Yoda, where all your information is and your general practitioner can access it and whatnot, that's the business. That's where I make money.

Of course, what's the problem with that business? And that business is -- well, I mean, that you're going to be like, well, you're losing a lot of money per test, doing your tests at a lower price than Quest and LabCorp or whatever to provide this back end service, why can't they do that, right? I mean, like, that becomes the same thing because you're going to need the same infrastructure. That's where she ran into issues. She's collecting data and she doesn't have the lab infrastructure to do it at the scale that these guys are doing.

If she'd been like these DTC companies, 23AndMe ancestry, she could have actually struck a deal, which is like, I'll be the cloud and I'll outsource the testing to them. And I will take a loss on the tests, because my investors are going to subsidize it, right? I mean, there was -- there would have been many Ways, but of course, she was also trying to kill their businesses. So it didn't work, right, with her engineering. but like, I mean, the bottom-line is, is if you look at it, like, it's something where you had a potential business model in that sense, where we would be asking the same questions that you'd ask about in detail, right? Like what are you doing that's different?

If you look at them today, Quest and LabCorp, they've entered into direct-to-consumer testing. I can go online and order my own tests and schedule the appointment and go pick them up, right? I'd like it's really, like, it's something where I don't even need to go through my medical practitioner if I want to get tested. And I don't know, to the degree I mean, I've discussed this with other people in the medical community on the testing side and I'm just, why isn't there a VIP service like, if I'm an extremely wealthy individual, where they come to my house, do the work, store in a cloud. And there's access to my blood work, on let's say -- but we don't have to do a monthly but let's say every three months, right?

These -- I mean like these are obviously options. So when you look at something like that and you see what went wrong with this company, her biggest mistake was being private. It's like -- because with her turtlenecks and Steve Jobs and Stanford dropout, I mean, the benefit of doubt, she would have gotten, if you look at the benefit of doubt, for example, that this company, Invitae has gotten. I mean, their CEO says one thing, and then he does the other three months later and nobody has cared like, at all. No one's asking questions. I mean, I don't know if you -- have you watched the CNBC, the Invitae interview with him on CNBC, Daniel?

DS: No. No, I haven't pulled that up.

AR: If you watch that, you would not understand what the company does. It's like we are the company the key opinion leaders turn to and this -- like, he does not say I'm a laboratory diagnostics genetic testing company, who derives primarily its revenue from doing these types of tests. And we're doing them at a significant discount to a competitor, who has had a monopoly in the space for ages. And we're using that to generate volume and we're hoping to parlay that into other sectors. And this is like -- this is our business model. Because to be -- to tell you the truth, if you look at this closely, I don't think they figured it out. They are trying to figure it out as they go along and that's part of the problem here.

DS: Isn't -- you said, if Theranos that they could have arguably sold tests below costs, but then put the -- like, isn't that essentially what the Invitae has? They haven't maybe laid out that vision but they're essentially selling below cost to get into -- like they could build that into the cloud sort of approach like?

AR: Okay. No, let's not make that mistake, okay? I'm saying that Theranos, if they wanted to, okay, and wanted to pivot for a story to sell, that sells well, when you're dressed like Steve Jobs, and you dropped out of Stanford, and you're a unique character and you're -- you've got a Board that has these people on it. And you've convinced Tim Draper and Larry Ellison to invest in you and whatnot, right? When you've dressed something like that, and you've ticked all those boxes, okay, you could just be like, hey, I'm going to do the same blood work everyone else is doing, I'm going to do it cheaper. So come to me. And how I'm going to make money off of it down the road, is I'm going to store that data, and it's going to give you a real time picture.

Now if you were to compare this on genetic information, my DNA isn't constantly changing, right? So if I'm doing -- if my focus is hereditary screening, i.e., what's been passed on to me, and what does that indicate?

What is the usefulness of that sitting there, right? Number one. And number two, in her case, it would be like, well, you still need to build the lab infrastructure to do the tests. You're going to have to do huge volume. So any business that -- like I mean, if you listen to the CEO, he literally sits on conference calls. And he's like, we hope to do half a million tests this year and reach a million people next year, and on our way to billions across the world. Well, what kind of infrastructure, you need Amazon infrastructure for that, right? I mean, how many geneticists do you need, genetic counselors? The industry doesn't even have the employees. I mean, we were discussing this, like, how big is that industry James.

