Brad Otto

health-tech investing

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@CatoInstitute Ideas specific to the healthcare sector, which is 18% of US GDP and 3x higher inflation than wages over the past two decades 👇

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@B_Marsh92 From an eye test perspective Lorenz looked great. Like a young Milan Lucic.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@MarkLazerus Those are a bunch of bot posts from Ukraine

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@Ryan__Barney

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

Is the cure to male loneliness starting a venture studio with your boys?

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@ssdhall This is dumb argument. A free market healthcare system would set physician prices and therefore salaries lower than they are today.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

ICHRA / CHOICE insurance models are worthless if you can't buy a quality insurance product in your state. In most states the exchange insurance products are crap.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

ŌURA dropped its IPO filing last week. Beyond the obvious headlines (it's a massive, high growth, consumer health business) there were some really interesting data points about the company's member base.

☝ 33% of members reported Oura as their first wearable device
🛑 29% reported replacing an existing wearable
👩‍🦰 72% are women
🌱 31% are Gen Z
💵 37% have household income below $100,000

Maybe the most compelling thing about Oura is how the company has managed to win market share in one of the most unique and desirable consumer/health/wellness demographic segments. If the company can retain subscribers and increase AOV with new product features this feels like a compounding winner for a long time.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@HealthcareAIGuy Yes, they are huge, just like in every industry and every household

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@DrDiGiorgio The single party most responsible for soaring healthcare prices is the US government. The single policy most responsible is the ACA.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@IterIntellectus They will do the same thing in healthcare. Better for patients, worse for doctors. Banned.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@chrissyfarr The ROI will be there but many solutions will still fail due to lack of trust from incumbents and patients. Conversely, the winners will be the ones with high trust brands.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@statnews imagine denying children healthcare because you have to spend a little extra time answering hard questions from their parents

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@Berci the AI scribes are probably making fewer errors than the human scribes

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@statnews This program is an order of magnitude behind where the industry needs to be. Payment for interventions not time spent, and regulatory sandbox and following approval process neeeds to have 10x greater capacity

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@nikillinit Digital health also attracts a certain founder archetype that is prone to early fatigue. It’s the “yay healthcare” crowd who wants to do a feel good startup but isn’t necessarily willing to get kicked in the teeth repeatedly on a daily basis.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@JoinLifespan @Nature This is amazing, but the key question is whether it is providing any benefits beyond just caloric restriction. Shouldn't caloric restriction be the control group?

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@micsolana We already have Medicare for all. It's called Medicaid. If you're poor enough you get it.

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

@nikillinit One thing that is NOT happening during that process is transparency on the actual price of the drug

[Brad Otto @realbradotto]

OpenAI stopped being a neutral layer in healthcare. They’re coming for the application companies.

OpenAI announced a partnership with Epic yesterday. Epic data will be workable in ChatGPT, and ChatGPT will be integrated into the EHR workflow. OpenAI separately announced data plugins with a number of public health datasets like PubMed and CMS Coverage.

It's a direct shot at the application layer companies that live on top of LLMs like ChatGPT.

Taken along with prior product announcements in research and life sciences it's clear that OpenAI intends to be a major player in the application layer for healthcare and life sciences. This increases the stakes for anyone building or investing in companies built on LLM tech stacks. OpenAI is not just a neutral infrastructure provider, they're going to be competing head to head in the application layer too.

The playbook feels similar to the one Microsoft used when they started bundling software applications into the PC (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). A lot of competing applications never stood a chance.

I'm confident there will be many valuable companies built in the application layer in healthcare and life sciences, but the field of competition just became a whole lot tougher.