A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

Most people in the U.S. use at least one medical device at home — likely a blood pressure monitor. used by nearly one-half of people based on a survey of 2,000 consumers conducted for Propel Software.                    The Propel study’s insights build on what we know is a growing ethos among health consumers seeking to take more control over their health care and the rising costs of medical bills and out-of-pocket expenses. That includes oral health and dental bills: 2 in 5 U.S. consumers use electric toothbrushes (a growing smart-device category at the

People define health across many life-flows: physical health, mental health, social health, appearance (“how I look impacts how I feel”) and, to be sure, financial well-being. In tracking this last health factor for U.S. consumers, several pollsters are painting a picture of financially-stressed Americans as President Trump tallies his first six weeks into the job. The top-line of the studies is that the percent of people in America feeling financially wobbly has increased since the fourth quarter of 2024. I’ll review these studies in this post, and discuss several potential impacts we should keep in mind for peoples’ health and

The world would be a better place if we had more, and better quality sleep. That’s the hopeful conclusion from the fifth annual Global Sleep Survey from ResMed.               ResMed’s global reach with the sleeping public enabled the company to access the perspectives of over 30,000 respondents in 13 markets, finding that one in 3 people have trouble falling or staying asleep 3 or more times a week. We now live in “a world struggling with poor sleep” — “a world without rest,” ResMed coins our sleepless situation. The irony is that most people believe

The partisan divide in the U.S., exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, could set the stage for another public health emergency given eroding trust in institutions — especially in media, government, and public health officials. I base this sobering forecast on the latest study from the Pew Research Center which polled people in the U.S. about their pandemic-perspectives, detailed in the report 5 Years Later: America Looks Back at the Impact of COVID-19. Couple these findings with the recent dismissal of public health “disease detectors” working with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and what is currently termed a “quademic” (that

In the wake of the always-creative ads for Super Bowl and last Sunday’s LIX bout, game-watchers got to see a plethora of commercials dedicated to the annual event’s major features: food and game-day eating. Oh, and what’s turned out to be the most controversial commercial, the one on GLP-1s from Hims & Hers. In that vein, and converging with many news and policy events, I’m trend-weaving the latest insights into that most consumer-facing of the social determinants of health: food, and in particular, health consumers viewing and adopting food as part of their health and well-being moves. First, to the

In researching several .gov websites from last Monday 20th January 2025, I had an ongoing frustrating user experience in being faced with “404 Error” messages like this one from WhiteHouse.gov. “President Trump’s First Week Hammered Public Health,” Dr. Arthur Kellerman, an ER doc, public health researcher, and patient advocate asserted in Forbes yesterday: “For now, the only health communications Americans receive will come from sources outside the government, such as professional societies, non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups, and businesses, vaccine skeptics, conspiracy theorists, foreign agents and bots posing as Americans to spread disinformation. It will be up to us to figure out what to

There were over 4,500 exhibitors on the show floor of the 2025 CES in Las Vegas last week, addressing every imaginable aspect of consumers’ daily lives as we increasingly coexist with technology to support life, liberty, and our personal pursuits of happiness….. ….and health. My focus is always on health, and in the past decade and a half, health/care, everywhere. So my lens on #CES2025 looked out for specific point solutions for health, medical care, fitness and well-being, along with adjacencies for mobility/auto, environmental health (think: clean air, clean water), kitchen appliances and food-tech, and home care (not the medical

CES 2025: as you read the acronym and year, your brain registered an image like consumer technology and the start of a new year, or some variation of those thoughts. When you saw the title of this post with the acronym “GLP-1,” your brain might not have connected the dots between a medicine and “CE,” consumer electronics. But here we are in real-time, in real life, at the convergence of pharmaceuticals and medicines and consumer-facing technology. And keep in mind that we’re at the annual meeting of CES which is convened by the Consumer Technology Association, CTA. GLP-1s are showing

Health/care is everywhere is the mantra on the back of my business card. And at #CES2025, that will indeed be the situation.           The 2025 convening of CES (once known as the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas officially kicks off on 7 January 2025. But I’ll be there beginning 3rd January, scheduling pre-show meetings with innovators, analysts, and my own clients who will be attending the meeting. This will be my 15th year participating in CES, and marking over a decade as a member of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). As someone who has tracked

One in two U.S. adults plans to purchase at least one health and wellness digital health technology product to gift during the winter 2024 holiday season, according to the 2024 Consumer Technology Holiday Purchase Patterns study served up by CTA, the Consumer Technology Association — aka the annual host of CES. Specifically, 41% of givers are looking to buy a dedicated health monitoring device, and 31% a product covering connected sports or fitness.             For this annual study, CTA conducted an online survey among 1,205 U.S. adults 18 and over in August-September 2024 to gauge