J: It's well smaller than then I thought it was. I think it's in the thousands of genetic counselors. I forget it, 10,000 or 15,000.

AR: So you're going to need lab technicians, genetic counselors, you're going to need the physical footprint. You're going to need logistics. I mean have you looked -- like part of the thing that like -- we found kind of interesting is just look at Quest Diagnostics. I mean, there was a $100 price target slapped on this thing. That's the market cap of Quest, okay? They have 3,500 trucks like 26 planes, 6,000 patient access points, right? They have infrastructure to test everybody.

The internet bull on this stock, he's been close to management. He's done a lot of write ups on it. One of his write ups was just recently, and I read it and he's like, I visited the company and the CEO told me that they're actually paying for the trucks to go to FedEx, to pick up the samples and bring them back instead of waiting for FedEx to bring them to the lab. And he's like, I've never seen a company who cares about the customer so much. And I am like -- I mean, sorry, logistics are part of his business. Collecting the samples and the turnaround time and what the infrastructure you need to do it, right?

Like that's not something of like, hey, I really care about my customer. It's something you have to do and unfortunately, Quest and LabCorp are sitting there with huge economies of scale and scope and infrastructure and the same machines available to them, and the lab technicians and the geneticists and everything to flip this switch on, and they're not flipping it on. Why?

DS: Right.

AR: It doesn't make money, because the volume isn't significant enough and the cost isn't at that point. So when this company talks about driving down costs, no, they're not driving down costs. Everyone else has a lower cost per test already established, because they have higher volumes in the space, right? If you look at it Myriad's cost per sample is in the $140, $150 range. If you look across all these other labs, who are doing the stuff and the testing on the reproductive health they're all far lower, right?

So this is a last person in the space coming and trying to get to the volume, trying to get to the economies of scale and trying to drive it down, right? But they still are subject to the same cost infrastructure limits. It's not amazon.com. They haven't eliminated the blockbuster employees sitting, that when they're competing against in DVDs like a Netflix or an Amazon or whatnot, they haven't eliminated the huge physical retail footprint that a Barnes & Noble needed, right? Like, they still have the same limitations, from a cost standpoint. They're relying on Ilumina machines, consumables, Agilent, Read [ph] everybody -- like it's the vials from, what's the company that sells the vials?

J: OraSure

AR: OraSure, right, like you're buying the same stuff from the same people. So it's when you look at it from that standpoint, like if they were to sell you a story about data or whatever, it's like, well, everybody else can sell us a story about data. Why are they selling it to us?

J: It's an interesting dynamic here, because when there was the rebuttal by this bullish commentator/endorsed analyst of the company, there was a comment that, hey, it's not just the raw data, it's not just the genetic information that is useful, because genetic information in and of itself doesn't tell you enough about the disease. And I think that's a partial indictment of the whole process. But more importantly, what the analyst said is, what the company does is they take that information and they combine it with a patient's medical record. That includes all of their scans, their CTs, their MRIs, all their historical blood tests, all their physical exams, and then it takes that data. And if you get enough of that data, then you can start running effectively very large statistical relationships and figure out, okay, which genetic mutations might be associated with which diseases.

The problem with that is, as far as we know, that's not what's happening. And yet the company, again, they've kind of endorsed this, this guy is an analyst of record, the company hasn't come out and said that. But that's not what's happening. Because if it is what is happening, I think they're serious privacy concerns. So I think it's very different, if you as patients and [indiscernible] into 23AndMe, you might sign a paper, some paperwork somewhere, but if they're actually signing away the rights to all their medical records. Again, I don't believe they are, but again, this is what would need to happen in order for this data to be proprietary and useful. Then I would imagine the consumers are not aware of that.

