Thursday 25 February 2016

World Economic Forum blog: Who should own our health data?

In October I wrote a piece for the World Economic Forum blog on health data and questions around who (should) own it.

Who should own our health data?

The amount of available health-related data is exploding. The increase is driven by both healthcare data, such as electronic medical records, but also user-generated data, such as activity and sleep profiles collected by wearables. The available data is set to more than double every two years until 2020, according toa study by EMC and the research firm IDC. This translates into a 15-fold increase between 2013 and 2020. If one imagines this amount of data stored on tablet computers, the resulting stack, which in 2013 is around 8,800 km high, would be more than one third of the way to the moon by 2020.

Tuesday 23 February 2016

Immunotherapy breakthrough: Did we just get a small step closer to curing cancer?

Nice to see our message on the severity of the NCD crisis is getting picked up. After an article in the German newspaper "Die Welt" covered our report, I just got quoted in a World Economic Forum blog post on a breakthrough in immunotherapy for cancer:

"Non-communicable diseases such as cancer are more than a personal tragedy – they're a threat to global prosperity. Their cumulative direct and indirect cost over the next 15 years will be around five times the cost triggered by the financial crisis in the 15 years following 2008"

Read the full blog here: http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/did-we-just-get-a-step-closer-to-curing-cancer

Monday 22 February 2016

Can the private sector help achieve universal health coverage?

The next blog post in the series by the World Economic Forum where constituents of the Forum engage with the ideas of my report "How to Realize Returns on Health" is by Sania Nishtar of Heartfile.

Can the private sector help achieve universal health coverage?

Image: Reuters/ Jorge Lopez

When the world committed to ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all with the 17 Sustainable Development goals, we knew no single entity would be able to achieve such lofty goals – it would take collaboration. “A successful sustainable development agenda requires partnerships between governments, the private sector and civil society,” Goal 17 stated.

Friday 19 February 2016

What can technology do for global health?

The World Economic Forum is currently publishing a series of posts engaging with the ideas of my World Economic Forum Report "How to Realize Returns on Health". The first post is by Jonathan Jackson of Dimagi.

What can technology do for global health?

A seven-year-old ethnic Tibetan girl diagnosed with congenital heart disease plays with a mobile phone as she lies on bed before having her surgery at a hospital in Hefei, capital of eastern China's Anhui province, December 22, 2012.
Image: Reuters/ Stringer

This year, the focus of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos was on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and how the technology revolution is changing all aspects of our world. The effects are particularly profound in the healthcare field.

Thursday 18 February 2016

World Economic Forum Blog: The silent pandemic that threatens the global economy

On Monday, the second blog by me and the partner I worked for in the last 10 months went live on the World Economic Forum blog.

The silent pandemic that threatens the global economy





Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer and diabetes are a silent pandemic of our own making and a real threat not only to human health but to global prosperity. To put this threat into perspective: the cumulative direct and indirect costs of NCDs over the next 15 years will be about five times the costs triggered by the global financial crisis in the 15 years following 2008, according to Bain analysis based on data from the World Economic Forum and Harvard University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.



Tuesday 2 February 2016

WEF/ Bain report online

My report is online on the WEF website. Let me know what you think!

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After demonstrating in Maximizing Healthy Life Years that health can have a positive return on investment, the 2016 report How to Realize Returns on Health shows how to tackle the silent NCD pandemic: why we should focus on Maximizing Healthy Life Years (MHLY) instead of just treating disease, why we need to act boldly now and how investments into health can have healthy returns in a multi-stakeholder environment by creating Ecosystems of Health.
Developed by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Bain & Company, this report covers
  • How investments into health can have healthy returns
  • How Ecosystems of Health align private and public stakeholders across sectors and industries
  • How the individual must be put at the center to make these ecosystems happen
  • How Ecosystems of Health create the foundation for market-driven solutions to tackle NCDs and to Maximize Healthy Life Years
  • Important success factors for healthier lives