WTM Bulletin #12: From Wall Street to Care Street. Latest musings on Health Care, Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Care Delivery. Innovation. Transformation.
Delivered to your inbox every week. 🗞
Subscribe to get a weekly healthy dose of medicine
6 points = 3 headlines. 2 startup or VC/PE firm news. 1+ closing thoughts. Follow me on twitter @Mahek_MD
I am passionate about transforming our industry to meet the demand consumers yearn and have come to expect to match other aspects of their lives: accessible, affordable, and convenient.
HEADLINES
World Health Organization renames monkeypox to mpox.
It aims to reduce stigma associated with the virus. More details can be found on their website: https://www.who.int/news/item/28-11-2022-who-recommends-new-name-for-monkeypox-disease#:~:text=Following%20a%20series%20of%20consultations,%E2%80%9Cmonkeypox%E2%80%9D%20is%20phased%20out.
From WHO: in accordance with the ICD update process, held consultations to gather views from a range of experts, as well as countries and the general public, who were invited to submit suggestions for new names. Based on these consultations, and further discussions with WHO’s Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO recommends the following:
- Adoption of the new synonym mpox in English for the disease.
- Mpox will become a preferred term, replacing monkeypox, after a transition period of one year. This serves to mitigate the concerns raised by experts about confusion caused by a name change in the midst of a global outbreak. It also gives time to complete the ICD update process and to update WHO publications.
- The synonym mpox will be included in the ICD-10 online in the coming days. It will be a part of the official 2023 release of ICD-11, which is the current global standard for health data, clinical documentation and statistical aggregation.
- The term “monkeypox” will remain a searchable term in ICD, to match historic information.
—
Food as Medicine will be impacted by prices
Food prices have surged by 25% globally from their pre-pandemic levels. The increase comes after a decades-long downward trend and has been driven by several factors, including higher shipping costs, supply chain disruptions, and the effects of the Russian war in Ukraine on grain and energy prices.
More:
- According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food prices peaked in March 2022 but have since declined by ~15%.
- The FAO said that the U.N.-brokered deal to bring Ukrainian grain to market via previously blockaded Black Sea ports has helped bring food prices down.
- Rebeca Grynspan, secretary general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, said that this drop in food prices “may have prevented over 100 million people from falling into poverty.”
Zoom Out:
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that U.S. food prices will rise by 3–4% in 2023.
- According to a Deloitte poll published in late 2021, 90% of European and U.S. food and beverage firms faced significant production and delivery challenges last year.
—
A leading virologist said that a universal flu vaccine could be available within two years. New experiments, documented in a paper published in Science, found that antibodies produced by an experimental mRNA vaccine effectively protect mice and ferrets from severe influenza.
More:
- Professor John Oxford of Queen Mary University in London, who was not involved in the study, said that the research is a major breakthrough that can help protect humanity against the ever-evolving influenza virus.
- Current flu vaccines are updated annually to match the flu viruses circulating among human populations.
- The new vaccine is designed to help the immune system fight all 20 subtypes of influenza A and B.
- The study found that the mRNA flu vaccine provoked strong antibody responses that were stable for months after the vaccination.
- Researchers plan to carry out clinical trials to determine how effective the vaccine is in humans and whether it causes serious side effects.
—
VENTURE CAPITAL / PRIVATE EQUITY
Particle Health raises $25 Million to Accelerate Growth.
https://www.particlehealth.com/blog/series-b-25-million-interoperability
Investors Canvas Ventures led this round with participation from Menlo Ventures, Story Ventures and Pruven Capital. The financing brings the organization’s total capital raised to $39.3 million.
Value proposition: Particle Health’s comprehensive API uniquely combines data from 270 million plus patients’ medical records by aggregating and unifying healthcare records from thousands of sources. The platform then standardizes the data to FHIR to ensure that they are usable at scale. With this approach providers are able to easily obtain clinical data points without complex technology integrations, putting actionable patient health data at their fingertips. On average the Particle solution delivers an exceptional 90% success rate in obtaining a patient’s records at a rate of 105 records per patient, per search.
Particle is leading the industry in applying the next-generation FHIR data format to make interoperability easier. With this approach, the company has created the most adaptable, easy-to-use solution for healthcare organizations, digital health companies, and startups to securely exchange patient data. In the past year alone, Particle has seen a 450 percent increase in annual recurring revenue and a 300 percent increase in customers. The team has expanded from 11 to 40 people since its $12 million Series A led by Menlo Ventures in 2020, and accelerated growth is anticipated.
—
Aide Health: a UK health tech startup that provides a digital platform to help manage long-term diseases, raised a $1.1M Pre-Seed round led by Hambro Perks with participation from Fuel Ventures, 1818 Ventures, and APX Ventures.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Long Covid may be ‘the next public health disaster’ — with a $3.7 trillion economic impact rivaling the Great Recession
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/30/why-long-covid-could-be-the-next-public-health-disaster.html
Just as a few years ago, pain as the 5th vital sign was common vernacular, could Long Covid become the next chronic disease.
While the majority of people that received vaccines and boosters experienced no acute or long term symptoms, there are enough that could trigger trillions in expenditures in the United States. Long Covid as it is known seems to react differently to different people but can often include low grade migraines, sensitivity to light and sounds, brain fog, and an overall feeling of lethargy.
According to HHS, up to 23 million Americans have long-haul symptoms of Covid-19 which in my opinion is just beginning to impact the health care delivery system because it is often masked as something acute or an aspect of the person’s chronic disease until a clinical team pieces it all together to diagnose it as Long Covid.
My former Professor and mentor, Dr. Peter Hotez says:
“There are just large numbers of people affected by this,” said Dr. Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and a dean at Baylor College of Medicine.
For many, this is a new way of life, as the Norpel family is experiencing firsthand. “All of it is just very heartbreaking,” said Norpel, adding that “long Covid changed everything.”
We, both for public health but also health care services, health systems, and other stakeholders need to get ahead of this impact. With the front-line already strained and stressed from the pandemic, increasing consolidation in the industry, macroeconomic factors further stressing the system, solutions need to be both created and implemented to ‘smooth the landing of the plane.’ Because we know it is here and it will be costly. So we have to decide as a nation, what to we want to do about it. React or be proactive.
Leveraging technology remains a great vehicle to streamline, accelerate, and deliver health care in a meaningful actionable and outcome led way. It’s part of the solution, not the only solution.
—
Disclaimer: The information presented here does not serve as investment advice. This is for informational purposes only.
Author biography:
As a former Citigroup investment banker and economist turn Medical Doctor, consultant, and investor, I see health care evolve and transform through a very unique lens. I am passionate about transforming our industry to meet the demand consumers yearn and have come to expect to match other aspects of their lives: accessible, affordable, and convenient.
Sitting at the intersection of health, technology, and business with senior roles as an executive in strategy, partnerships, and innovation, I’m eager to share my weekly findings with you, my growing worldwide audience.
Please subscribe and feel free to leave a comment below. I sit at the intersection of Wall Street. Tech. Medicine. I’m an MD with Buy-side, Sell-side, & Bedside Manner. Alumni and faculty networks from Harvard, Cornell, Baylor College of Medicine, and Rice. I am the world’s only Doctor to work with all 3 modern business icons Michael Porter, Robert Kaplan, and Clay Christensen. You can find me on twitter @Mahek_MD