And so you kind of have this catch 22, if you're getting the data, whatever, this guy refers to it as the golden data, whatever it is, if you're getting that data, such that it's useful, you're probably in violation of some privacy laws, whether or not you are in terms of you're covered legally, I think just patients don't understand that's what's happening. And if you're not getting that data, then there's a very real question as to what exactly is the use of just this genetic information without putting it into -- in context without kind of correlating it to these other disease markers?

And again, this is a question that could -- that's very answerable by the company as far as we know, has decided not to answer.

J: I mean, look, there's also two elements of that, right. If you remember also, in his rebuttal, he pointed out to a subscription model, right ,where he was even saying that this should be looked at from a dollar-based retention standpoint like a SaaS company. So I mean, again, if he's saying this, it's something that well was spoon fed to him, okay? And that's part of the element here, when you're dealing with something like this, and you look at that, it's like, all right, so like, I go in, I do a test for cancer, but you know, a BRCA screen. And you're saying -- are you essentially saying that, in year one, you generated revenue off of the actual testing, but then in year two, and year three, supposedly, my DNA is something that just sits there, and they can find ways to make money off of, by farming it for some sort of data that they can sell to pharma.

And it's tenuous at best to even understand how that model would work, because if you look at the rest of the industry, you just have to assume, they're all idiots. I mean, how many tests has Myriad done? I mean, look, when you go back to this thesis, Daniel, one of the most important things here is, when I put this on, this company was bigger than Myriad, literally in enterprise value, it was bigger than a company with $850 million in revenue, 20 years of testing. They've done 6 million tests through some -- to that effect I think it is at this point.

They have a database that they've made a trade secret since 2004, as far as variant data. They have four times the employees of Invitae. I mean, if you were to look at this company from there -- one notable institutional bull in the space, like this bull doesn't own any Myriad, okay. And they have a genetic spawn, and they did like kind of throw like a little bit of a shade at this thesis when it came out. And I mean, I can imagine they got a lot of questions because they own a lot of the stock and they were like, these are the companies leading in AI.

And then they like -- they listed Invitae like two other names. And then they put in their tweet, which was almost essentially directed, not my gen [ph], which I mean, for someone like me, I just -- I didn't even really spend much time getting into the AI nonsense. But if you look at Myriad how many people with machine learning backgrounds and data scientists do they employ, plenty.

You could just go on LinkedIn, look at it, and draw your conclusion. But they're not out running around saying, hey, we got AI, we're doing stuff. We're literally running machine learning models on your DNA. We're figuring out better ways, a secret sauce. Like who would advertise that? If you actually have made the data a trade secret, and you refuse to share it and they've gotten a lot of heat for it, literally the whole industry had to band together to contribute data freely to Clinvar, because Myriad won't share, because they're like, hey, fine, you took away our patent, but who cares about that. Our ability to interpret this is better than everybody else at this juncture.

So again, you look at it, at something like that, and you're just like, well, there's companies who've been doing this for decades. And you're just supposed to assume that like data science is completely irrelevant to them. But the company that acquired an AI startup in July, by September is a leader in this space. I mean what, you know.

DS: Solet me -- so there are a few directions to go here. But let's quickly touch on Myriad. It's -- you're using it as a payer here, as I think you mentioned, it's -- short sellers have kind of had their eyes on it. Somebody like Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation has reported about it. Why are you comfortable with that as the other side of this trade given the fact that they've also come under fire?

AR: I mean, I don't know James, you want to tackle this? I'm obviously a lot more bullish on Myriad then most people. I would say, like, I can't really get my head around the short thesis, and I can't get my head around the short thesis in a relative context. I mean, if you've looked at the space there are some companies with some pretty crazy valuations. Myriad is not a hard business to understand. They have a cash cow in hereditary cancer. They've used that to diversify into companion diagnostics, into carrier screening, now into these pharmaco-genetic tests, psychotropic like for depression, which is a very controversial area.

