TOM4's Profile

What are the perceived effects on PBMs and drug manufacturers if amazon via pillpack enters Pharma distribution? for instance will PBMs need to pay amazon/pillpack the ‘product payment’ they would otherwise pay retail pharmacy chains? If so, will amazon’s entry lead to more negotiating power on the retail side (or less?), in a way that ultimately effects pricing for the consumer?

In this sort of tech-enabled insurance framework it is straightforward to imagine how driving data fed back to insurance co’s could dynamically shift the price of premiums based on simple metrics – number of red lights ran, frequency of wearing a seatbelt, etc. – e.g. Wrisk. It is also easy to see applications for insurance fraud in the vein of Shiftforce across industries, such as health insurance claims, for Shift.

Fascinating post! Perhaps the ‘winners write history’ mantra will die with crowdsourced information via Wikipedia. On the other hand, in a future state, with constantly changing updates to a digital encyclopedia, will we lose the ability (or easy ability) to query old version of encyclopedic volumes to see how our understanding of a given topic (think: craniometry) has changed over time.

How do platforms like EdX and Coursera reform or re-establish the status of certain universities? For instance, does having Ivy League institutions on these platforms magnify or dilute their brand equity? My suspicion is that the ability to export a particular professor or subject expertise is particularly compelling to these, and may generate the same concerns that the NYT and other publishers had when migrating online – will our editorialists leave and create their own brands as bloggers / free lancers? Will the entrepreneurial professor on these platforms utilize in a manner akin to a TED talk?

Great analysis of a promising company. Facing similar problems of health inequity and outrageous cost trends, other countries may find comparison between WeDoctor’s success and the traction (or lack thereof) of digital health in their nation instructive. One glaring difference in offerings on the WeDoctor side is the provision of condition-based insurance as your detail for leukemia specifically and cancer more generally. [I wonder how condition-based insurance gets around the issue of adverse selection?] This is very different from insurance in the US and EU, among other industrialized nations. The general adoption of technology in healthcare raises the data privacy concerns echoed above, but certainly has the power to unlock the potential of true population health analytics.

Very insightful post! In a vein similar to Maren, I am curious as to IP rights and whether users will be able to claw back value from their contributions to any given initiative (pro bono or for profit) should it be successful in the future by demonstrating clear evidence of their contribution. My hope is that this platform democratizes data science for early stage ventures both by making the hiring of developers and data scientists more meritocratic (as you detail) and by allowing early-stage companies to crowd-source solutions to MVPs and data interpretation rather than hiring a less-than-‘full stack’ data scientist or developer.