3 ms·

Theranos, uBiome, and Practice Fusion all have well known scandals. I'm aware of other issues at some other health tech startups surrounding misrepresenting the

by reureu 5y ago

Theranos, uBiome, and Practice Fusion all have well known scandals. I'm aware of other issues at some other health tech startups surrounding misrepresenting their impact on quality of care, building biased algorithms that have a discriminatory impact on care delivery, companies looking at questionable payment models that seem like they'd violate stark laws, straight up medicare fraud, etc. I'll just say that I'm skeptical of health tech companies that claim/suggest any impact on a medical condition, that claim to have a predictive algorithm related to a medical condition that's their core product, or that somehow give free things to providers.

elcritch 5y ago
To be fair I'd take that list and expand it to include the big pharmaceutical companies (see the new Alzheimers drug scandal at the FDA, billions spent on next generation statins that proved ineffective by confusing correlation and causation, etc), to include doctors and surgeons and various surgical practices or novel medical treatments (billions spent on full Meniscectomies that just lead to arthritis after years, pointless heart stints, etc). True many startups in health are trying scammy payment models, but hospital bills often aren't much better unfortunately. Personally my life has been positively improved by 23andme when they could still list health research, or by "zany" microbiome/probiotics startups years before the medical establishment caught up. Obviously these fields should be regulated, but properly so without just providing an excuse for regulatory capture for existing players. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/health/alzheimers-drug-aduhelm-fda.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/health/alzheimers-drug-ad... 1: https://www.crossfit.com/health/the-great-statin-scam-time-to-clean-up-the-mess https://www.crossfit.com/health/the-great-statin-scam-time-t... 2: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/28/16823266/medical-treatments-evidence-based-expensive-cost-stents https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/28/16823266/medical... 3: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/when-evidence-says-no-but-doctors-say-yes/517368/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/when-evid...

by reureu 5y ago

elcritch 5y ago

To be fair I'd take that list and expand it to include the big pharmaceutical companies (see the new Alzheimers drug scandal at the FDA, billions spent on next generation statins that proved ineffective by confusing correlation and causation, etc), to include doctors and surgeons and various surgical practices or novel medical treatments (billions spent on full Meniscectomies that just lead to arthritis after years, pointless heart stints, etc). True many startups in health are trying scammy payment models, but hospital bills often aren't much better unfortunately. Personally my life has been positively improved by 23andme when they could still list health research, or by "zany" microbiome/probiotics startups years before the medical establishment caught up. Obviously these fields should be regulated, but properly so without just providing an excuse for regulatory capture for existing players. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/health/alzheimers-drug-aduhelm-fda.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/health/alzheimers-drug-ad... 1: https://www.crossfit.com/health/the-great-statin-scam-time-to-clean-up-the-mess https://www.crossfit.com/health/the-great-statin-scam-time-t... 2: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/28/16823266/medical-treatments-evidence-based-expensive-cost-stents https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/28/16823266/medical... 3: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/when-evidence-says-no-but-doctors-say-yes/517368/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/when-evid...