A lot of a lot of volatility around Myriad lately, let's say the last six months, has been tied to this gene site division, and the way the FDA wants to treat these tests, where I get a DNA test that like tells me, I'm more tolerant for Zoloft over Prozac. And no science has shown any clinical efficacy yet, and it's a controversial area, because there's obviously some doctors, and they've been doing -- they've been running clinical studies to try to get this approved. And they missed the primary endpoints on it. But there's also an argument that in depression, which is like opioids, a national crisis, essentially speaking, and it's not going to get better, that there's nothing, and something is better than nothing. I mean, two-thirds of antidepressants are prescribed by general practitioners. Not -- you're not talking about the psychiatry side here. These are not experts on these drugs or on mental health.

And the argument is that maybe you give them something that starts this out with a little bit more direction, however little incremental it is. Now when the stock got hammered in the summer, on its last earnings, was because they said the FDA is pushing back on them on the labeling. And then recently, there was another genetic psychotropic-related test company where the FDA allowed them to resume sending the test information, but to the doctors. So the patient just gets this, like here's what your genetics say, but nothing about the drugs. But the doctor actually gets the drug indications. And then that doctor can see that and that doctor can use that as part -- like as a helpful part of his treatment.

But again, you go back to -- they haven't been able to show scientifically and it's hotly debated. I mean, there was just recently something in -- two Harvard doctors had published something in one of the big journals on mental health, same thing with oncology, like outside of BRCA, like there was a recent paper basically like these other genes are like no better than a placebo.

So this is part of the problem in the space but I mean, I haven't -- I don't have the numbers in front of me. I mean, James do you remember off the top of your head, but I mean, I think it's like $850 million in revenue and like $150 million in EBITDA, something like that against a company with -- that did what, like $144 million in revenue last year and lost what $100 million.

J: Yeah, but larger now.

DS: Yeah, $850 million, trailing 12 months revenue, looks like EBITDA of over $100 million at least.

AR: Yeah. So like, you can look at that, I mean, and this is something when you look at stocks, I mean I was long, some Pinterest against the Snapchat short. And I thought about closing it before earnings. And the reason I thought about closing it is that you know, Snap is $16 billion and Pinterest is 15 billion and Twitter after its 35% decline is 18.2 billion AV. Yeah, Twitter's growing slower than the other two. But it's like three to four times the revenue base. And you got to kind of adjust for that, when you get to that point.

And you're like, this is a company that is in the advertising space, and it's doing -- it's going to do whatever issues its got, it's going to do 3.5 times what this is going to do and their enterprise values are a hair apart. So when you -- like this wasn't -- this is a case where if you would look at an Invitae, you'd be like, this has got to be like a quarter a fifth of the size of like, even if you are a believer and you're willing to buy into the speculation of a Myriad.

And then the other problem you have with it is that they're interrelated. All the revenue growth that is coming for Invitae is coming because Myriad hasn't come down in pricing. They've been fighting this price decline, because they've had the luxury to fight it as the leader in the space and they're extracting a premium for their testing, because they -- like there's a compelling argument, at least from their end, that based on the data we have in the history, our tests can more accurately predict what you have, as far as a likelihood of a hereditary cancer and indication reliably.

And it's ironic, and we were discussing this when we were working on this, like this company throw shade at who -- I mean, they throw shade at the DTC companies. Like they literally just gave a scientific presentation at this Houston Cancer Conference with Genetics or whatever, just like two weeks ago, where they were like, here's 23andMe's tests, okay, and this is what's wrong with it. Like 23AndMe gives you a BRCA test, that only is designed to detect three variants. Basically, if you're not an Ashkenazi Jew, it's useless.

But it's literally a report that is bundled in with the ancestry, with the health with the 50, 60, 70 reports, you get for $100 okay. It's not like you're going into buy this or you're going to your doctor and you're like, okay, I had breast cancer, I'm worried about a potential recurrence. Let's see family history. Do I need to get a mastectomy early because I have this mutation and that's a good preventative measure, et cetera, et cetera. They're not looking at 23AndMe. Like, it's -- you're competing in the clinical grade medical diagnostics market. But here's this company attacking the DTC companies who are not really their competitors.

