-Monday is a transitional day at South by Southwest, with the weekenders shipping out and the music nuts not set to arrive until Tuesday or Wednesday. We’ll be spending it recording podcasts and congregating with smart health people and whatnot.
-There are plenty of marketers and techies from big pharma companies here at SXSW, and a solid 62.5% of them have the word “innovation” in their job titles. Yet unless you accost them in the split-second between when they put down their buffet plates and when they reach for their phones, they’re disappointingly inaccessible. The business needs more ambassadors like Shwen Gwee, whose energy and boundless enthusiasm for all things SXSW Health is amazing and, frankly, a little intimidating.
-Despite not having disrupted anything recently except my kids’ game of “who can jump highest off the hood of the car?,” I made it past the bouncer at the annual Health Disruptors Dinner last night. Two takeaways: first, that Health and Human Services CTO Ed Simcox kicks quite a bit of ass on the drums; and second, that the red mole sauce, prepared by Page Pressley — I’m told this is important to mention, though I generally don’t distinguish between celebrity chefs and ramen meisters — liquefied the inside of my face to the extent that most partygoers now know me as “the snot guy.” I regret nothing.
-Forced to choose between two A-list panels due to dummyhead scheduling, I attended Reimagining the Patient/Doctor Relationship instead of Beating the Hype of AI in Healthcare. After hours of semi-informed conversations about healthcare’s data era, I’ve reached a point where the letters “A” and “I” paired in close proximity make me want to bolt for the door. We gotta be careful, or “AI” is soon going to be relegated to the scrapheap of Things Health-Adjacent People Quite Don’t Understand But Reference Multiple Times In Casual Conversation Because They Think It Makes Them Sound Plugged-In.
-Somebody brought an infant into the Patient/Doctor session. That’s some fine parentin’, yo.
-Smart people saying smart, pithily quotable stuff: “The amount of VC money being pumped into the telemedicine space right now is a huge indicator as to where we see opportunity growing.” — Maria Miller, Life By Spot
-I came away disappointed from A Better Future Through Digital Health, because it didn’t deliver on its titular promise. It felt less like a look forward than a recap of the recent past, with a more cheerleader-y tone than the results merited. There were, however, some interesting bits about the use of incentives to convince people to take better care of themselves, such as $100 into an HSA when you schedule your annual physical exam.
-I may not have gotten the exact wording down, but BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina’s Sarah Martin said something to the extent of “incentives provide awareness for health initiatives, but longer-term, a couple things are more important: workplace culture is more important and personalization is most important.” The insurer did a study of type 2 diabetes patients and found that personalization promoted “more sustained engagement” with healthy behaviors than incentives did. That seems an important learning.
– Katie Couric remains the universe’s most effortlessly smooth and disarming panel moderator.
– The next scooterer who comes within arm’s reach of me is getting clotheslined.
