Do We Have a Magical Healthcare Fix?

Public Market Update: Average Sector Performance

Let’s first take a look at the HealthTech market. (This month we’ve continued to exclude companies trading below $1 as of 7/31/24. This is to prevent skewing of the results as small changes in share price when below $1 can result in outliers that do not necessarily represent the sector as a whole.).

HealthTech overall is still hanging out in the red (but less red than last month).

Notable mentions:

🖥️Access to Care likely continues to falter as some COVID-era support for telehealth treatments expires at the end of 2024. However, Medicare has proposed new billing codes for digital mental health treatments, which may soon help reverse this downtrend.

🏥 Hospital Operations may be getting bolstered by the surge in AI in radiology technology, which has also given a boost to radiology focused HealthTech companies.

The rest of the sectors are pulling together and coming out of the red slowly, however👨‍⚕️Decision Support fell this month. The fluctuation could be the result of the changing roles of AI based decision support technology, lack of patient and physician trust, and the lack of standardization of how such technologies fit within workflows and the liability surrounding them.

On to the next month…

Articles Worth Reading

Miracle or Mirage? An Overview of the Rise of GLP-1 Drugs

GLP-1 agonists are not a new class of diabetic medication; their current rise in popularity is due to the added knowledge that they are effective for weight loss.

In addition to weight loss, more studies and data are coming out and showing us that they may be able to address a plethora of medical issues, for example:

The excitement and increasing demand for these medications has prompted many to ask, “Will healthcare be altered forever?”

In a word, probably. However, will some treatments we currently use become obsolete? Probably not (yet).

There are plenty of patients who cannot afford GLP drugs, plus supply chain and production limitations may affect its usage, and then theres this: stopping the medication reverses its effects (i.e. weight loss —> weight gain).

Much has yet to be learned about these medications and whether or not they will permanently disrupt the healthcare industry.

Read more about what industry players have to say about these medications and other data on the future of healthcare.

Related content: How AI/LLMs are Impacting Healthcare and What it Means for the Future

Opinion

A Doctor’s Perspective

The hype around GLP-1 agonist medications is legitimate. These drugs can help many patients. I think time will tell about the long-term effects and their viability for weight loss, and it will be exciting to see how we evolve to include potential long-term treatment for the other medical issues listed above.

But I’d like to dig a bit more into the elephant in the room. The idea that this class of medications will render current treatments and healthtech obsolete is debatable.

For instance, let’s address one claim that if the population of Type 2 diabetes and obese patients declines due to this treatment (a good thing) then continuous glucose monitors will disappear from use.

While a valid concern, this claim overlooks Type 1 diabetics - who do not make insulin and need it for life - and those who cannot afford these medications, or suffer greatly from side effects and cannot take them.

Our arsenal of drugs has changed so it follows that the dynamics of treating patients will also change; there is a shift happening, but at this time I think we’re a long way away from total and permanent disruption of healthcare as we know it.

I also believe that as treatment modalities improve, HealthTech will evolve with it. Instead of continuous glucose monitors, for instance, we’ll have continuous monitoring of another health marker.

I’m excited to see what else is to come and how we’re able to improve the health and wellness of our entire population.

—Sanjana Vig MD,MBA (Anesthesiologist)

In the News

Interesting Articles From Around the Web

To round out the newsletter, here are some other interesting happenings in HealthTech.

• 🚑️ ER wait times and delays could become a thing of the past with this nifty AI tool.

• 💊 This system helps hospitals/providers confirm patient prescriptions without the need to call pharmacies.

• 💻️ Teledermatology technology preserves the highest quality mobile photographs to facilitation dermatology evaluations for patients.

• 📸 Microsoft is teaming up with two major academic medical centers to perfect AI imaging interpretation.

• 📜 The overturning of the Chevron Doctrine could have implications for health policy and, in turn, HealthTech.