Read the original:
Breaking Down The Invitae Short (Podcast Transcript) - Seeking Alpha

Genome editing goes prime-time

Genome editing was in the news again recently, following the publication of a paper that describes prime-editing, a new method of altering genetic information. Whilst more information is needed to accurately assess the true potential of this technique, prime-editing does represent another addition to the ever-growing suite of genome editing tools many of which will have an impact on treatment approaches to genetic diseases. In our latest set of policy briefings, we outline the current state of somatic genome editing in health, discussing areas of greatest progress, limitations and the evolving regulatory landscape and ethical considerations surrounding its application.

Genome editing describes a suite of techniques that can be used to alter genetic sequences. These all use a cutting enzyme and a targeting mechanism to make cuts and induce repair in DNA, altering the genetic sequence in the process. CRISPR-Cas has received the greatest attention in recent years, owing to its precision and relative ease of use.

The new technique prime-editing differs from standard CRISPR-Cas by making a cut in only one of the two DNA strands and using different methods to induce repair and add new information to the DNA. The technique could potentially be used to make alterations in genomic regions which preceding techniques cannot. However, it also has its limitations.

The hype surrounding both somatic and germline genome editing has reflected the general excitement and rapid progress in a field that stole the spotlight in 2012, thanks to the arrival of CRISPR-Cas9 for DNA editing. While germline editing is still being hotly debated, and dominates the headlines, greater awareness is needed of the current scope and applicability of somatic genome editing for health, and the broader progress that is being made in addressing genetic disease. The focus on human germline editing has somewhat obscured the impacts of somatic gene editing on individuals and populations.

Several therapies based on genome editing techniques in somatic cells have now made their way into clinical trials, including several therapies for rare blood disorders such as sickle cell disease and retinal disorders such as Leber congenital amaurosis. Genome editing is also having an impact on therapies and diagnostics beyond its direct applications for rare disease; for instance, CAR-T therapies a type of immunotherapy for blood cancer and in research into cancer diagnostics that utilise CRISPR for detecting the presence of genetic variants.

Like all disruptive technologies, somatic genome editing poses legal and ethical challenges, which should be considered alongside the potentially life-changing benefits for patients. Although somatic editing physically impacts only the individual whose cells are edited, its use could still have wide-reaching societal implications. For example, genome editing in one individual will inevitablyhave an impact upon other patients may be stigmatised or discriminated against if they are unable or unwilling to recieve the same therapy. The circumstances in which genome editing is used will also have an impact upon public views of the technology, as studies show that whilst there is widespread support for genome editing for therapeutic applications, this does not extend to non-therapeutic use. High-profile cases may further influence this view one way or another.

Although the drive to develop genome editing comes predominantly from therapeutic need, these techniques could theoretically be put to non-therapeutic use i.e. enhancement. Much policy and public discussion assumes a meaningful distinction between the two. But in recent years, as preventative health has taken centre stage, this distinction has become harder to maintain; medicine is not just about treating acute disease, its about identifying and reacting to risk. Is editing out a mutation that carries an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease a therapeutic intervention? Navigating this blurred line is hugely debated, and societal debate on such issues will become more important as the associated risks and benefits become clearer, influencing how genome editing might be used in the future.

Whilst momentum is building around the use of genome editing technologies, the significant journey from the bench to the bedside is often underestimated, and it can be easy to forget that current developments are built on decades of contributory research in related fields. Patients are beginning to see benefits from genome editing, but use is currently limited to a small number of rare disease and cancer patients taking part in clinical trials. However, looking to the future, new techniques such as prime-editing and base-editing could expand the applications of genome editing. There is much excitement and optimism among researchers about these techniques, but this is only the beginning in terms of exploring how they could practically be used. In time, these techniques might be used to develop new therapies, once their safety and efficacy have been established and technical obstacles such as how to deliver the editing tools to cells have been overcome. A further challenge will be to ensure that the regulatory landscape is sufficiently robust and dynamic to be able to accommodate these novel technologies.

For more information, see our policy briefings:

Read the original here:
Genome editing: a broad perspective on a precision technology - PHG Foundation

Free whitepaper The State of Application Development Report 2018/19: Local Government

Get your free whitepaper now to learn about this critical update.

Close

BT and the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) have entered into a partnership to demonstrate a remote diagnostic procedure using a 5G-connected ambulance in Birmingham.

