Five Good Things with Janae Sharp and Megan Antonelli: A rapid-fire segment highlighting positive developments in digital health. Janae and Megan share insights on recent innovations, successful implementations, and emerging trends that are driving progress in healthcare technology.
Janae Sharp, Founder, The Sharp Index
Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live
00:00:00 Intro: Welcome to digital Health talks. Each week we meet with healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't as we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Jenny Sharp and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
00:00:30 Megan Antonelli: Hi everyone, welcome to Digital Health Talks five good things I'm here with Jenny Sharp. Hi, Jenny.
00:00:35 Janae Sharp: Hi. Thrilled to talk about good things now.
00:00:38 Megan Antonelli: Happy new year.
00:00:39 Janae Sharp: Happy new year. What's your New year's resolution?
00:00:42 Megan Antonelli: Oh, God. Do we have to start there?
00:00:44 Janae Sharp: I love New Year's resolutions. Have we ever talked about this? I'm obsessed with them because I keep them basic. Yeah, like. Like cook?
00:00:57 Megan Antonelli: Yes, that is one of mine, too. I just copy everyone else's. What else? What other ones do you have? I'll adopt those.
00:01:05 Janae Sharp: Do my hair nice. Because then you've. Then it's ambiguous. You need to leave it, like, open. So it's still an adventure. Like. And if you've done it once, you can check it off, but also maybe do it longer. Yeah.
00:01:18 Megan Antonelli: I like that. Uh, I like, uh, keeping it simple and, uh, just, you know, I always like the additive things. Like hook. Yes.
00:01:28 Janae Sharp: It's supposed to be fun. Yeah. People forget that. Like, the New year is supposed to be fun. It's not supposed to be like, every thing you feel guilty that you didn't do and carrying into the new year. But, you know, it could be if you want. If that's if that's what gets you going.
00:01:44 Megan Antonelli: Right. Well, I'm all about.
00:01:47 Janae Sharp: Speaking of what gets you going, let's talk about five good things.
00:01:50 Megan Antonelli: Five good things. It's amazing that we're still on this, huh? We've been doing this now almost for like three years coming.
00:01:56 Janae Sharp: It's amazing that we could even think of five good things for this long. Knowing us.
00:02:03 Megan Antonelli: We don't always do the best job, but it has been wow.
00:02:07 Janae Sharp: Yeah we do.
00:02:09 Megan Antonelli: It has been a very busy, uh, first two weeks of the year. And I since we did not do a December, we can count a little bit of what went on in December, too. Um, but there have been a lot with CES kicking off the, the year. So there were a lot of announcements that came out of there. Uh, and then, of course, uh, JPMorgan is this week. Um, but most importantly, the Golden Globes were on Sunday and our favorite show, our favorite show, The pit one. Um, and it's back. So not only is it back and we've got new episodes to watch, but Noah Wylie won. So I'm just going to celebrate that good thing because yeah
00:02:50 Janae Sharp: So season two just started and.
00:02:54 Megan Antonelli: I wonder what that's.
00:02:55 Janae Sharp: Been a great show in terms of realism, in terms of actually, you know, connecting people with great medicine and improving things. Fantastic. Great job.
00:03:04 Megan Antonelli: Well, and and the big joke, of course, in Pittsburgh. Speaking of needing, uh, cardiology medicine, um, is that they should do an episode where everybody comes in having heart attacks after all the crazy losses that and and some wins that the Steelers have gone through, uh, this season. But it was quite a non climactic finish to their season this this Monday. So. Oh well I'm sorry Steelers fans.
00:03:34 Janae Sharp: Well then they wouldn't win awards for that. So that's not.
00:03:37 Megan Antonelli: No but it would be. It would be a Pittsburgh episode that is for sure. Um, and uh, we're going to see Mike Tomlin either go to the news or go to a new new team. We'll see what happens. I know you watch football.
00:03:52 Janae Sharp: Oh yeah. Every chance I get.
00:03:54 Megan Antonelli: Yeah.
00:03:54 Janae Sharp: Although I think Andrea from our team loves it. So.
00:03:56 Megan Antonelli: Yes, yes, she's a bills fan. They're still in it. So she's going to.
00:04:00 Janae Sharp: Hey I'm loyal to it. I don't care about it or watch it, but I care about people who care about it. Right.
00:04:07 Megan Antonelli: Well, the fun thing is, is that we will be going into Super Bowl week, uh, the week of health impact in New York. So our second good thing that we can talk about is we are a little over two weeks, three weeks away from Health Impact Forum in New York City. And the lineup is amazing. And we've got some great partners coming. And, um, you know, talking about healthcare everywhere. Again, the AI, uh, you know, tools and automation and, and how that is going to power healthcare everywhere. And we've partnered with Telehealth org, which we're super excited about. Um, as an education partner for this year, uh, you know, both at this event And, uh, beyond that, we'll be working on some content with them. So excited to share that with with everybody. And, uh, make that announcement at our event in February.
