A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has been an outspoken advocate calling out the state of mental health in America for all health citizens, young and old alike.                He wrote the book, Together, reflecting on the toxic side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic that exacerbated many Americans’ feelings of loneliness and lack of human connection. Most recently, he’s raised the issue of parents’ anxiety and stress, especially in light of children’s use of social media and the recognition of children’s need for access to therapy. Parents are also at-risk, Dr. Murthy asserted as a

One of the few bright spots in consumer technology spending in the past couple of years of the U.S. economic “vibecession” has been the category of smartwatches. The Wall Street Journal recently talked, specifically, about the growing role of the Apple Watch for health care, gaining traction as a part of cardiologists’ and other physicians’ testing for and adoption of the wearable tech device for patients who are managing medical conditions.                     Data from CTA, the Consumer Technology Association, has been tracking such spending which I’ve often discussed here in Health Populi

“Businesses which have witnessed a rise in brand value…have all transcended their established category norms and play a more significant and meaningful role in society and consumers’ lives,” we learn in the Interbrand Best Global Brands 2023 report, subtitled, “How Iconic Brands Lead Across Arenas. Most brands stagnated or lost ground in terms of brand value in 2023, with average growth rate of 5.7% compared to 16% in 2022. But those who rose fast bucked the stagnation trend, and included the fastest risers Airbnb (growing brand value by 21,8%) and Microsoft (increasing in brand value by 14%, the highest growth rate

With consumer and prescriber interest in GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs “soaring,” health plan managers have a new source of financial stress and clinical questions on their to-do list. A team of Virta Health leaders held a webinar on 13th July 2023 to explain the results of a study the company just completed assessing health plan execs’ current views on Ozempic and other GLP-1 medicines with a view on both clinical outcomes and cost implications for this growing category of drugs that address diabetes and obesity.             Indeed, diabetes and obesity are top health concerns among the

Most doctors see the advantages of digital health tools like telehealth, consumers’ access to their health information, and point-of-care workflow solutions, the American Medical Association found in a survey of 1300 physicians, published in September 2022.             The AMA first conducted research with physicians and their views on digital health in July 2016. This year’s study was designed to compare current clinicians’ perspectives with those garnered in the 2016 and 2019 studies. There is a clear and positive shift of doctors’ adoption of and appreciation for digital tools, with “growth in enthusiasm” concentrated in tele-visits, the

“Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once,” Paulo Coelho wrote in his novel, The Winner Stands Alone. Coelho is talking about the all-too-human condition of facing situations that are unplanned which test our patience, resilience, and grit. Our best-laid plans go awry – especially those for healthy behaviors, like exercising and eating well.             Enter Michelle Segar, PhD, MPH, MS, NIH-funded researcher at the University of Michigan, sustainable-behavior-change expert, and health coach. Michelle is our go-to sage for helping us

There’s more evidence that doctors and patients, both, want to use telehealth after the COVID-19 pandemic fades. Doximity’s second report on telemedicine explores both physicians’ and patients’ views on virtual care, finding most doctors and health consumers on the same page of virtual care adoption. For the physicians’ profile, Doximity examined 180,000 doctors’ who billed Medicare for telemedicine claims between January 2020 and June 2021. Telemedicine use did not vary much across physician age groups. Doctors in specialties that manage chronic illnesses were more likely to use telehealth: endocrinology (think: diabetes), gastroenterology, rheumatology, urology, nephrology, cardiology, ENT, neurology, allergy, and

I cannot recall a season when so many health consumer studies have been launched into my email inbox. While I have believed consumers’ health engagement has been The New Black for the bulk of my career span, the current Zeitgeist for health care consumerism reflects that futurist mantra: “”We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run,” coined by Roy Amara, past president of Institute for the Future. That well-used and timely observation is known as Amara’s Law. This feels especially apt right “now” as we enter 2022,

Years before we knew how to spell “coronavirus,” I gained Italian citizenship while retaining my U.S. citizenship. My family’s plan was to, soon thereafter, split time for work and life between the U.S. and the E.U. Then, COVID-19 emerged as a pandemic the world over, and the move to Brussels in January 2020 was quite short-lived. Now, the plan is in play and I’m writing this post from our home in Brussels, Belgium. Why Brussels? Among many smart reasons, the city is welcoming, our farm-to-table food style is doable, the walkability is brilliant, and the transportation options are accessible to

