Inside Valley – Better sensors and smarter algorithms bring high-tech medicine home
Better sensors and new algorithms should diagnose diseases without a visit to a specialist clinic. A self-test in Silicon Valley.
In this episode of Inside Valley I show how US start-ups and technology companies are trying to upend the healthcare market: diagnostics that used to be confined to clinics should soon be possible at home – with small sensors, smartphones and trained algorithms.
What is at stake
A race for the healthcare market has broken out in the US technology industry. In 2021, venture capital firms poured 80 billion dollars into the sector according to Silicon Valley Bank – more than 30 per cent more than the previous year, and roughly doubling every two years since 2017. Google’s chief health officer Karen DeSalvo announced that a smartphone placed on the chest should soon be able to measure heart function. That is just one of dozens of projects.
What the devices can do
Alivecor, based in Mountain View, offers the KardiaMobile Card – a device the size of a bank card. Place fingers from both hands on it for 30 seconds and it assesses whether the heart rhythm is normal or shows signs of atrial fibrillation. The Smart Rhythm app gives proactive alerts on Apple Watch and comparable wearables. Other start-ups such as Sonde Health and Ellipsis Health are working on detecting illnesses from the voice – short recordings are meant to reveal signs of depression, respiratory issues or neurological anomalies.
Who benefits – and who doesn’t
For patients in underserved regions this is an opportunity: Butterfly Network transforms smartphones into mobile ultrasound scanners and targets developing markets specifically. But the shift also creates disruptions for insurers, hospital groups and the healthcare system: whoever processes tens of thousands of cardiac rhythms, as Alivecor does, accumulates data that previously only cardiologists saw. Control over these data flows is becoming the new power centre of the industry.
What remains to be resolved
Technology is running ahead of the regulatory framework. Which measurements are medically meaningful – and which are just colourful entertainment? When do algorithms become regulated medical devices, and when do manufacturers bear liability for misdiagnoses? Data protection is also unresolved: most health apps are US products running on cloud infrastructure that is viewed critically in Europe. The market is growing faster than regulators can keep up – and it is here, in the coming years, that it will be decided which high-tech medicine actually arrives in German living rooms.
I wrote the full reportage for Handelsblatt.