News roundup: Ancestry sells 75% to Blackstone, Cornwall NHS partners with Tunstall, most dangerous health IT trends, Slovenski departs from Walmart Health

August 13, 2020 | by

Ancestry sells 75 percent of the genealogy/genetics company to Blackstone for $4.7 bn. The acquisition by the private equity company buys out other equity holders: Silver Lake, GIC, Spectrum Equity, Permira, and others. Ancestry’s business combines their genealogy database with consumer genomics for both heritage and health. The Blackstone release notes that their goals in the acquisition are to expand data, functionality, and product development across the Ancestry platform as part of their investment in growth businesses. If an acquisition cost of $4.7 bn seems high, Ancestry’s revenue is cited as $1 bn annually.

Once blazingly hot, both Ancestry and 23andMe saw their consumer businesses crater late last year, with layoffs in January and February. It’s an example of a quickly saturated market (one test and you’re done) flogged by annoying TV commercials over the holidays [TTA 13 Feb]. Where the profit is, of course, is not in consumer tests but in selling the genomic data to other companies, something which the market leader, 23andMe, realized early on with half-ownership by GSK ($300 million, a real bargain). 23andMe is also intensively marketing as a premium subscription service updates on health information derived from member testing. Ancestry has followed, but reportedly has not been as proactive in linking genetic information to health outcomes. STAT

 This Editor noted back in August 2018 that it was long past time for a Genomic Data Bill of Rights for consumers to be fully transparent on where their data is going, how it is being used, and to easily keep their data private without jumping through a ridiculous number of hoops. It’s a conclusion now being reached by various privacy groups according to MedCityNews. Also noted is that Ancestry, in its complex and long privacy policy, can use your “personal information to market new products from the company or its business partners, but says it will not share users’ genetic information with insurers, employers or third-party marketers without their express consent.” But when your 75 percent owner has real estate and other healthcare holdings, can you trust them?

Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust partnered with Tunstall Healthcare UK on a 26-week support program during the pandemic for young people 11+ with a range of eating disorders. The patient group used the myMobile app and the ICP triagemanager software to send in weekly reports on their vital signs and answer symptom-related questions, which are tracked over time via a secure portal to monitor progress. The myMobile app has parameters set for individual patients, where readings outside them generate a system alert that is sent to clinicians. The program was able to ascertain that 32 patients were at high risk and have been referred. Cornwall/Tunstall white paper, ATToday.co.uk

As if COVID Fear weren’t bad enough, now we have to be frightened of Dangerous IT Trends. Becker’s Health IT interviewed eight healthcare executives and came up with a list of what keeps them up at night:

  • The sluggish rate at which healthcare systems embrace new technology
  • We won’t be going back to the pre-pandemic normal and how healthcare deals with that
  • Overlooking data security and medical device vulnerabilities
  • Cutting IT staff and budgets without acknowledging the consequences
  • The consequences of hastily moving workers remote and securing their devices

All of the above are not new, and it’s rather shocking that they haven’t been addressed.

And in Comings and Goings, we have a Notable Going. Sean Slovenski, who for the past two years has been heading up Walmart US’ Health and Wellness initiatives, departed the company last week with a replacement to be named in the coming weeks. Mr. Slovenski had been heading up a variety of healthcare initiatives, including in-store primary and dental care clinics which have opened up in four Arkansas and Georgia locations with an additional eight planned plus Florida. Walmart also opened up 100 COVID testing locations in store parking lots. His efforts were acknowledged in Walmart’s departure statement to staff. Mr. Slovenski “and his team have successfully stood up the strategy we hired him to create,” Walmart’s CEO John Furner said in a memo to staff. Walmart has also laid off over 1,000 corporate employees in a recent restructuring. Mr. Slovenski is most noted in digital health circles as CEO of Care Innovations for 2 1/2 years during the Intel-GE ownership. He was also with Healthways-ShareCare and Humana. Walmart is up against a long list of heavyweight challengers in retail health, including Amazon, CVS Aetna, and Walgreens–and may be deciding that an independent run is not worth it.

‘Let me die at home’. The human and financial cost of ending telehealth (Cornwall UK)-update

July 7, 2017 | by

See below for ITV coverage. Jill Diggett, a resident of Bodmin in Cornwall, is one of undoubtedly many local people losing their telehealth monitoring next week. A business decision was made to abandon telehealth monitoring provided by NHS Kernow, whose statement is extensively cited by this article in Cornwall Live. NHS Kernow, which is £54 million in the red, cites “the service did not have significantly robust clinical evidence for effectiveness and did not demonstrate the desired outcomes that we would expect to see.” The Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which provides the service, will hand it off in advance to the telehealth user’s GP, and will provide community services or getting a helper to manage their condition.  

From this article, Mrs. Diggett is 1) an exception to their findings and 2) the handoff appears to have been dropped. Mrs. Diggett has five serious chronic conditions. She is on oxygen. Last December, she was in hospital for three weeks. Post-discharge, she was given telecare and telehealth monitoring of her vital signs (weight, blood oxygen, blood pressure), performed by her husband and sent to a care coordinator (a ‘medical expert’ in the article). There’s medical intervention if things trend poorly. However, she has stayed out of hospital since and is presented here as medically stable, though not doing handsprings. In the article, Mrs. Diggett expresses despair and real fear that she will be taken from her home and wind up back in hospital where she assumes she will die, an understandably emotional reaction. Worse, her husband gives no indication that his wife’s care has been transitioned. 

Readers of Cornwall Live are also pointed to the closure of a Bodmin treatment centre in March. So the Diggetts will be traveling much farther to receive care if they were using it.

Mr. Diggett was told that the average cost of a hospital bed is £1,000 a night. For 21 nights, that is £21,000. Let’s assume that the fully allocated cost (devices and monitoring) of the telehealth service is £100/month. That is 210 months–17.5 years–of monitoring for the cost of one hospital stay. If it is £250/month, that is 84 months or 7 years.

What is not cost-calculable but has consequences? Mrs. Diggett’s state of mind and her husband’s quality of life. Her predicament is shared by patients and caregivers who had telehealth or telecare withdrawn after a pilot or the ending of an at-home program. There is a feeling of abandonment, that they don’t have this help or support, no one is listening, the safety net’s been taken away, and they are all alone again. Anyone who has worked for telehealth and telecare companies, such as this Editor, knows this is an unavoidable consequence of service withdrawal unless that person is much better or is transitioned properly, which almost never happens. Readers on both sides of the Atlantic will surely be able to supply their own examples where the books don’t balance. Hat tip to Susanne Woodman, our Eye on Tenders.

Update: ITV last night (11 July) reported on this here, interviewing the Diggetts. Bravo!