00:05:03 Janae Sharp: Yes. And I'm consistently impressed with artificial intelligence and telemedicine and just the potential there and the involvement with people who are who are in New York and who are getting things done at these events. You know, I've had some really impressive people there, you know.
00:05:21 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, New York is great. It's a great, um, you know, easy place to get to even in the winter. And, um, you know, it's so concentrated with such great health systems and a lot of startups and innovator companies that are doing great, great work and of course, Microsoft, our host partners there. So that makes it, um, you know, a great venue for us to, to bring that group together. So excited to be there again. Uh, in February. And I think we're going to have, uh, representation from ASP, ONC, ASP who were very active at the end of the year, as they always are. I think they.
00:05:57 Janae Sharp: Were doing a lot of work.
00:05:58 Megan Antonelli: I saw a lot of jokes about how they, you know, they never sleep over the holiday and they were they they released a number of stuff around the HTC Vive proposed rule. Uh, and hopefully they'll come and talk to us about the impact of that. We've got Todd Rogo two from health. Uh, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about tfca and interoperability and what that means now as we look at, you know, not just hospitals but but beyond the hospital, you know, it gets even more complicated.
00:06:30 Janae Sharp: Well, I do think some of the rules are also supposed to help things be less complicated and help us move forward innovation and and help us use the tools and technology that are available to us to improve people's health. Right.
00:06:45 Megan Antonelli: So in addition to ASP, which I'm never going to get used to saying. Uh, the FDA made their announcement, of course, at I think that was at CES. It seems like so long ago, but it was just last week, right? And they had Marty Makary there talking about, you know, there, you know, to some degree, loosening of regulations around, um, digital health and wellness. Uh, and really kind of lighting a fire under folks in terms of innovation, of letting, um, you know, some of that stuff come into the digital health industry.
00:07:21 Janae Sharp: Right. And you haven't been on LinkedIn or Instagram. If you haven't seen a joke reel about venture capitalists throwing money at artificial intelligence, and you know what? The year end reports support that. If it's been a year of transformative change for digital health, and a lot of that is influenced by AI driven innovation innovation for venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst they've really had a surge in investment in digital health startups, in, um, artificial intelligence. So there's some potential there and there's value there, and there's a race to see who will be able to realize that potential and that value. Plus, it's hilarious to watch people make jokes about it.
00:08:15 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, well, that was the the. This week, ROC Health released their, uh, year end report. I guess that said, um, the funding was up to fourteen billion or something around, um, which was the highest since twenty twenty two. So I think we saw that huge surge post pandemic, you know, kind of funding virtual. And then the idea that that AI was coming and the large language models and now, you know, continuing to just surge. Right. So we're seeing it all all across the industry. But basically any company that has the word AI in it, um, but you know, I think real as it's, you know, we're in that hype cycle, there's no question. But people are seeing real value and real return, um, from their investments. And that's why we're seeing the continuation of this and some of the, you know, like open evidence, you know, I mean, just astronomical valuations. Um, right. Uh, so, you know, interesting to see what's coming there. And on the heels of that.
00:09:21 Janae Sharp: And we're hoping someday Google will be functional again.
00:09:25 Megan Antonelli: Well, speaking of what what to some degree I think has broken Google ChatGPT and their, uh, release uh, earlier this week of, you know, around, um, what they're doing with B-well, um, which has been interesting. Most of the response online has been very positive. Um, we were talking about one one particular post from from Grace young, uh, who is a SVP of product and partnerships at Publicis. Publicist, um, talking about, you know, that people are rather self-congratulatory about it and that perhaps it is just another incremental improvement. But what is great about that is the engagement she got from the likes of, you know, pretty much everyone, including Christian Valdés. Um, just sort of saying, you know, that incremental and, and, uh, to some degree, you know, significant change are both, you know, go hand in hand in healthcare.
00:10:26 Janae Sharp: Yeah. I do think it's interesting. I've read some interesting things about, you know, this is a a tactic for getting, you know, data and also for not using health data. Um, and the interesting development of modeling. And and if they're going to be developing their healthcare models and just there are some interesting regulatory burdens and hurdles ahead of us, I think, in terms of how artificial intelligence will play out in this space. I think.
