As a physicist, I’ve learned that if you don’t know the main root cause(s) of the problem, two things are likely to happen: You’re very unlikely to find an optimal solution to the problem Confusion opens up opportunities for bad solutions (and profiting from them) The U.S. obesity epidemic with…

I grew up in Finland where employers only worry about serving their customers, and the focus of Human Resources (HR) is on hiring and retaining talent. These things alone are hard enough for any company. As for healthcare, this is the responsibility of the Finnish government given it is a…

Nobody needs to ask an Olympic gold medal calibre athlete, such as Michael Phelps, Eliud Kipchoge or Annemiek van Vleuten questions like: Did you have to work very, very hard to achieve that level of success? Did you prioritize rest and sleep before your biggest races? Did you have to…

Digital Health is hot. Investments in digital health companies are pacing to break the 2020 record (Also: Virta Health which I co-founded recently closed its Series E). There are deals, mega-deals, mergers and SPACs. All this funding is driving growing interest in the still nascent world of health tech. Entrepreneurs…

JAMA Internal Medicine published a well done study about our national diabetes outcomes titled “Evaluation of the Cascade of Diabetes Care in the United States, 2005–2016” with a rather depressing conclusion: “Despite major advances in drug discovery and movement to develop innovative diabetes care delivery models over the past 2…

A confession: for years, I was convinced that people living with type 2 diabetes (T2D) only had themselves to blame. The logic behind this conclusion was simple: T2D is a lifestyle disease and therefore a choice, controllable with will(power). Sure, environmental factors make “good lifestyle choices” harder. …

Dozens of health care insiders and outsiders approached me asking “what do you think of this large Teladoc acquisition and does it change your view on Virta Health’s strategy and vision?” I thought I’d save time and write my answer once, here. In summary: you get what you pay for…

(I.e., What the US Healthcare System will Look Like After Telemedicine’s Next Transformation) In part I of my take about the future of telemedicine, I talked about what telemedicine will look like when its true promise is realized — virtual, continuous and proactive, with the ability to flip many chronic…

Even with drastically increased investment and adoption, we are still early in telemedicine’s trajectory COVID-19 has become a global nightmare, especially for people living with a chronic illness. The data paints a bleak and heartbreaking picture. …