Since the spike in hospitalizations and deaths topping 300,000 in the U.S., one day and week at a time, it appears that more Americans are moving on a continuum from being vaccine-hesitant toward vaccine-enthusiasm. The latest Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor for December 2020 quantifies this moving sentiment across several perspectives: Most Americans across political party believe the COVID-19 vaccine development process is moving at the right speed The number of Americans who would get a coronavirus vaccine if it were free and seen as safe grew since September, from 34% of people who would “definitely get it” to

While 85% of people are open to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, over one-half of them would want to wait some time to observe if after-effects developed in people who took the jab, according to a new study from Acxiom, the data analytics-marketing company. Not all people are as enthused about getting a coronavirus vaccine at all, Acxiom discovered: in fact, those hardest hit by the virus — Black people — would be the least-likely to want to get a COVID-19 vaccine, discussed in in Vaccine Hesitancy in the U.S., a survey the company conducted among 10,000 people in the U.S.

Patients embraced virtual care and communications at very high rates in the first months of the pandemic, and want to continue to use telehealth platforms after the pandemic ends. The new era of virtual care has begun and is here to stay, Accenture expects in its latest look at How COVID-19 will permanently alter patient behavior, a patient survey conducted in May 2020. Accenture polled 2,700 patients around the world, 450 participants each from China, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. Patients represented one of three conditions, with one-third each managing cardiovascular, immunology/rheumatology, and oncology. Topline, consumers “faced

The barbershop and beauty salon are important community touch points for health, wellness, and social connection in so many peoples’ lives. In my book, HealthConsuming: From Health Consumer to Health Citizen, I feature the black barbershop to introduce a chapter on “The New Retail Health.” In the COVID-19 pandemic, how we’re dealing with hair is a metaphor for personal control, for political statements, for mental health, and for overall well-being. Check out Geoff Coates’ (known as Sadochicken, from Vancouver) take on “how quarantine hairdos are lookin’,” here. Can you see yourself? I can (it’s the “Corona Bangs” style for me,

Nearly 3 in 4 Americans see their lives disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the early April Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll. This feeling holds true across most demographic factors: among both parents and people without children; men and women alike; white folks as well as people of color (although fewer people identifying as Hispanic, still a majority). There are partisan differences, however, in terms of who perceives a life-disruption due to COVID-19: 76% of Democrats believe this, 72% of Independents, and 70% of Republicans. Interestingly, only 30% of Republicans felt this way in March 2020, more than

The coronavirus has shaken U.S. consumer confidence, both in terms of financial markets and personal health risks. COVID-19 is re-shaping peoples’ behavior and daily choices, from using public transit to choosing where to shop, based on Morning Consult’s National Tracking Poll #200276 conducted February 28-March 1, 2020. Morning Consult surveyed 2,200 U.S. adults, finding that 3 in 4 Americans were concerned about the coronavirus outbreak. The first chart from the survey shows various consumer activities by peoples’ likelihood of choosing to do them. Clearly, our daily life-flows outside of our homes have been impacted by our perceived risks of the coronavirus:

With our HealthConsuming “health is everywhere” ethos, this post updates some of the most impactful recent retail health developments shaping consumers’ health/care touchpoints beyond hospitals, physicians, and health plans. For inspiration and context, I’ll kick off with Roz Chast’s latest New Yorker cartoon from the February 3rd 2020 issue — Strangers in the Night, taking place in a Duane Reade pharmacy. Roz really channels the scene in front of the pharmacy counter, from Q-tips to vitamins and tea. And it’s hummable to the tune of, well, Strangers in the Night. Check out the 24-hour pharmacist under the pick-up sign. Now,

U.S. employers are tightening their focus on mental and behavioral health, addressing workers’ chronic conditions, emphasizing women’s health, and allocating more resources to digital and telehealth investments, we learn from Optum’s Ten Years of Health and Well-Being at Work: Learning from our past and reimagining the future. Four in five medium, large and jumbo companies expect their spending on health and wellness programs will increase over the next three years. That spending will have a strong focus on behavioral health services: 9 in 10 employers are concerned with the level of access workers have to mental health services. Companies will

