Sales in healthcare is a blessing and a curse because of the same reason: resistance to change. The industry changes slowly. To you and from you.
All in Big Picture
Pursue value. Not valuations
In today's startup culture, founders and investors obsess about valuations.
Valuation of a company is a culmination of other people's guesses of your worth.
Disturbingly, US ranks last in healthcare performance (yes, again)
Just look at this graph. There's a wide gap between U.S. and other high income countries. In healthcare spending. It's been widening since 1980.
To survive (and thrive) in healthcare, you need a pipeline of ideas
There's this myth that entrepreneurs take great risks. It may be true while starting out. But in reality, most longterm entrepreneurs methodically de-risk. Do everything to reduce risk for their companies. Not increase it.
#UberCrisis: Beyond the troubled ride
There are 47 recommendations in this 13-page investigative report on Uber. Compiled by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran.
The first thing that strikes you is that the recommendations are pretty basic.
Ego and us
Ego wants to do big things. It's not satisfied with changing one life. It wants to transform millions of lives. It wants Likes. Recognition.
Or, it goes into its shell. Struggling to find its place in the world. Becoming small. Guilty. Jealous. Angry.
Healthcare's future needs you. But do you have these 4 attributes?
It's easy to imagine a future when your phone knows you more than your doctor. It's also not difficult to foresee the future of healthcare's challenges.
Masking fear in the name of research
We know what we need to do. But we wait and wait.
Then we research. The research never ends.
When we forget what we are here for
People are usually drawn to healthcare because of a certain calling. A strong desire to be of service to others. To innovate. To make a difference. It's particularly true for doctors and nurses who are on the forefront of medicine.
Diseases have changed. Why hasn't our mindset?
We still behave as though our primary killers are communicable diseases.
Ebola, one of the deadliest infectious diseases, set the world on fire recently. It killed 11,315 people - almost none in the rich world.
Contrast that with heart disease that kills 610,000 people just in the U.S.
Let's talk more openly about profitability in healthcare
Dr. John Noseworthy, chief executive of the world renowned Mayo Clinic, recently said in an internal meeting that they must "prioritize" commercial insurances over Medicaid (insurance for the poor).
Commercial insurances pay better and contribute to better margins. Medicaid, a government insurance, pays much less and is possibly a loss-leader.
Mindfulness needs to be part of the healthcare conversation
It was in February 1968 that The Beatles stayed at an ashram in Rishikesh to learn Transcendental Meditation. The retreat is at the foothills of the Himalayas, across the river Ganges. Today it's totally abandoned. In ruins. Part of a jungle.
Sitting inside John Lennon's dilapidated stone cottage last summer, I stared at chunky yellow-black graffiti: When you look up at the sky and see a cloud think of me - Lennon to Yoko.
A million jobs in healthcare's future
The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed.
It's true.
Science fiction writer William Gibson said that right. We simply have to look around enough - now - to find out what the future holds.
The future may never be evenly distributed. But it's surely becoming the present faster.
Upgrading or Moderating: Two Evolving Views of Healthcare
As I reflect on what I learnt in 2016, I see two somewhat conflicting world-views of health: upgrading and moderating.
One promotes upgrading the human body much like software. In this case, our biological processes can be considered as algorithms that can be improved upon. The other view calls for moderating our dependence on medicine by influencing elements surrounding health, such as food and environment.
Let’s consider both views.
4 Disturbing Trends in Healthcare
It's easy to get excited about technological advances such as nanobots that swim in blood to deliver drugs or 3D printers that print human tissues or contact lens that detect glucose levels. However, in our enthusiasm to find the next fix, we are failing to notice the ground slipping underneath the healthcare industry.