00:11:06 Megan Antonelli: Well, for sure, I mean, you know, and I think that I mean, you've already seen that, you know, once you upload your data to this, you know, it's no longer HIPAA protected or what have you. And people don't seem to care. And I think that's also been true, you know, when they upload it to Reddit for, for that matter. Right. And so right. And the question becomes what the what's the difference. You know, and I mean, I talked about this earlier, you know, with Doctor Chao in terms of, you know, when when a physician makes makes an incorrect decision or doesn't know the answer. They ask for more tests. They get consults. They go to the collaborative. What happens with AI is it just gives you the answer rather confidently. And yeah, you know and that's no danger can be.
00:11:56 Janae Sharp: They're confident and sometimes they are confidently wrong.
00:12:00 Megan Antonelli: Most you know, I mean it just is always confident and and they.
00:12:03 Janae Sharp: Are like that one guy on the internet sometimes who's like, no, actually.
00:12:10 Megan Antonelli: My son on Reddit or my son after he has read Reddit, right? They are.
00:12:15 Janae Sharp: Like that one dude.
00:12:17 Megan Antonelli: Mom that no.
00:12:19 Janae Sharp: Actually.
00:12:20 Megan Antonelli: That peptide is going to save your life.
00:12:23 Janae Sharp: Devil's advocate here.
00:12:25 Megan Antonelli: Um, so good things. Good things with maybe a little bit of a. You know, question mark. Right. We'll see. Right. And Claude, of course, in their their move into the health space. And I you know, I think it's interesting and I, I know I saw, um, you know, some of the folks who, you know, Misty Krasner and the folks who were part of Google Health in the beginning. You know, how different is this, right? I mean, it's just it's big tech different.
00:12:55 Janae Sharp: Yeah.
00:12:55 Megan Antonelli: You know, it's the big tech saying, oh, well, every search we get is healthcare, you know? Well, that's because everyone cares about their healthcare. Nobody really wants to ask Reddit, although there are plenty of people who do. So ChatGPT and Claude become a very easy place to ask for that health ailment.
00:13:13 Janae Sharp: Also, making an appointment with your doctor is a literal human nightmare, right? So that can be a sign for the health systems. That may be.
00:13:22 Megan Antonelli: Right.
00:13:23 Janae Sharp: It could be a little bit better, right?
00:13:25 Megan Antonelli: And in the two weeks that you wait for that appointment, you have lots of questions. So yeah, you know, and and.
00:13:31 Janae Sharp: You've gotten better.
00:13:33 Megan Antonelli: Right. Sometimes. Um, but it does, you know. I mean, I think it speaks to to go back to that need for healthcare everywhere. And how do we enable it, you know, and how do we enable it at high quality? Right. And, and where there is some, um, you know, not guardrails but just knowledge that it will be that it has been vetted and it has and it will be accurate. And so I suppose the option of ChatGPT and Claude learning that and then enabling it is a good thing. Um, but as we've talked about many, many times in terms of what it weighs, you know, when it gets the wrong answer, when it gets misinformation, when it gets, you know, skewed data sets that are about mostly men or mostly, you know, white people or mostly what have you, that they don't always have the right answers and that that it won't. And, well, that's also true of our actual healthcare system. Um, how much more dangerous does it become when it is, uh, our you know what we perceive to be true and and to your initial point where Google has become less functional of late for various reasons. One is that they're trying to feed this, you know, sort of the format that I think it expects us. But also I think because some of the content that it was normally searching is now been locked down because all of the content providers don't want their content scraped. So there seems to be, you know, sort of skewed stuff. And Reddit seems to be coming to the top. And I have various.
00:15:13 Janae Sharp: Wild.
00:15:13 Megan Antonelli: Reddit because I don't think it's very reliable. Um.
00:15:17 Janae Sharp: Which is weird. Are you telling me that the weird forum where people go to complain is not the most reliable? Who could imagine.
00:15:28 Megan Antonelli: Um, to find the good things? As you said before, it is cyclical and it's kind of like we've got to, you know, we got to break it to fix it, and then we got to break it again and fix it and hopefully, um, you know, end at something that is useful and provides better health care and better access for everyone.
00:15:47 Janae Sharp: Yeah. I think people are also trying to find a way around the big problem of not being able to find reliable healthcare answers, and and big Tech is trying to profit from that, that gap. You know, they're trying to meet a market need. And we can applaud that. You know they're trying to meet a market need. They're trying to step around a regulatory hurdle. They're trying to step around the FDA. And and that's actually kind of good news that there's that they recognize that there's that gap even though you know it's arguable like that Grace girls post, it's arguable that it's a little shady, that it's not anything to applaud, but at least people are stepping in. You know, I think human nature is to fill in the gap and to find a workaround to get what you want. And just like it's human nature to, you know, build this thing to profit off it, it's also human nature to find a way to get what you want and find a way. When this search engine is terrible and when finding an appointment is terrible, when these systems don't work for us, we are going to find a way to work around it. When Claude and you know, OpenAI, when they're all stealing our data just to make some other dude another super yacht, we're all going to find a way as a community to get better health care.