The vision/optical industry is one piece of the health/care ecosystem, but the segment has not been as directly impacted by patients’ new consumer muscles until just about now. It feels like the vision industry is at an inflection point at this moment, I intuited during yesterday’s convening of Decoding the Consumer: The new science of customer behavior, the theme of the 13th annual global leadership summit hosted by Vision Monday, a program of Jobson Medical Information which is part of the WebMD family. I was grateful to have an opportunity to share my views with attendees on the vision patient as

Most consumers would be willing to try an FDA-approved app or online to treat a medical condition, as well as receiving hospital care at home if would be less costly. We’ve reached an inflection point on the demand side among consumers for digital health options, PwC suggests in their report on the New Health Economy coming of age. The report outlines health/care industry issues for 2019, with a strong focus on digital health. Whether a menu of care options including virtual health to access specialists across the U.S., post-hospital virtual visits, or hospital care at-home, a majority of Americans supports

Family premiums for health insurance received at the workplace grew 5% in 2018: to $19,616, according to the 2018 KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). These two trends combine for a 212% increase in workers’ deductibles in the past decade. This is about eight times the growth of workers’ wages in the U.S. in the same period. Thus, the main takeaway from the study, KFF President and CEO Drew Altman noted, is that rising health care costs absolutely remain a burden for employers — but a bigger problem for workers in America. Given that

The saving rate in the U.S. ranks among the lowest in the world, in a country that rates among the richest nations. So imagine how well Americans save for healthcare? “Consumers are not disciplined about saving in general,” with saving for healthcare lagging behind other types of savings, Alegeus observes in the 2018 Alegeus Consumer Health & Financial Fluency Report. Alegeus surveyed 1,400 U.S. healthcare consumers in September 2017 to gauge peoples’ views on healthcare finances, insurance, and levels of fluency. As patients continue to take on more financial responsibility for healthcare spending in the U.S., they are struggling with finances and

If you live in one of nine U.S. states, your chances of having heart disease are greater than living in the 41 others. This geography-as-destiny for heart conditions is examined in The Burden of Cardiovascular Diseases Among US States, 1990-2016 published in JAMA Cardiology. Researchers analyzed data on cardiovascular disease mortality, nonfatal health outcomes, and risk factors by age, sex, and year from 1990 to 2016 for the U.S. population. The outcome used to measure health by state was cardiovascular disease disability-adjusted life-years, or DALYs (FYI, “DALYs” are a commonly used metric in health economics research).   Pennsylvania While overall cardiovascular

What if you went to visit a Vermeer still life with fruit, vegetables, and flowers, and the only image you saw in the famous painting was the flower and an urn? What if you heard the sounds of a juicing machine whirring as you reflected on a Rembrandt? That’s exactly what happened to museum-goers visiting Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. These art patrons witnessed a museum guard literally pulling an apple out of a painting, to leave a barren portrait of an urn and little else. Roll over, Anthony Oberman, the artist of “Still Life with Fruit in a Terracotta Dish,” one of

Chronic diseases are what kill most people in the world. In the U.S., the chronic disease burden takes a massive toll on both public health and mortality, accounting for 7 in 10 deaths in America each year. That personal health toll comes at a high price and proportion of national health expenditures. A new alliance between Livongo and Cambia Health seeks to address that challenge, beginning with diabetes and scaling to other chronic conditions. Livongo has proven out the Livongo for Diabetes program, which has demonstrated positive outcomes in terms of patient satisfaction and cost-savings. The plan with Cambia is

“It’s not about shiny new technologies but about designing relationships to truly impact the patient at the center of the disconnected ecosystem,” asserted Amy Cueva, Founder and CXO of the design consultancy Mad*Pow. That patient is a consumer, a caregiver; it’s you and me, Cueva explained. To reconnect the fragmented pieces of healthcare delivery, Cueva said, mantra-style, “collaboration is the new innovation.” And collaboration with patients, caregivers — the people for whom that healthcare is aimed — is the optimal workflow for effectively, enchantingly designing healthcare. In a talk she delivered at the Innovation Summit in a preconference meet-up at the annual