Among 127 health determinants, two rank highest: digital divides in the era of tech-enabled health  and care: digital divides that shape a person’s political, economic, and social environment, and the person’s health/disability status.               The digital transformation of health and care compel us to re-consider and re-frame social determinants of health in the “digital age,” which is what the World Health Organization in collaboration with the London School of Economics have done in research, published this week in the report, Addressing health determinants in a digital age. The report was funded by the European

In our home, we’re feeling very grateful for our healthy lives and work-flows right now, being very mindful about seeing blessings around me and within me…. So I’m sharing the love (or “scaling the love” as I recently coined at OSF’s Digital Health Symposium!) to honor American Thanksgiving 2024 here in Health Populi pointing out several sources highlighting the evidence on gratitude and health….underpinned with love, the ultimate driver of health and well-being.           Leslie Sarasin, President and CEO of FMI, the Food Industry Association, reminds us that, “Our immigrant ancestors, the pilgrim settlers, worked hard

A new report from the OECD asks the question, “How’s Life?” with the tagline letting us know the plotline focuses on “well-being and resilience in times of crisis.”       The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has tracked the well-being of member nations for the past six years, taking a broad view on the definition of holistic health — including physical, mental, financial, and social aspects of people living in OECD countries. The first “How’s Life?” report was published at the height of the global financial crisis; the authors of this report introduce it saying that, “the

Two in three people in the U.S. are dealing with Presidential Election Stress — a significant contributor to Americans’ overall stress we learn from the American Psychological Association’s study into Stress in America 2024.                I’ve covered the APA’s Stress in America studies for many years, appreciating the role that anxiety and stress play in peoples’ overall health status and well-being. In 2024, “stress” is a mainstream factor in daily life whether you identify with Main Street or Wall Street. Here was my most recent post on the APA study here in Health Populi,

Today I am keynoting the OSF Digital Health Symposium in Peoria, IL, discussing The State(s) of Digital Health. A double-entendre intended, one of the states I’ll be discussing is the migration of acute care back to peoples’ homes, embedded with sensors, householders donning smart rings, and rooms fitted with Internet-of-Things for health and well-being.             In this context, news that Samsung has begun to partner with Ashley, the national furniture dealer, struck me as interesting and important. I visited the Samsung Health House at CES 2024 last January: here is my write-up about what I

Lululemon has published the 2024 Global Well-Being Report, a study into peoples’ perspectives on their personal health from the company best known for athleisure wear and self-care. This year’s report is titled, The Pressure to Be Well. That pressure is coming from peoples’ experiencing “well-being burnout.” In the company’s fourth annual report on well-being, Lululemon learned that most people have tried to adopt personal strategies to bolster their health, and one-half of these folks are confronting “well-being burnout.” Lululemon collaborated with Edelman Data & Intelligence to field the study in April and May 2024 in 15 markets where the company

In the U.S., aging in and staying at home is a priority for most people over the age of 45 — and for nearly one-half of younger people between 18 and 44 — we learn in Best Buy Health’s Research Brief discussing the company’s survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers.               Best Buy Health, the health-focused operation which is part of the electronics retailer Best Buy, worked with Sage Growth Partners to assess 1,000 U.S. consumers, 18 years and over, on their perspectives on health care, technology, aging in place, and caregiving. The research was fielded

AARP found that 7 in 10 people ages 50+ are “app-receptive” for health and wellness apps in Unlocking Health and Wellness Apps: Experiences of Adults Age 50-Plus, a summary of research conducted with U.S. consumers 50 and over from AARP.           The methodology for this study included only older consumers who were comfortable in downloading apps to smartphones or tablets, and were willing to do so — whom AARP considered the target audience for this research. In addition, the respondents surveyed were also at least interested in trying apps designed for health and wellness, thus dubbed “health

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

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) was founded in 1945 by a group of scientists concerned about the atomic bomb — sharing a mission to focus on technology, science, and innovation to, in the Association’s words, “work toward a safer, more equitable, and more peaceful world.”           Nearly 80 years after the organization’s launch, the FAS is focusing on the growing role of artificial and augmented intelligence across the many areas that touch peoples’ lives — including health care and well-being. The FAS published a state-of-the-nation essay on June 27 on Improving Health Equity Through AI.