00:17:09 Megan Antonelli: Just like we have in the past. Maybe.
00:17:15 Janae Sharp: I mean.
00:17:16 Megan Antonelli: I think people.
00:17:16 Janae Sharp: Help each other.
00:17:18 Megan Antonelli: We hope. Yes. And I, you know, and I, I do think and I've said this a billion times, I start to sound like a broken record. But those who work in health care, certainly those who have committed their careers to health care. You know, come, come at it from a good place and are there to help people. And so believing in the the good that is there, um, will bring us to good solutions. And I think that that's, that's kind of where we're at is seeing how, how this all comes together. I mean, I love ChatGPT, I love cloud, they're amazing. The things that it enables, um, are fun, you know, and and, um, I.
00:17:56 Janae Sharp: Love great Instagram ads and I love watching The Traders.
00:18:02 Megan Antonelli: But, uh, you know, I think there's, um, you know, time will tell. And it is amazing that here we are in January of twenty twenty six, and it was in November of twenty twenty two that you and I sat in New York at the first health impact post pandemic, and ChatGPT had just been launched, and I made a joke about my son, you know, using it to do his college applications, of which he is still in community college and has not applied to regular college yet. But we don't have to talk about that on the podcast.
00:18:36 Janae Sharp: Get with it. ChatGPT fix.
00:18:40 Megan Antonelli: It. Um, but it has it does the the good things. The promises are there and there's a lot of there. You know, to Grace's point on LinkedIn, there's a lot of enthusiasm around AI. And that's a positive thing because enthusiasm leads to investments and that leads to innovation. You know, we cannot innovate in healthcare without the financial backing of people who may understand healthcare less than than we want them to. But if they're willing to invest in it and drive the, you know, bring bring it forward, then that's what we need, because the money's not going to come from the hospitals. It's not, you know, in some cases comes from pharma, but that's within their lane. So, you know, we need those guys at JPM to invest. And gals of course.
00:19:29 Janae Sharp: Are there more good things we need to share?
00:19:32 Megan Antonelli: Um, I forget, I think that was it. We got our funding, got astp announcements, we got the FDA announcement, we have the pit coming back, being back and health impact.
00:19:51 Janae Sharp: And before we meet, there will be a lot of great conferences I think.
00:19:54 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. Well ours is first and then um, and then we've got Viv on our heels in February, which is exciting. Um, and then of course, hims, you know, so uh, and hims has a, a nice boot camp happening here in February. We've done some great, great meetings with them. Um, the regional hims groups are really picking up, and, uh, I think hims is going to be great this year in Vegas. And I'll be ready to go back in March. Um, and Viv is in Los Angeles, which, you know, some people are, um, not.
00:20:31 Janae Sharp: It's close to you.
00:20:32 Megan Antonelli: But I'm super excited about it. It's a great place to have a show. Um, and the community here, um, you know, I think in some ways, because of, of our him SoCal chapter, uh, kind of reactivating folks and getting people out there. Uh, the community in Southern California has been, um, more energetic, uh, and, and, uh, coming together. So hopefully they'll, they'll come out in droves.
00:20:55 Janae Sharp: From all that terrible weather you guys have.
00:20:59 Megan Antonelli: Well, February isn't the best, but I won't complain.
00:21:01 Janae Sharp: Oh, come on.
00:21:02 Megan Antonelli: It is beautiful today. Actually, my my sweater. Which which says do not disturb. By the way, um, my sweater is, uh, probably unnecessary if I were to step out of my house, but, you know, that's okay. It'll be chilly in February. Bring your sweaters To Vive for sure I do.
00:21:22 Janae Sharp: I do love a good sweater.
00:21:24 Megan Antonelli: Mhm. Uh but yeah that's it. That's what we got. Do you have any other good things Jeanette.
00:21:30 Janae Sharp: Well we forgot the pit was also a good thing. So I hope we're going to give everyone back time to watch the pit. We can all talk about it. We can have, you know, just a little discussion about that later. Talk about it on Reddit. In the threads.
00:21:46 Megan Antonelli: Exactly. My thoughts exactly. Well, thanks as always. It's always great to chat with you. Um, happy new year. I'll see you soon. And thank you to our audience for tuning in to another episode of Five Good Things on Digital Health Talks. This is Megan Antonelli signing off.
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