Category Archives: Healthcare

COVID-19: Applauding a powerful messaging that serves as call to action

The long awaited break to end the pandemic phase of COVID-19 pandemic we all await continues to elude us despite many breakthrough control tools and measures. In times like these when participation of everyone is needed, succinct and clear messaging is a key – and we dedicate this post to applaud one powerful and succinct statement.

Applauding a COVID-19 messaging

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COVID-19 Vaccines: Hits, Misses, Mandates and Charting the Post-pandemic Normal

While we await the end of the pandemic phase of COVID-19 and to begin the new normal, we recognize the rapid development and deployment of vaccines as one of the biggest success of science, technology, regulatory flexibility. That and the rapid and effective role played by governments in many parts of the world as highlights of what we as a society can do to rise to serious challenges. These accomplishments would have been decade long process in the past or minimally a multi-year process.

Shields against COVID-19

As with the other posts of ‘HiBrow Perspectives’ – we highlight salient and some not obvious aspects of some of these huge successes in biomedical and technological innovations, business strategy, regulatory and governance aspects that have impacted the society positively in major ways as well as some stark disappointments.

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Crushing COVID-19: Masks, Messaging and Creating the Moment

Masks, do they protect me directly if I wear? Why should I wear them if it protects others and not me? Here I present a line of reasoning for masks being protective to the person who wears it and relate it to a rapid acting equivalent of vehicle seat belts. I hope the message in this blog aids change in mindset and practice, and together with other developments in place now help us create ‘The Moment’ to hold current state of the COVID-19 pandemic as its worst and help move to build a better future faster.

Crushing COVID-19 pandemic.

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Did Andy Grove Leave a Fallacy for Life Sciences and Healthcare?

Yes, you guessed it right.. we are talking about the Andy Grove who left an indelible legacy through his role at the Intel corporation (together with the other two founders Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore) including as CEO for a decade, fueling the growth of Silicon Valley and the world at large. Now we got that cleared, we need to introduce some background on what is called the ‘Andy Grove Fallacy’ in a commentary in 2007.

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How do we prevent denial of available and deserved therapeutic options to patients?

I read this excellent post The Irrational Rationing of Health Care on LinkedIn by David Katz, that documents a case of denial of a treatment option to a patient because the payer considers that ‘not established as standard therapy for that cancer’ – as documented in their business criteria. As you would have guessed that the treatment option is a reasonably expensive one. This is an excellent article and an exemplary case for what I elaborate in previous blogs http://bit.ly/ACOSteadyState and http://bit.ly/sustainablehealthcare .

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Just in time (JIT) vaccines and cures for Ebola and other sporadically emerging (and devastating) global infectious diseases

Do you know one of the advantages of being an engineer turned biotechnologist turned entrepreneur/capitalist? You can write a blog like the one below.

A few months ago, I was in an event that discussed approaches and challenges in tackling Ebola, organized by the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge.

Image for JIT infectious Disease blog

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