BT said that the technology has the capability to transform healthcare services in the UK and bring about major cost-savings by reducing the number of patients being admitted to hospitals.

The demonstration follows the launch of BTs 5G network in Birmingham earlier in 2019.

It also follows the UKs first demonstration of a remote-controlled ultrasound scan over the 5G network in June.

The presentation was hosted at the Medical Devices Testing and Evaluation Centre (MD-TEC) in UHBs simulation lab located in the Institute of Translational Medicine.

The demonstration involved a 5G-connected ambulance, which was provided by South Central Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust, to allow remote diagnostics by connecting practitioners in the field with consultants or surgeons in real-time.

It showed a paramedic functioning from an ambulance in the Edgbaston area of the city being linked over the 5G network to a clinician based over two miles away at MD-TEC.

UHB chief executive Dave Rosser said: We are excited by the huge potential of 5G technology and how it can help transform healthcare in the future. We believe it has the potential to create more efficient use of healthcare resources, particularly with regards to easing the burden on A&E services which are facing unprecedented demand.

UK-based telecommunications company BT has worked with its research partners, including Ericsson and Kings College London, as well as Voysys to showcase how 5G technology can offer digital transformation of critically important services and facilitate real-time collaboration. It also shows the potential of 5G beyond enhanced mobile broadband.

BT Enterprise CTIO and 5G executive lead Fotis Karonis said: Not only is 5G capable of ultrafast speeds it has much lower latency meaning there is little to no delay when transmitting data over the network.

This means things happen in real time so this is of significant interest to the NHS because of its potential for medical applications, such as diagnostics and preventative healthcare. This capability provides efficiency opportunities for both hospital and ambulance trusts by reducing the number of referrals into hospital and patient trips.

Enter your details here to receive your free whitepaper.

Close survey

Close

Original post:
BT, UHB demonstrate 5G-connected ambulance in Birmingham - Government Computing Network

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) Do you have back pains and headaches and cant figure out why? The cause could be as simple as your posture.

CBS2s Dr. Max Gomez says our bodies were meant to be used a certain way to support our weight, but modern devices and workplaces tend to sabotage that design.

In a few weeks, when its time for finals, students at the New York Institute of Technology will get to work. Theyre members of the schools posture patrol.

Its basically something people dont pay attention to a lot of the times, said physical therapy student Philip Hennings.

(Credit: CBS2)

Thats why theyll be handing out brochures to students and faculty.

Just correcting them with their posture and helping them become aware, I realize that it makes such a huge difference and is what we consider preventative medicine, Hennings said.

RELATED STORY: Is Sitting The New Smoking? Doctors Say Long Days And Poor Posture Can Cause Widespread Harm

Whether were sitting at our desks, staring at our devices or just walking around, posture is a big part of our day.

Dr. Mark Gugliotti is an associate professor of physical therapy. He says poor posture can lead to different types of pain.

The neck, the head, the shoulders, the elbow, hips, low back, knees, feet and ankles, the whole body is subject to any sort of postural dysfunctions, he said.

(Credit: CBS2)

Gugliotti and his students demonstrated the right way to sit at a desk. To start, your feet should be flat on the floor.

Im going to lower the chair to a position that helps accentuate a 90-degree angle between the trunk and the hip, as well as a 90-degree angle between the upper leg and the lower leg, he said.

Shoulders and elbows should also be at 90 degrees. Your computer screen should be an arms length away and positioned so your eyes are looking at the top third of the screen without moving your neck up or down.

Then theres what may be the biggest offenders; phones and other mobile devices can impact the back and especially neck.

Having your phone more towards the front of your face would be the best scenario, Gugliotti said.

Dont forget about your posture when youre walking. Keep your back straight, not slumped, and try to pull your belly button in towards the spine.

If left untreated, poor posture can lead to nerve compression in the back of the neck, which can lead to headaches. Poor posture can even impact the lungs of patients with asthma, COPD and emphysema.

