- Allergan CEO Brent Saunders said the company could curb DTC TV advertising in favor of digital marketing spend. “A big part of our DTC budget is national television advertising,” he said on a third-quarter earnings call, “and there are social media and other analytics techniques that are emerging, I think, that are going to allow us to do that a lot more efficiently.” Women’s health brands have been shifting spend from TV to social amidst a “backlash against the traditional ads on TV,” and TV advertising’s share of U.S. ad spending across all industries is projected to fall below 30% by 2021, curbed by growing numbers of younger-skewing “cord-cutters” and “cord-nevers,” expected to comprise upwards of 50 million viewers this year.
- Allergan’s Sanders also said Amazon’s anticipated healthcare entry is a plus, because “the drug distribution channel also should be disrupted with improvements based on technology or efficiency, and Pfizer’s Ian Read concurs. But elsewhere in the sector, the Great Amazon Freakout of 2017 continues. CVS is prepping next-day or same-day drug delivery (and probably weighing a merger with Aetna), while UnitedHealth is watching the throne. CNBC has a look at what healthcare companies might be acquisition targets if Amazon goes shopping in the space.
- Researchers in Canada and Italy have developed an algorithm that can predict which patients with memory loss will develop Alzheimers with 84% accuracy based on PET scans.
- Suicidality can be spotted in “a distinctive neural signature” detectable by an algorithm using brain imaging more than 90% of the time, according to the authors of a very small (and as-yet unreproduced) study.
- An app that “provides personalized predictions of migraine episodes” for sufferers is being studied by Mayo Clinic and Allergan. It employs machine learning to build a “personal predictive model” through input from smartphone or fitness tracker sensors, including weather, activity, sleep and stress, and can predict migraines with 85% accuracy after 15 episodes.
- What might tracker sensors cover five years from now? Noninvasive blood pressure and blood sugar readings are the holy grails in the medium term, along with mental health.
- Can VR be used to treat chronic pain? Dr. Brennan Spiegel, of MyGIHealth fame (and Ceders-Sinai), is experimenting with doing so, and has conducted clinical trials in which a set of goggles has reduced pain by 25%.
- The VA has established a “healthcare improvement center” that USA Today describes as an “Uber-like control room for veteran health care,” allowing VA administrators to monitor metrics like mortality rates, incidences of avoidable complications and wait times in real time.
- The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is investing $2 billion in building 3 “digitally-based specialty hospitals” in partnership with Microsoft. The hospitals, focusing on cancer, heart and transplant, and vision and rehabilitation, will have physical locations at several existing UPMC sites but will have no additional beds.
- We’ve puzzled over the persistence of the fax machine as a fixture of medical offices eight years after the Health IT Act put EHR systems in nearly every practice. Vox has the story, one of EHR systems and physician’s practices that still don’t talk to one another, and of unintended consequences of a policy that was meant to both digitize U.S. healthcare and give the economy a shot in the arm.
- Hardly consolation for the fact that we’re still using faxes, but DrChrono has incorporated Apple’s Face ID tech to let docs view EMRs without logging in.
- The scandal over allegedly inflated waiting room reach figures from point of care health info firm Outcome Health has big clients like BMS and Omnicom canceling or suspending contracts with them.
- WPP says ad agencies will have to get used to low growth in revenues, thanks to “frenemies” Facebook and Google, competition from consultancies and zero-based budgeting by clients. Meanwhile, the holding company is investing in online patient community The Mighty, which just completed a funding round.
- By popular acclaim, “KOL” has earned its place in the alphabet soup of pharma industry acronyms. The MSL Society surveyed MSLs and med affairs professionals to determine what they call HCP influencers. “KOL” was used by 62% of respondents and was the preferred term of a 42% plurality, followed by “thought leader (14%)” and “medical expert (13%).”