We are only just past the dawn of the second machine age, where digitization is enabling artificial intelligence. “Our new tools are destroying both trust and truth, creating a hunger for community and authenticity. We crave actual physical connection to neighbours, colleagues, and fellow townspeople, even if digitally facilitated.”  Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote this in a column I read this morning in the Financial Times titled, “Our struggle with technology to protect trust and truth.” Trust and truth underpin health engagement, we learned in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer launched ten years ago. Those were the early days of the formation

It’s February 1st, which marks the first of 28 days of American Heart  Month – a time to get real, embrace, learn about, and engage with heart health. Heart disease kills 610,000 people in the U.S. every year, equal to 1 in 4 deaths in America. It’s the leading cause of death for both men and women in the U.S. Knowing your blood pressure is an important step for managing the risks of heart disease. That hasn’t yet been available to those of us who quantify our steps, weight, sleep, food intake, and other health metrics. In 2017, Hugh Langley

THINK: money and love. To find health, working-aged people seek financial stability and good relationships, according to the Consumer Health POV Report from Welltok, meQuilibrium, and Zipongo, featured in their webinar broadcast today. The online consumer survey was conducted among 2,000 full-time working U.S. adults in August 2017, segmented roughly into thirds by Boomers (37%), Gen Xers (32%), and Millennials (31%). Much lower down the priority list for healthy living are managing food, sleep, and stress based on the poll. Feeling stress is universal across most consumers in each of the three generational cohorts, especially related to work and finance.

Obesity, conflict, and mental illness contribute most to the ill health and mortality of the world’s population – especially in the U.S., according to the annual Global Burden of Disease study published this month in The Lancet and funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. There’s good news and bad news in this research: on the upside, people are living longer. On the downside, there’s a lot of morbidity – that is, sub-optimal health – in those years. The study examines both YLLs (years of life lost) and YLDs (years lived with disability). “Death is a powerful motivator, both

Technology should serve people, and Accenture has identified five major key trends that, together, could forge a person-centered, -friendly, -empowering healthcare system. This is Accenture’s Digital Health Technology Vision for 2017. “Should” and “could” are the important adverbs here, because if tech doesn’t deliver, driving efficiency and effectiveness, personalizing medical treatments, and inspiring people to become more health literate and health-engaging, then tech is just a Field of Dreams being built and available, with no people taking advantage of the potential benefits. The five new-new tech trends are: AI is the new UI, where healthcare experience is everything Ecosystem power

U.S. consumers consider Consumer Electronics to be the most innovative industry they know. But people believe that Health & Wellness should be the most innovative sector in the economy. Welcome to the 2017 Klick Health Consumer Survey, which focuses on health innovation in the context of peoples’ hopes for technology to improve health and healthcare. 1 in 2 people say that technology has had a positive impact on their health and wellness, skewing slightly more toward younger people (although 45% of people 55 years of age and older agree that tech positively contributes to health. 41% of consumers say they’ve

For us mere humans, behavior change is hard. Changing health behaviors is really tough. Enter Dr. James Prochaska, who has been at the forefront of researching and understanding human and health behavior for several decades. He’s the father of the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TTM). I have the honor today to listen live to Dr. Prochaska’s talk at the Health Integrated EMPOWER conference in St. Petersburg, Florida, where I’ll be addressing attendees on the new health consumer tomorrow. “Empower,” indeed. Dr. Prochaska is all about how people have good intentions to make good health decisions, but we all slip and

The truest form of health reform and consumer-directed health care isn’t in a high-deductible health plan or a health savings account, and it doesn’t come out of Washington DC or your employer’s health benefits office. It comes from you in the form of self-care and DIY healthcare. In this case, think “inspired by sport, powered by you.” I’ll be participating on a panel at this weekend’s South-by-Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, along with three wellness innovators: Nick Buettner of the Blue Zones project, Mary Liz McCurdy of Google, and John Wilbanks from Sage Bionetworks. Together, our quartet will brainstorm the