At least one-half of U.S. health care organizations have experienced a data breach, one-third in the last 3 years, according to Software Advice’s 2024 Healthcare Data Security Survey released in May 2024.               Of the health care organizations who experienced ransomware attacks, one-third did not recover patient data from the cyber-attackers, Software Advice learned. Clearly, cyberattacks are impacting patient care. And the growth of home care, hospital-to-home, and greater self-care are also increasing risks for cybersecurity. The growing adoption of digital technologies in healthcare, from the hospital to the doctor’s office to the home,

“The greatest opportunity offered by AI is not reducing errors or workloads, or even curing cancer: it is the opportunity to restore the precious and time-honored connection and trust,” Dr. Eric Topol wrote in his 2019 book, Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. In the five years since Dr. Topol looked for AI to bolster the human-touch in health care, we’ve lived, worked, and muddled our way through the COVID-19 pandemic and witnessed the growing epidemic of burnout among clinicians, the front-line of medical care. I recalled Dr. Topol’s assertion on AI’s promise for humanizing health

Welcome to post #2 of 3, publishing the results of three dialogue sessions between Richard Kaufmann, CISO of Amedisys, and me. The timing of our conversations, tracking both Richard’s and the company’s evolving approach to cybersecurity in health care, has coincided with the Change Healthcare breach and ransom that emerged in February 2024. This second blog of the three is being edited just days after Andrew Witty’s testimony to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee which convened a hearing on May 1st themed, “Hacking America’s Health Care: Assessing the Change Healthcare Cyber Attack and What’s Next.” UnitedHealth Group acquired Change Healthcare

This post follows up Part 1 of a two-part series I’ve prepared in advance of the AHIP 2024 conference where I’ll be brainstorming these scenarios with a panel of folks who know their stuff in technology, health care and hospital systems, retail health, and pharmacy, among other key issues. Now, let’s dive into the four alternative futures built off of our two driving forces we discussed in Part 1.             The stories: 4 future health care worlds for 2030 My goal for this post and for the AHIP panel is to brainstorm what the person’s

How many people do you know that don’t know their cholesterol or their BMI, their net worth or IQ, their credit score, astrological sign, or ancestry pie-chart? Chances are fewer and fewer as most people have gained access to medical records and lab test results on patient portals, calorie burns on smartwatches, credit scores via monthly credit card payments online, and completing spit tests from that popularly gifted Ancestry DNA test kits received during the holiday season.                       Meet “The Guy Who Didn’t Know His Cholesterol” conceived by Roz Chast,

“Clinical transformation with AI is easier without patients.” When Dr. Grace Cordovano heard this statement on a panel of physicians convening to share perspectives on the future of AI in health care held in early March 2024, the board-certified patient advocate felt, in her words, “insulted on behalf of the patient communities I know that are working tirelessly to advance AI that works for them.” “The healthcare ecosystem and policy landscape must formally recognize patients as end-users and co-creators of AI,” Cordovano wrote to me in an e-mail exchange. “Patients, their care partners, caregivers, and advocates are already utilizing AI

With the urgent need to identify more efficient and lower-cost health care delivery models, we look to growing evidence for digital health technologies that support the Hospital at Home (HaH) model, considered in a new review article published in late February in npj Digital Medicine, The hospital at home in the USA: current status and future prospects. Clinicians from Scripps Research and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine collaborated on this work, calling out the relatively fast adoption of HaH programs during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In some parts of the world, such as Australia and Norway, “in-person at-home

A “rebel” is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, Merriam-Webster tells us that a rebel is a person who opposes or takes up arms against a government or a ruler. As a verb, “to rebel” is to oppose or disobey one in authority or control, or otherwise renounce and resist by force the authority of one’s government.” An additional definition of the verb is, “to feel or exhibit anger or revulsion.” If you’ve been a patient facing a diagnosis of an illness, whether rare or common, you may well have felt these various feelings stirring inside your self.

For health care, AI can benefit diagnosis and clinical care, address paperwork and bureaucratic duplication and waste, accelerate scientific research, and personalize health care direct-to-patients and -caregivers. On the downside, risks of AI in health care can involve incomplete or false diagnoses, inaccuracies and errors in cleaning up paperwork, exacerbate differential access to scientific knowledge, and exacerbate health disparities, explained in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report, Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health.             WHO has released guidance on the use of large multi-modal models (LMMs) in health care which detail 40+ recommendations for

Today as we appreciate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., I post a photo of him in my hometown of Detroit in 1963, giving a preliminary version of the “I Have a Dream” speech he would deliver two months later in Washington, DC.               Wisdom from the speech: “But now more than ever before, America is forced to grapple with this problem, for the shape of the world today does not afford us the luxury of an anemic democracy. The price that this nation must pay for the continued oppression and exploitation of the

