To Risk or Not to Risk?

Public Market Update: Average Sector Performance

Let’s first take a look at the HealthTech market.

(One thing to note with this month’s data is that we’ve excluded companies trading below $1 as of 6/28/24. 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 is still getting slammed (friendly reminder: these values reflect the entire HealthTech industry, not Langar’s HealthTech ETF). A closer look at the underlying companies within each sector reveals:

Our comments on 🖥️Access to Care and 💊Biopharma last month appear to be holding true this month as well. Telehealth companies are struggling to retain their patient base and fund growth, and pharmaceutical companies are lagging in drug development.

🤖Treatment Device companies, especially newer players that are attempting to grab market share from established industry giants, are facing fierce competition. Plus, the FDA is cracking down on their approval of some home testing devices, further increasing the hurdles that these companies must overcome to achieve growth.

On a positive note:

🧑‍⚕️Decision Support: AI explosions within healthcare have gained a strong foothold, especially among Decision Support companies. The power of large language models and machine learning is making its way into many HealthTech systems that assist with diagnosis, treatment planning, and the like.

💵Insurance companies are that annoying cousin that always does well in life and you can’t quite figure out why. A review of sectors shows that digital health insurance is winning, which makes sense given the help of AI.

Articles Worth Reading

Are We Equipped to Care About Risks to Our Health?

Risk assessments are one way to identify a patient’s risk of developing disease, and hopefully treating it early, or preventing it altogether.

Author Kavita Rai is a cancer survivor herself, and dives into the significance of risk assessments, yet admits to her own hesitation in moving forward after receiving information, and how difficult it can be to accept what you hear.

Finding out you’re at risk for illness is not the same as a diagnosis of one, making it difficult to understand and do anything about it.

Why are humans so resistant? The usual suspects.

😐️ Denial

🙅 Risk-averse thinking

😨 Fear

In addition to education and understanding, we have to be proactive in handling these outcomes of providing information. We need to link it to what comes next, mental and emotional guidance and support, & lifestyle adjustments and treatments.

An interesting starting point and motivation for providing risk assessments, and potentially also developing lifestyle prevention: employers.

Read more about all of it by clicking below!

Related content: How AI Can Help Physicians Promote Lifestyle Counseling

Opinion

A Doctor’s Perspective

The article featured in this month’s newsletter puts forth a rather philosophical question but brings to the forefront an important consideration: with all the information we are providing to patients about their health, are we also providing the support needed to handle/cope/take the appropriate next steps?

I think the answer is yes, but it’s insufficient.

Knowing you are at risk for illness (or now have one) has implications for your entire existence: you may need procedures, new medications, time off from work, the inability to work at all anymore, time away from family, financial strain and so on.

This is part of healthcare that very often gets left out because we are so focused on diagnosis and treatment. Human emotion plays a large role in how a patient is able to handle their illness, continue thriving while figuring it all out, and recover.

So many patients are lost to follow up because they were in denial, were led by fear, or didn’t take information seriously enough.

We’re highlighting this article because this is another area HealthTech could be applied. Simple lifestyle-change reminders from your physician, diet suggestions, reminders to take medication - all through an app for instance - can actually help make a difference.

Of course, many such applications already exist, but I think we need to do a better job of tying it all together. Patient learns that they are at risk for disease—>get lifestyle/diet instructions or suggestions for testing —> get reminders/notifications—> regular follow up—>mental health support via support groups —> and so on.

Coming from personal experience, I’ve seen certain things fall through the cracks when it comes to patient care. For instance, mental health support all too often gets neglected, and it’s one of the of the most critical factors in helping patients.

We have everything we need for holistic patient care; I think we just need to be more organized about it and remember that healthcare goes beyond just diagnosis and treatment.

—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.

• 💊 Amazon’s RxPass is expanding and using the help of generative AI to fill prescriptions faster and more accurately.

• 💰️$2.8B of VC funding has been invested into AI-based healthcare so far in 2024.

• 🤖14% of medical devices are at “end of life” and can’t be updated, an issue with cybersecurity.

• 🗣️ Endless hours of documentation could be a thing of the past as this company’s healthtech can record & convert patient conversations directly into doctors notes.

• 🏷️ An AI nutrition label system may be what helps us understand the value of the technology in different situations.