Visit link:
Bad Posture Could Be The Cause Of Your Back Pain & Headaches - CBS New York

Hippocrates conceived one of the most revolutionary health concepts, Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, around 400 BC, yet modern society has yet to capitalize on this concept. The worlds pharmaceutical market, worth $934.8 billion in 2017, is projected to reach a staggering $1170 billion by 2021, while the average American lifespan has decreased over the past few years. This is due, in large part, to a dramatic increase in the early onset and acceleration of chronic diseases that are perpetuated by poor nutrition and lack of exercise, such as heart disease, cancer, Alzheimers and diabetes.

Nutrition businesses, under soft food regulations, are vested in exploiting our palates with high-carb, high-protein and cheap, unhealthy high-fat products.The consequent surge of chronic diseases has furthered the sick care model of medicine to create a multi-pill-a-day standard of care that has prolonged the sick part of our lives rather than our healthspan, i.e. the healthy part of our lives.

The U.S. healthcare system is at risk of bankruptcy unless we invest in the economic potential of lifestyle improvements, with food as medicine as a top priority. Food is the only product we ingest every day, multiple times a day, so it has the potential to be the most powerful medicine or poison. A nutrition-tech company can use the same research and scientific standards when developing its nutrition programs and/or products that the biotech industry uses.

As a physician and the CEO of a leading nutrition-tech company developing products based on clinical research from the USC Longevity Institute, I believe evidence-based nutrition formulations have the potential to greatly increase our healthspan. Realizing the potential of this emerging industry will require several paradigm shifts for patients, healthcare providers, consumers, corporations, regulatory systems and payers policies. Here a few key considerations.

Food As Powerful Medicine

Recent scientific evidence shows that, at the cornerstone of all major chronic diseases, lie common metabolic factors driven by unhealthy lifestyle factors, specifically nutrition. It is along these lines that some are calling Alzheimers Type 3 Diabetes. One strategy for maintaining optimal health is to eat less, less frequently. Various recent pre-clinical trials are showing how the stress induced to the body by fasting activates the bodys own defense mechanisms against multiple cancers, diabetes and autoimmune diseases.

According to the International Food Information Council Foundations annual survey, intermittent fasting (IF) was the U.S.s most popular diet in 2018 and a close runner-up to clean eating in 2019. While intermittent fasting helps improve weight loss and certain metabolic markers, prolonged fasting for several consecutive days is showing additional rejuvenating effects by enhancing the bodys own protective capabilities. Intermittent fasting and diets that can mimic prolonged fasting are becoming new interventions besides pharmaceuticals for doctors and health practitioners to effectively recommend.

Health Care Before Sick Care

Another paradigm shift that supports the proliferation of nutrition-tech is a growing emphasis on true health care instead of sick care. Preventative medicine is cheaper and more effective, while empowering people to assume more responsibility for their own health outcomes. Insurance companies are increasingly incentivizing patient-driven preventative medicine efforts, offering gym membership reimbursement, for example. The U.S. health coach market, worth $6.14 billion in 2017, is projected to reach $7.85 billion by 2022, while a reported 60% of Americans say they want health coaching. A certified health coach could be the nurse of the new healthcare model.

Similarly, the demand for increased nutrition education for medical practitioners reflects a growing consensus that health practitioners should prescribe food as medicine. Indeed, first line therapy for the reversal of prediabetes and early diabetes lies in better nutrition and lifestyle drug therapy could be used thereafter. According to David Eisenberg, an adjunct associate professor of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, most U.S. medical students currently receive fewer than 25 hours of nutrition education and less than 20% of American medical schools mandate a course in basic nutrition.

Todays physicians have little faith in food as medicine, because the standard food industry has cut corners to sell diets based on taste and profits rather than health value and evidence-based protocols. However, the tide is turning with the burgeoning nutrition-tech industry.

Food Regulation And Payer Policy Reform

A large part of reshaping the way we think about food as medicine lies with the FDA. Currently, the FDA classifies medical foods as intended for people who have a disease or condition that results in a distinctive nutritional need which cannot be met by a diet of regular food, but is met by the medical food. Put simply, a medical food supplements a nutritional lack or deficiency, e.g. a potassium deficiency. The FDA has a great chance to expand this definition to include foods that impact the progression or the treatment of common diseases such as diabetes, cancer and Alzheimers.

