I already mentioned that we had a workshop in San Francisco earlier this year. I summarized some of our insights in a blog post for the World Economic Forum: Who should own our health data?
Thursday, 19 November 2015
Monday, 16 November 2015
Annual Meeting of New Champions in Dalian
Dalian was particularly exciting as this was my first WEF summit and gave me an idea what to expect from Davos. And we had a fantastic group of people attending my workshop, including two ministers of health, executives from the for- and not-for-profit sector as well as leading academics. Gates Cambridge, my scholarship during my PhD at Cambridge, actually wrote a blog about it, which you can find here.
Thursday, 12 November 2015
OECD Health Indicators 2015
For all the number crunchers among us, the OECD has published its "Health at a Glance 2015" report with dashboards and data on health indicators & status, pharmaceutical spending, non-medical determinants of health, health workforce, health care activities, access to care, quality of care, health expenditure and financing, the pharma sector, and ageing and long term care.
My favorite chart is public and private per capita health spending in the OECD countries:
The US are the biggest spender (adjusted by purchasing power) by a large margin but they are also outspending all other countries except the Netherlands and Norway on public health spending. Or to put differently: the amount of public money the US spends on health would be enough to cover all health costs in most other countries.
The full report can be found here:
My favorite chart is public and private per capita health spending in the OECD countries:
The full report can be found here:
My work at the World Economic Forum
As you might know, since May I have been taking a semi-break from my work at Bain & Company. Until the Annual Meeting in Davos in January, I am seconded to the World Economic Forum as a project manager for the Future of Healthy project.
FoH is a two year project on the prevention of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Last year it was all about a paradigm shift from curing disease/ preventing deaths to actually Maximizing Healthy Life Years and how interventions that do so are investments that pay off (the report can be found here). My project is looking at how to bring stakeholder from different sector and industries together and how to align their incentives with positive health outcomes.
Thursday, 13 August 2015
Incentives
Over three years ago, when I was still living in the UK, I had an IUD (inter-uterine device or "copper coil") fitted. For those of you who are not English: Health care by the National Health Service is free at the point of service and this includes contraception. Hence I paid nothing for my IUD. Now it makes intuitive sense that the IUD won't be good forever and I was actually given a piece of paper stating that it will have to be replaced after 10 years - which I figured was fair game.
When I moved back to Germany, I suddenly hear that an IUD (also copper ones) supposedly have to be replaced after 3 to 5 years. Now, you have to know that contraception is usually not covered by German insurance. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.
I still did a bit of research and what I found is even more interesting:
- Official, WHO-based recommendation is that copper IUDs can be worn for up to 10 years, depending on their copper content, and hormonal IUDs for 3 to 5 years
(http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/intrauterine-device-iud-for-birth-control) - According to the WHO, the type I have is actually WHO effective for up to 12 years
(http://apps.who.int/rhl/fertility/contraception/soacom/en/) - However, there are actually studies that copper IUDs are effective for up to 20 years
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/13/us-iuds-effective-idUSBREA2C1B320140313
https://www.arhp.org/Publications-and-Resources/Quick-Reference-Guide-for-Clinicians/Non-hormonal-Choosing/IUC
Trussell J. Contraceptive failure in the United States. Contraception. 2011;83(5):397-404
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