Rock Weekly – NEW

No commitment issues here—Google and Mayo Clinic announced a 10-year collaboration to put Mayo’s patient data in the cloud, expand AI capabilities, and build a Google office in Rochester. We've seen a slew of such partnerships as big tech vies for healthcare’s cloud business nationwide. Meanwhile, Apple launched three new studies with leading medical researchers to explore whether its Watch is a meaningful tool for monitoring women’s health, hearing, and mobility.

Regulations that enable patients to summon medical records through consumer apps aim to usher in an era of choice and convenience. But not everyone sees eye to eye on the consequences. Some industry players are becoming more vocal about privacy concerns—“patient privacy can’t be retrieved once it’s lost”—while others argue the shift allows patients to push back on paternalism in medicine.

There’s been a lot of talk about putting health records in the palm of patients’ hands via APIs. But so far, they've been slow to adopt them. Two potential reasons for the trend: the apps have limited functionality, and health systems haven’t done enough to market them just yet.

If consumer-grade genetic insights (à la 23andMe) aren’t enough for you, head on over to a deep genomic sequencing clinic. For a hefty price tag, top medical institutions are offering substantially more thorough DNA analyses—but there's plenty of skepticism about targeting healthy clientele and downstream testing costs.

What if devices like your iPhone and Apple Watch could detect signs of dementia from everyday behavior data? They might, according to early results from a research collaboration between Apple, Eli Lilly, and Rock Health portfolio company Evidation Health. More on the research front from our portfolio: Podimetrics’ comprehensive remote monitoring solution detected 91% of diabetic foot complications in high-risk patients who had already lost one foot.

In the latest episode of Amazon vs. America’s pharmacy supply chain, Surescripts cut off vendor ReMy Health for improperly sharing medication histories with PillPack—and said it notified the FBI. The data feud didn't stop Amazon and other big tech execs from teaming up in a notable, renewed commitment to make claims data accessible to patients, however. Meanwhile, CMS announced a pilot program to put Medicare claims data in physicians' hands—an echo of the agency’s proposed interoperability rule earlier this year.

All eyes were on two digital health household names last week—both Health Catalyst and Livongo made their much-anticipated public market debuts on Thursday. Livongo’s executive chairman hinted that the IPO provides spending money for an acquisition or two—which wouldn’t come as a surprise since digital health companies remain the most likely acquirers of other digital health companies.

Sensors are the future of healthcare technology. So says former Apple CEO John Sculley—and tech giants are poised to change consumer health by adding remote monitoring capabilities to the likes of the Apple Watch and Google Nest. Elon Musk brainchild Neuralink wants to go one step further with its implantable brain-machine interface, starting in paralyzed patients. But with regulatory checkpoints and, well, actually having to decode the brain, we’re likely a long ways from such "symbiosis with AI."

Digital therapeutics are poised to tackle chronic and acute conditions—including those that often fly under the radar. 70M Americans have a gut disorder—twice the number of those living with diabetes—and the current standard of care is costly and largely ineffective. We’re thrilled to announce our investment in Vivante Health, whose comprehensive solution is changing the digestive health care paradigm. Welcome, Vivante!

There’s a whole lot of health data out there just waiting to be used in research—whether passively collected or intentionally shared (we loved this take on the PatientsLikeMe acquisition). While most patients are altruistic with their data for research, they've become less trustful of healthcare institutions' ability to protect it. At the eighth Rock Health Summit, we’ll sit down with leaders including former FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf and the AMA’s Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld to discuss the implications of the healthcare techlash.