The heart is a major health-category at CES 2024, from wristband wearable tech to remote health monitoring devices enabling cardiovascular hospital-to-home care. Abbott, one of the first life science companies to exhibit at CES back in 2022, announced the HeartMates program here at #CES2024 today as part of a panel titled Ahead of the Game: Revolutionizing Athlete Safety with Emerging Health Tech. I have both professional and personal interests in athlete safety, having two nephews who have been involved in acute sports injury and brain health. The panel discussion featured the latest research findings on injury prevention and recovery, with

Even with serious concerns about personal data privacy and lack of integration, “connected products” are an integral aspect of peoples’ everyday lives. That’s the central thesis in a timely report from Capgemini Research Institute, Connected products: Enhancing consumers’ lives with technology.           This study is well-timed as we begin a week-long exploration into the latest technology innovations being unveiled at CES 2024, the annual mega-conference hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). For the consumer research, Capgemini’s team polled the perspectives of 10,000 consumers age 18+ in November, among people from 13 countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany,

Not known for its salubrious qualities, Las Vegas will nonetheless be a locus for health, medical care, and well-being inspiration next week when the Consumer Technology Association convenes the annual CES featuring innovations in consumer technology.               Ten years ago here in Health Populi, I wrote about New Year’s Resolutions for Health and the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. Then, one-third of consumers were keen to buy health tracking technology but most of those people were healthy, CTA’s research found. I talked about the “battle of the (wrist)bands” witnessed at CES 2013, and spotted the

Most people in the U.S. are bullish on the role AI will play in health care in 2024, especially to lower access barriers to care and to diagnose and detect health conditions. Two new studies point to the consumerization of AI in healthcare, from Medtronic and Deloitte. This post weaves their findings together and suggests some planning points for 2024. Medtronic collaborated with Morning Consult to poll 2,213 U.S. adults in late September 2023 to gauge peoples’ perspectives on AI and health care.                   With such optimism among health consumers comes some

While health care has been slower than other industries to leverage digital transformation, COVID-19 accelerated change — revealing some key barriers blocking the potential for more fulsome transformation, the OECD explains in its latest version of Health At A Glance for 2023 with a detailed chapter on “digital health at a glance.”                   The OECD report assesses digital health maturity across 22 countries: in addition to the U.S., the report provides details digital health traits in (alphabetically) Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea,

The U.S. is “a nation recovering from collective trauma,” the according to the latest survey on Stress in America 2023 from the American Psychological Association (APA).             The APA has been quantifying Stress in America since 2007; for context, at the end of that year The Great Recession kicked in, and in response President Obama’s team put together assistance to bolster the national economy, jobs, and health technology (codified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). American health citizens are experiencing a deja vu in 2023 akin to their financial stress experienced in the APA 2008 Stress

Clinicians’ feeling burnout is the top morale challenge facing U.S. doctors, driven by turnover and understaffing, compassion fatigue, and challenges using digital tools — think EHRs. The 2023 BDO Clinician Experience Survey “takes on” clinician burnout, connecting the strategic dots between the clinician experience and the patient experience.                       BDO surveyed 153 clinician leaders in June and July 2023; one-half of the clinicians were executive leaders, and one-fourth were each direct clinician providers and clinician directors. Roles reached into the C-suite (one-third), and other levels in their organizations.    

One half-of health care financial leaders plan to invest in technology to cut costs — and most believe that AI has the potential to re-define the entire finance function as they look to Leading the transformation, a study conducted by U.S. Bank among U.S. health finance leaders thinking about emerging technologies.               U.S. Bank fielded a survey among 200 senior health care financial leaders in the U.S., 30% of whom were group CFOs, 20% regional/divisional CFOs, 25% senior managers, and the remaining various flavors of financial managers. All respondents were responsible for at least $100

What if….you were given the opportunity to build a health system from scratch in this new era of platforms, cloud computing, AI and machine learning, curious-digital-empowered consumers, and collaborators in retail and community settings operating close to peoples’ homes and workplaces? With the HLTH 2023 Conference meeting up in Vegas these past couple of days, this “what if” scenario can be constructed with announcements coming out of the meeting, coupled with recent developments in the larger health/care ecosystem.             Start with General Catalyst’s news of engaging Dr. Marc Harrison, most recently CEO of Intermountain Health,

“What omnichannel really means: hearing the customer wherever they are and making them feel heard, valued, and understood.” That statement comes from Qualtrics’ explanation of omnichannel experience design. The very human needs of feeling one is heard, is valued, and is understood, underpin the rasion d’etre of omnichannel marketing. And these very values are those that underpin the trust between patients and providers and the large healthcare ecosystem.         It’s Telehealth Awareness Week, led by the ATA. I celebrate and support the effort; this Health Populi post explains the Association’s mantra that Telehealth is Health, and that

