Is healthcare too much for Big Tech’s Google and Apple? Look at the track record. And David Feinberg’s $34M Cerner package.

August 24, 2021 | by

With Google scattering Google Health to the four winds of the organization--the heck with what employees recruited for Health think of being reorg’d to, say, Maps or YouTube and falling through the corporate rabbit hole–more detail has leaked of Apple’s struggles. This time, on the scaleback list (a/k/a chopping block) is Health Habit. It’s an app in the Apple Store that connects users with AC Wellness, a doctor’s group in Cupertino, California. The ‘eligible participants’ are restricted to Apple employees. From the app site, they can check weight, nutrition, blood pressure, and schedule wellness checks. It seems to be the typical ‘skunk works’ project that’s not ready for prime time, but its public fate seems to be poorly timed and simultaneously, overblown because they are–well–Apple. 

Bottom line, is healthcare once again proving rather resistant to being leveraged by technological solutions? Those of us who go back to the Stone Age of health tech, or those of us who joined in the Iron and Bronze Ages, remember when you couldn’t get into a conference cocktail party without a “wellness” app. (You say you’re in behavioral and remote patient monitoring for older adults? Oh, look! A squirrel!)

Microsoft was going to dominate consumer health with their HealthVault for personal health records (PHRs). We know how that turned out–dead apps, Fitbit an also-ran bought, Pebble and Misfit going to the drawer of failed toys, Jawbone t-boning plus Intel and Basis written off in 2017, and HealthVault unlamentedly put out with the trash at the end of 2019. Oh yes, there was an earlier Google Health for PHRs, which died with a whimper back in 2012 or so.

The press releases crow about Big Tech’s mastery of complexity, yet going off on their own without partners–or even with partners–never seems to work. In the industry, it makes for a few good articles and the usual rocket launching at places like Forbes, but the pros tend to treat it with a shrug and pull out a competitive plan. Glen Tullman, founder of Livongo who will never have to worry about paying for chateaubriand for two for the next billion years or so, stated the obvious when he said that patients cared about the overall experience, not the tech.

Speaking of experience, Amazon Care promises the best for its employees and enterprise accounts–a one-minute telehealth connection, a mobile clinician if needed within the hour, and drugs at the door in two hours. All with direct pay. This has met with skepticism from telehealth giants like Teladoc and Amwell with established corporate bases. There’s also CVS Health and Walgreens. The Editor has opined that care isn’t Amazon’s game at all–it’s accumulating and owning national healthcare data on Amazon Care and Pharmacy users that is far more valuable than whatever is spent on providing care and services [TTA 16 June]. Will Amazon really be able to pull it off?

Paddy Padmanabhan, the author of Healthcare Digital Transformation, lists a few more reasons It’s Too Hard For Big Tech In Healthcare in his HealthcareITNews article here….

  • Healthcare is a part-time job for Big Tech
  • Big tech firms want to solve the healthcare problem by themselves
  • Selling technology is not the same as selling healthcare services

…but holds out some hope that the initial success of “digital-first and virtual-first providers of healthcare emerging as challengers” will point the way for them.

And speaking of Google Health and former employees, Cerner’s necessary SEC disclosure today of new CEO and president David Feinberg, MD’s compensation package was sure to create some talk in Googleville among his now-scattered team. $34.5 million over the next 15 months is structured as follows:

  • $900,000 base salary
  • a target cash bonus of $1.35 million
  • a one-time cash bonus of $375,000 stock
  • $13.5 million in Cerner’s restricted shares for 2022
  • $3.375 million in stock shares for the fourth quarter of 2021
  • a new hire award of $15 million in restricted stock shares to offset his equity loss with Google. 

Whew! Becker’s HealthIT

Verily, Google’s life sciences arm, gathers in another billion to go…where? (updated for Study Watch FDA clearance)

January 17, 2019 | by

Biotech/device company Verily added to its 2016 $800 million stake from Singapore’s Temasek a fresh $1 bn from Silver Lake Partners. with reported participation from Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan. Verily is majority-owned by Google parent Alphabet, which has added a new member to the Verily board, CFO Ruth Porat, and Egon Durbat from Silver Lake.

CEO Andrew Conrad, who is still there despite a brace of bad press two years ago [TTA 6 Apr 16], stated that “We are taking external funding to increase flexibility and optionality as we expand on our core strategic focus areas. Adding a well-rounded group of seasoned investors, led by Silver Lake, will further prepare us to execute as healthcare continues the shift towards evidence generation and value-based reimbursement models.”

One is tempted to say, ‘whatever that means’. They have had multiple ventures from contact lenses with Novartis’ subsidiary Alcon (reportedly discontinued but dating back with Google to 2014), diabetes with Sanofi, to sleep apnea with ResMed. VentureBeat reports they are cash-profitable and even venturing into areas such as small exploding needles that can extract blood through a wearable device–not precisely for the needle-phobic. There seem to be multiple projects in multiple directions that are primarily research. Certainly their finding at $1.8 bn is an outlier even at 2018’s big scale–but with Alphabet/Google as a parent and A-list partners, the risk is minimal. Mobihealthnews, Crunchbase

FDA clearance of Verily’s Study Watch. Late last week, Verily announced that their Study Watch was given a 510(k) FDA clearance. It records, stores, transfers and displays single-channel ECG. To date, there are no plans to use it beyond a handful of research studies primarily on cardiac disease. Mobihealthnews. Meanwhile, Google, not Verily, paid Fossil $40 million for a still under development smartwatch technology to fit into Google’s Ware OS area. It’s not known whether it is health related, but their CEO admitted that it was based on tech from the Misfit acquisition–and Misfit was focused on health tech. After the sale closing, it is predicted that some Fossil R&D staff will move over to Google. Back in 2015, Fossil paid $260 million for Misfit and their fitness tech but generally has stayed in the conventional smartwatch area. The story broke in Wareable. Also Mobihealthnews.

