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Presented by SimpliSafe: The collision of health care and technology. | | | | | |  | | By Adriel Bettelheim | Presented by SimpliSafe | | | | HEALTH TOOLS LEFT BEHIND: We prowled Amazon for pulse oximeters, downloaded lifestyle apps and stuffed our holiday stockings with germ-zapping wands. But while Covid-19 created a boom for at-home diagnostics and digital gizmos, how many really were used? If your personal air purifier is gathering dust, you’re not alone. Health and tech industry players say the expanding “digital front door” to convenient care and peace of mind is littered with unused trackers and digital thermometers. Even the experts have got drawers full of the stuff. Lisa Suennen , aka “Venture Valkyrie,” a group leader in digital and tech at Mannatt Ventures, ticks off her pandemic buys with the precision of a seasoned Yelp reviewer: Pulse oximeter (“I mean, it’s not a bad thing to have, but do you know where I put it? Me neither”); a stand to dry masks on (“Uh…that’s what doorknobs are for, or so I learned”); and that quarantine kitchen staple, the air fryer (“What the hell? Like I can’t make Brussels sprouts the old fashioned way?)” | | | | A message from SimpliSafe: Most security companies send a technician to your home. SimpliSafe doesn’t. Order online. Set it up in 30 minutes. After that, you’re protected 24/7. Learn more. | | | | 
Getty Images | While 40 to 60 percent of consumers say they're interested in virtual health gadgets, there's a gap between stated enthusiasm and actual usage, according to a new McKinsey report. The consultants say it may take more seamless data transfer and consumer outreach to sustain growth as the pandemic wanes. And there are practicality issues that maybe taught us something about our needs during a crisis. “Everything I've ever tried has ended up in a drawer gathering dust,” says Christina Farr, principal investor at OMERS Ventures and a former CNBC reporter. “I've tried a lot. I was pregnant during the pandemic so I would have used something to track how that was going, but there isn't much on the market!” A number of industry insiders fell hard for digital thermometers during the early phase of the pandemic but have since had second thoughts. “I took my temperature every day even though I rarely left my apartment. I haven’t used it once since I got vaccinated,” says Jason Helgerson, former New York State Medicaid director and now a health care consultant, who adds the Peloton he bought also isn’t being used nearly enough. “My drawer full of thermometers is our leftover reminder of Covid here, which were as rare as diamonds at the height of the pandemic,” said Devin Jopp, CEO of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, adding it’s wise to stockpile the batteries they run on. Julia Adler-Milstein , director of the Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research at the University of California, San Francisco, just bought a thermometer last week after wishing for one for the entire crisis. “Not sure why I waited so long.” Maybe, she mused, it was a fear that hers too would never be used. Bijan Salehizadeh , managing director at NaviMed Capital, says he obsessively checked his Oura ring all of last year for overnight temperature and heart-rate variability to see if he was coming down with the coronavirus. In the end, it alerted him to something far more routine: “Last week when I caught a cold (not Covid), it told me the day before I had sniffles that something wasn’t right.” Nicholas Genes, an emergency physician and clinical informaticist in New York City, bought a half dozen pulse oximeters for family and friends. But he says he’s personally benefited from health apps: Apple Fitness+, MyTrends++ to make sense of data collected on his Apple Watch and WaterMinder, which tracks daily fluid intake – including caffeine and alcohol. “It’s handy and helps me moderate,” he says. Darius Tahir, Joanne Kenen, Dan Goldberg and Alexandra S. Levine contributed. | | | Welcome back to Future Pulse, where we explore the convergence of health care and technology. Share your news and feedback: @dariustahir, @ali_lev, @abettel, @samsabin923. John Ross @JohnRossMD “Gonna create an app with quirky videos about Lyme, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, and ehrlichiosis, and call it TickTalk” | | | |   | | | | | | NEW LIFE FOR PATIENT ID?: Digital health interests hungry for a win found something to cheer about this week, when House appropriators omitted a decades-long ban on federal funds for a national patient identifier from their fiscal 2022 health department spending plan, POLITICO's Darius Tahir writes. The identifier is a simple number that health providers would use to match and manage patient information and help distinguish this Joe Smith from that Joe Smith. In theory, that would reduce medication errors and other mix-ups. But the federal government has been barred from working on the effort since the late 