Most U.S. consumers will continue to spend their disposable incomes on connected consumer devices, but will be looking for more balance in their digital lives according to Deloitte’s fourth annual 2023 Connected Consumer Survey.                 In this year’s update, the Deloitte Center for Technology, Media & Telecommunications found that most households use five key digital devices daily: above all, smartphones, followed by laptop and desktop computers, tablets, and computer monitors. Most consumers who own smartwatches and health and fitness trackers also use those devices every day, as shown in the household penetration/usage chart

Nearly all patients are concerned about their medical records getting leaked or breached, which is The State of Patient Privacy, the title of a consumer study from Health Gorilla with a headline finding that “Patients don’t trust Big Tech with their health data.”             With trust the “backbone” of health information exchange, Health Gorilla calls out, we have to face a big challenge here as health care enters its own sort of industrial revolution embedded AI and data analytics across the health/care ecosystem. How to re-build trust with the very technology that can help health care,

Now in Aisle E(commerce) – get your one-year membership to One Medical for $149. Today and tomorrow are Amazon Prime Days, 2023 style, when you can fetch bargains on lots of electronics (esp. deeply-discounted Amazon-branded devices), sporting goods, kitchen gear, pet supplies, and even groceries (saving with Amazon Fresh getting $20 off $100+ orders on Prime Day).                       And among a vast menu of health, medical, and well-being offerings from collagen to gym equipment and blood pressure monitors is that One Medical membership good for a year of services. “On-demand

In 2023, U.S. consumers’ purchases of technology in their households will contract this year. Consumer-facing health-tech categories won’t be spared, we learn in the 2023 U.S. Consumer Technology Ownership & Market Potential Study, an annual update from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).             On the upside, smartwatch market penetration held steady in 2023, as this favorite form of wearable technology is “providing consumers a personalized digital health and fitness dashboard at their fingertips.” Many of these new smartwatch purchases will be cellular-enabled, blurring the space between smartphones and watches. One in five households intends to purchase

“It seemed like an odd pairing: shampoo and a throat swab,” observes a new report on the growth of retail health from Definitive Healthcare. But retail clinics are no longer, as the paper explains, “an experiment of a few grocery stores….they’re becoming a major force in the U.S. healthcare system,” asserts the thesis of Retailers in healthcare: A catalyst for provider evolution.                 While the use of emergency departments fell by 1% in the past five years, the use of retail clinics expanded by 70%, Definitive Healthcare calculated. Most retail clinics are owned by

Using the Internet and mobile health apps are as mainstream as swiping left for a date and researching features in a new car, based on the Digital 2023 Global Overview Report from Meltwater. The broad coverage of this kind of research can’t be accomplished by just one entity, and Meltwater acknowledges the partners who brought them to this research-party: these included data.ai, GSMA Intelligence, GWI, Locowise, Ookla, PPRO, SemRush, Similarweb, Skai, and Statista. In this 400+ page report, you can find most datapoints you’re interested in covering the global consumers’ use of the internet, mobile apps, and social media. I

With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, there’s no shortage of press releases promoting a wide range of services and programs emerging from both the public and private sectors. In the wake of the COVID-19 public health crisis, the exposed epidemic-beyond-the-pandemic of mental health has inspired many collaborations between public, private commercial and not-for-profit organizations. These have begun to embed mental health into the larger retail health ecosystem. I’ll point to several examples as signposts for this phenomenon.           Walgreens and Mental Health America – This collaboration expands Walgreens’ work with Mental Health America focusing in

“Can employers afford not to care?” MetLife’s 21st annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study asks and answers that question, with a resounding and evidence-based “NO.”                 I’m in Salt Lake City today discussing the drivers of health, “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” at the Virgin Pulse Thrive Summit, celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the company. As you would expect from an organization that is part of Richard Branson’s business ecosystem, the meeting will be energetically produced, delivering insights wrapped in info-taining ways. One of those features will be my being invited to create a

Most consumers are bullish on the benefits that digital health technologies can play in their health. Most health care practitioners are also positive about the potential of digital health — recognizing room for improvement for better data integration, interoperability, and the opportunity to bridge gaps to achieve health equity and bolster access. So assesses the Consumer Technology Association in the report, Driving Consumer Adoption of Digital Health Solutions, To paint this profile, CTA engaged Ipsos to poll 1,000 U.S. consumers 18 years and older, 300 health care providers (HCPs), and 12 health tech company stakeholders in August and September 2022.