Healthcare consumers are in a “state of denial,” according to research conducted for Alegeus, the consumer health benefits company. Overall, 3 in 4 consumers feel fear when it comes to their healthcare finances: most people worry about being hit with unexpected healthcare costs they can’t afford, and nearly half fear they won’t be able to afford their family’s healthcare needs. The wordle illustrates consumers’ mixed feelings about healthcare: while people feel frustrated, overwhelmed, powerless, confused and skeptical about healthcare in America, there are some emerging adjectives hinting at growing consumer health muscle-building: optimistic, hopeful, supported, engaged, accountable. Still, denial and

A special report on patient engagement and digital technology was published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Based on a survey of doctors and healthcare executives, the research found that clinicians and managers welcome the opportunity to use digital tech — when it makes financial sense. That conclusion inspired the title of the article, Patient Engagement Survey: Technology Tools Gain Support – But Cost Is a Hurdle. NEJM polled 595 members of the NEJM Catalyst Insights Council, which included healthcare executives and clinicians who deliver healthcare. Here is NEJM’s scenario on patient-engaging health IT, a Holy Grail of sorts:

This post was written to support the upcoming meeting of the PCHA, the Personal Connected Health Alliance, to be held 11-14 December 2016 at the Gaylord Hotel in greater Washington, DC. You can follow the events and social content via Twitter using the hashtag #Connect2Health. Have you visited your local Big Box, discount or consumer electronics store lately? You’ll find expanding shelf space for digital health technologies aimed squarely at consumers. 2017 promises even more of them, aimed at helping people accomplish health tasks once  performed in hospitals and by healthcare providers, or tasks not yet delivered in today’s healthcare

People living in only 1 in 10 homes with broadband are “very interested” in connected health services, like a personal health coach, a remote health monitoring app that connects to and notifies a healthcare provider, or a clinician collecting vital signs virtually. This finding comes out of a survey from Parks Associates. This is a relatively low consumer demand statistic for digital health, compared with many other surveys we’ve mined here on Health Populi. While these are not apples-to-apples comparisons — note that Parks Associates focus on broadband households — a recent study to consider is Accenture’s consumer research published in March

J.D. Power, the company best known for evaluating consumers’ experiences with automobiles, published its 2016 Fitness Band Device Satisfaction Report this week. The bar chart summarizes overall satisfaction with activity tracking wristbands, led by Samsung with the highest index score, followed by Garmin. Below the average index were LG, Fitbit, and Jawbone. Samsung’s top grade translates into J.D. Power’s methodology as “among the best” fitness bands, based on a 1,000 point scale. Samsung’s high ranking was earned based on particularly strong scores for customer satisfaction in comfort, reliability, and ease of use. Garmin’s customer service was also highly rated, along

How can digital technologies enable self-healthcare in novel ways? This was the theme of a meeting sponsored by Pfizer Consumer Healthcare and hosted by Google, with the title, “Advancing Consumer Health through New Technology and Next Generation OTC Healthcare” held on 12th April 2016 at Google offices in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Pharmaceutical brand drugs switching to over-the-counter packaged goods, the Cellscope Otoscope used by parents checking their young children’s earaches, connected shoes and earbuds for athletic enhancement, and omni-channel retail shopping….these are a few of the signals we see emerging to enable consumers’ to drive healthy behaviors, wellness and self-healthcare. Speakers

When I say “Fitbit,” you may think, “digital health.” When I mention “Gatorade,” “Nestle,” and “Dannon,” you might think, “drink,” “chocolate,” and “yogurt.” But soon, the phrase “digital health” will come to mind. That’s because a growing list of food manufacturers is looking to digital technologies to bake (or cook, blend, or mix) health into their value propositions. “Gatorade Taps Into Tech-Thirsty Consumers” is an article published in today’s Wall Street Journal, page B1 in the Business & Tech section of the newspaper. Mike Estrel writes that Gatorade is going high tech, working on a “smart cap” bottle with a microchip

Retailers in the U.S. are morphing into health destinations in 2016. Members of Target’s management team attended the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and shared their perspectives in the company blog. Among the Target teams observations came from the Chief Marketing Officer, Jeff Jones, who observed, “A tidal wave of newness is coming to fitness technology and many companies are on the cusp of changing the game. From nutrition and sleep to how you exercise, it’s all going to be measured, linked and tracked. Wearables are here to stay and getting smarter every year.” The Senior Vice President for Hardlines,