Using sensors to speed scientific experimentation

February 4, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/lab-experiment-equipment.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]A Boston-based startup with some impressive backing, Elemental Machines, is seeking to solve the variability problems that hinder scientific experimentation, particularly in drug development. Misfit and AgaMetrix founders Sonny Vu and Sridhar Iyengar join co-founders Elicia Wong and Gary Tsai in raising $2.5 million in seed funding, with investors including Founders Fund, backer of SpaceX and Lyft. The company’s purpose is to develop sensors (called “elements”) sending data interpreted by cloud-based software that will help scientists better detect and control for the most common variable factors that take place during experiments–temperature, humidity, vibration, light, instrumentation and protocols. The goal is to accelerate the experiment and research process so that drugs, devices and products make it to market (eventually) faster and less expensively. BostInno, TechCrunch

The rich store of information in…human sweat

February 3, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/sweat-sensor-wristband450.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]’Don’t sweat it’ may in future be the wrong thing to say. University of California-Berkeley researchers have developed a prototype sensor array on a band that successfully captures readings of multiple sweat analytes and sends the information to a smartphone app for analysis, making it the first device capable of continuous, non-invasive monitoring of multiple biochemicals in perspiration. The five sensors measure metabolites glucose and lactate, the electrolytes sodium and potassium, and skin temperature, which serves to calibrate the other readings in real time. The device (left), which can be in a wristband or headband form, also contains a flexible printed circuit board that amplifies the sensor signals and sends them to the smartphone app. The Berkeley researchers look forward to commercializing the technology to capture more analyte readings, for athletic performance, medical and fitness tracking usage–and in the longer-term, population-level studies for medical applications. We wonder how long it will be before these show up in a new model Misfit, Jawbone or Fitbit. Berkeley News   Hat tip to former TTA Ireland Editor Toni Bunting

Reaching the lemonade point with Jawbone

November 6, 2015 | by

This editor’s recent blogs on Jawbone’s UPs do not make pleasant reading so now I’ve reached my “lemonade point” – ie I am on my 7UP (or should that be seventh UP?) – it seemed only fair to advise readers that I have had my second UP3 for over a month and it still works! As I took my previous one in the shower – as is recommended – and it packed up very quickly, for this one I’m avoiding all water contact. Perhaps that’s the secret?

I was reminded of this by this recent piece in ZD-net grumbling about tracker data loss – Jawbone, alongside Misfit, were the two quoted. That is an experience I have yet to have, although at present if anything I have the reverse with my sleep times being doubled resulting in 14+ hour daily sleeps.

Apart from this relatively minor glitch (compared to previous rather more terminal ones), I am almost at the point of being impressed. The new software automatically detects sleep, so no need to remember to tell it when you are going to bed, and the heart rate monitor produces some very interesting results. Once you work out how to put it on so it doesn’t keep falling off, it’s much less obtrusive that the original UP open bracelet, too. If it keeps going like this for another eleven months, I fear I might even start recommending it!

67% of 50+ users found activity trackers beneficial: AARP study

July 23, 2015 | by

The just-published AARP study of 50+ consumers and design of sleep and activity trackers has found that a near-or majority surveyed found activity and sleep trackers useful in maintaining health. 71 percent found they increased awareness of habits; 67 percent found them useful and beneficial. Four user personas emerged: sticklers, achievers, enthusiasts and the ‘why not’-ers. Yet these mostly enthusiastic users experienced difficulties. During the six-week trial, many discontinued use of the trackers due to data inaccuracy, finding and using instructions, perceived device malfunctions, difficulty in syncing, difficulty in putting on the device and comfort in wearing. The seven trackers used by the 92 participants were from Misfit, Spire, Jawbone, Lumo and Withings. Conducted by Georgia Tech Research Institute’s HomeLab with AARP’s Project Catalyst: The Power of We initiative which encourages good product and service design for the 50+ demographic. Coming up: med management tools. iHealthBeat. AARP release. AARP’s Building a Better Tracker research paper

Wearable alert: DARPA’s tinier-than-a-penny nav device

April 16, 2013 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/timu.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Misfit, UnderArmour, Fraunhofer Institute, Samsung, Apple, GuideMeHome and even Avery Dennison, listen up: the US Department of Defense via DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a/k/a the Internet’s real dad) researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a timing and inertial measurement unit (TIMU) that monitors motion, acceleration, time and positioning–without GPS. This navigation chip packs internal clocks, gyroscopes and accelerometers into 10 cubic millimeters fitting quite comfortably in the center of a US penny. Defense usage is backup for military devices in case of malfunctioning/unavailable GPS. In the civilian market, the easy one is wearables particularly for safety (e.g. gait detection, falling)–but the other is backup to in-car and cell phone systems dependent on GPS which, if knocked out, can present inconvenience to hazard. Extreme Miniaturization…. (DARPA.mil)  PopSci’s once-over-lightly.