1990s over fears it would enable the government to snoop on patients. “The idea of a patient ID makes a lot of sense, and this ban on even reviewing it has always seemed like an over-reaction,” says Kirk Nahra, a privacy lawyer for Wilmer Hale. Monday’s move to omit the ban by the House Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee marks “a single step in a [potentially] long journey,” Nahra adds. The full committee will mark up the spending bill on Thursday. The policy change comes amid heightened sensitivity surrounding health privacy, with controversies erupting over Covid “vaccine passports” and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra’s comments about the government having a right to know which Americans have been vaccinated. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the most notable opponent of the patient identifier and son of former Rep. Ron Paul, the force behind the original ban, could still try to revive it in the Senate. | | | PARKING PROFITS?: Covid vaccine producer Moderna is setting up shop in Switzerland and in Delaware to avoid paying high taxes on vaccine sales, according to a Dutch nonprofit. POLITICO’s Jillian Deutsch writes that in a report released Tuesday, the Research on Multinational Corporations cited a leaked contract between the company and the European Commission, which “indicates that the company’s vaccine profits will end up in some of the world’s worst tax havens.” | 
AP Photo/Paul Sancya, Pool | The EU, which has ordered hundreds of millions of Moderna vaccine doses, pays the company’s Swiss subsidiary, Moderna Switzerland GmbH, based in Basel, Switzerland. The country offers tax rates as low as 13 percent for foreign companies. The company also holds 780 patents in Delaware, where income from intangible assets such as patents isn’t taxed. Beyond possibly paying little in taxes, the report notes the company has received big infusions of public money, including some $4.1 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services, including $1 billion under “Operation Warp Speed.” The U.S. ordered $7.5 billion worth of Moderna’s vaccines, paying around $15 a dose. | | | A CLEARER WINDOW INTO THE MIND: Computers are providing increasingly detailed mathematical models of schizophrenia, depression and other mental illnesses that are usually diagnosed by clusters of symptoms, in a bid to create more targeted drug treatments. Yale researchers, in a pair of studies in the journal eLife, describe a new framework that maps individual symptoms down to the specific neurons that carry out brain functions. This “computational psychiatry” could show how one person’s response to a drug can predict altered states of consciousness. One of the studies measured the effects of the hallucinogen LSD on brain function in specific regions. The chemical is known to mimic characteristics of psychosis and also activates a serotonin receptor that’s a target of antidepressants. “This work establishes a framework for linking molecular-level manipulations to salient changes in brain function, with implications for precision medicine,” the researchers write. | | | COMMEMORATING FAILURE: Tired of breakthrough technology? The art collective MSCHF — best known for the “Satan Shoes” billed as containing a drop of human blood in the soles — now has the internet tittering with a product line called Dead Startup Toys, honoring some of Silicon Valley’s most infamous flops. Among the miniature reproductions is a 4-ounce plastic Theranos minilab, Like Satan’s Shoes, the low-cost, compact diagnostic tool ran on human blood — but wound up becoming an emblem of fraud and false claims. Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes’ criminal trial is due to begin in August. Other products that get sent up include a $700 juicer, a “social robot” companion that quickly got eclipsed by Amazon’s Echo and a $100 mini-laptop for kids. “Behold these beautiful mutants, hoisted on petards of their own solid-aluminum-unibody construction,” the collective’s website declares. | | | | A message from SimpliSafe: It’s finally easy to make sure your house is safe. Whatever you’re worried about—from french doors to basement windows—SimpliSafe’s got your back. Just click here to customize your system and get a FREE security camera. | | | | | | “Welp. We screwed up. Because of a reporting error we have not yet hit 70 percent on our adult vaccination.” Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, dialing back a brag after his state’s Covid data team uncovered discrepancies with the Utah Department of Health’s public website and re-did the math. | | | A pair of prominent researchers take to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to advocate for cross-state medical licensure, a key regulatory barrier to telehealth. Is the telehealth free-for-all era coming to an end, asks STAT News? Recode takes a look at the struggle to create private mental health apps. | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