It’s Christmastime, so I’m thinking about connections. “Connectivity” can be social (offline and online), which is indeed a health factor (see Christakis and Fowler on being Connected). But the kind of connectivity to which I’m referring is broadband, WiFi, the kind most often associated with data plans, cable to the home, and free WiFi at your favorite coffee or fast food joint. That kind of connectivity is also a social determinant of health, and is increasingly becoming so for all people. Yet as peoples’ need for internet connectivity is fast growing, especially for health, home broadband connectivity has reached a

Food + Drink, Beauty, Tech + Innovation, Retail, Lifestyle…JWT pulls out their crystal ball for 2016, and I see health, everywhere. The Future 100 – Trends and Change to Watch in 2016 is J. Walter Thompson Intelligence Innovation Group’s annual trend forecast, which I highly value and mine each year to help THINK-Health continue to hone our own environmental analyses for health and healthcare. [Here’s what I wrote one year ago about JWT’s 2015 forecast]. Health is baked into JWT’s 2016 trendscape, well beyond their “Health” chapter. Even the report’s introduction is health-flavored: “As forecasters, we’re watching the rapid metabolism

A Switzerland-based health insurance company is piloting how members’ activity tracking could play a role in setting premiums. The insurer, CSS, is one of the largest health insurance companies in the country and received a “most trusted general health insurance” brand award in 2015 from Reader’s Digest in Switzerland. The company is conducting the pilot, called the MyStep project, with volunteers from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the Unviersity of St. Gallen. According to an article on the program published in the Swiss newspaper The Local, “the pilot aims to discover to what extend insured people are

CVS quit selling cigarettes and tobacco products in 2014, made $139 bn, and saved 65,000 lives. That’s the best kind of retail health there is. It’s been a year since CVS quit selling cigarettes, I’m reminded by a one-page ad in today’s Wall Street Journal on page B5. This is a big investment in an ad for a business strategy that’s had a huge return-on-investment. The ad reads: “One year ago, we took a deep breath and quit selling cigarettes in our pharmacies. Now we’re working to create a tobacco-free world. We just want to help everyone, everywhere, breathe easier,”

Sales of computers and tablets and LCD TVs won’t be hot on peoples’ holiday shopping lists in 2015. But smartwatches, health and fitness tech, and 4K Ultra HD TVs will be in peoples’ gift wish-lists and under homes’ holiday trees. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) published its 2015 U.S. Consumer Electronics Sales and Forecasts report, and it shows a shifting retail picture where traditional consumer electronics categories — notably computers and mainstream TVs — are declining in demand. But new-new categories are expected to buoy 2015 retail sales. The new categories of consumer electronics will generate about $10 bn (wholesale

In this week’s posts on Health Populi, we’re diving into three big reports focused on digital health and the Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare: from the McKinsey Global Institute, Goldman Sachs, and Accenture. In this post, we dig into Goldman Sachs’ analysis, The Digital Revolution comes to US Healthcare, the investment firm’s fifth volume in their Internet of Things report series. Goldman Sachs’ definition of the Healthcare IoT is, “a device that is connected via the Internet and informs clinical decision making,” which bridges digital and physical worlds “to change physician and patient behavior.” The firm identifies three IoT

Digital health is a fast-growing category of consumer electronics, and many new mobile and wearable health devices were featured at the 2015 CE Week held in New York City. The major themes of the “Fresh Gear” unveiled at the meeting included connected cars, connected home devices, 3-D printing, and a growing array of wristbands, apps, and wearable devices focused on the already-crowded health/wellness segment, and the emerging health/care area. The five I’ll focus on are good examples of digital health tech’s aimed at mainstream consumers shopping at retail at the middle of the market: an area that’s ripe to be served.

People in the U.S. spend over five-and-a-half hours a day with digital media in 2015, with time on mobile devices exceeding use of laptop and desktop computers. The growth of mobile means people are using and seeking more just-in-time services in daily living, and this has big implications for health/care, based on the annual mega-report on Internet Trends from Mary Meeker, KPCB’s internet analyst. “People” in health/care are patients, consumers and caregivers; people in health/care are also health plan administrators, employer benefits managers, doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, financial managers in hospitals, pharmacists, and the entire range of humans who