However, there is currently no clear pathway for classification of foods to treat or better manage mainstream chronic diseases, such as cancer, Alzheimers and autoimmune diseases. The FDA could relax the interpretation of this definition to include foods that have strong scientific evidence and a degree of novelty with respect to alleviating or reversing mainstream chronic diseases.

Finally, insurance companies, driven by financial pressure, are slowly shifting to embrace reimbursement of certain nutrition plans. This year, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, announced that Medicare Advantage will begin reimbursing some social determinants for health, such as home-delivered meals a milestone step in the right direction for increasing access to nutrition-tech products and creating a predictable, therefore investable, nutrition-tech market. Similar Medicaid policies could encourage the poor to use food stamps for nutritious or fasting-mimicking food products instead of cheap fast food. If this true healthcare model were realized, the benefits to individuals and society could be enormous.

See the rest here:
How Nutrition-Tech Could Save Our Healthcare System And Billions Of Lives Around The World - Forbes

RENSSELAER For the second year, the Jasper and Newton County Extension offices have joined to bring information and wellness testing to the Jasper County Fairgrounds for the elderly population of both counties. The senior expo, on Oct. 9, brought a variety of senior living residences, medicine and other agencies together for seniors to browse, gather some freebies and learn about the choices they have as they grow into their golden years, and all of it was free.

Franciscan Health Rensselaer brought nurses offering free screenings in bone density, cholesterol and glucose testing as well as Medicare information. Tim Ventrello, an RN who runs the Heartland Vascular Screening program for Franciscan Health was there to tell seniors about the new testing program and to discuss the hospitals new 3D mammography machine, making it easier for radiologists to see more clearly what is inside a breast and the ability to find something unusual that may not have been seen by regular mammography.

The machine gauges the persons body type and adjusts itself to each individuals body, making it more comfortable for the patient.

The new screening programs offer different heart, lung and vascular screenings for a flat fee without going through insurance or the need to have a doctors referral. A heart risk assessment is included in each screening. The screenings are by appointment and the office is open Monday and Thursday, 7 a.m. to noon, but appointments can be made outside of those hours for patients convenience.

Ventrello said the screenings are meant for young healthy people to find where they are in their health and to follow up each year as a wellness check rather than waiting for something to happen as they age. It is preventative medicine, he said.

Sherri Van Buren discusses information and Medicare options for seniors on Medicare health insurance in Rensselaer, Lafayette and Crawfordsville. She was on-hand Wednesday morning to help any seniors who stopped to talk about their healthcare coverage.

Josephine Mikuly, of DeMotte, said she came to the expo last year and enjoyed the information she received and was happy to return again this year. Ive gotten good information, she said.

The new senior living facility in Rensselaer, Autumn Trace, had representatives available to talk about their facility. It is three/quarters full and they receive inquiries daily regarding availability, Kristi Ritter said.

There was also a table for Parkview Haven in Francesville, the Rensselaer Care Center, Oak Grove Christian Retirement Village in DeMotte and George Ade Memorial Health Care in Brook. Ashland Place Senior Apartments in Goodland was also there to discuss its independent living apartments with the visitors.

Birthright of Rensselaer was there looking for senior volunteers to help answer the phone and do other volunteer work. Brook Library and the Jasper County Library had large print books to give away as well as information on services the libraries have to offer. Both community services from the two counties gave seniors information on the services they offer seniors as well.

Walgreens was offering free flu shots and pneumonia shots to the seniors as well.

Although attendance was down from last year, the expo went well, and those who went were glad they did.

Northwest Indiana Community Action promoted a free Living Healthy workshop that began on Thursday, Oct. 10 and continues each Thursday through Nov. 14, at 3:30 p.m. at the Community Church in Roselawn. The address is 10498 N 450 E, DeMotte/Roselawn. Seniors will need to register for the program by calling 800-826-7871, ext. 2203.

See the rest here:
Senior Expo provides information and wellness testing for Newton and Jasper - Newsbug.info