February 2024

Fast start to the year, January got away from me, already lots to share and a big newsletter backlog already for March. I hope you’re all having a great 2024 so far.

The JP Morgan Chase Healthcare Conference (“JPM” as it’s colloquially known) was in San Francisco in early January. It’s become one of the bigger events in the healthcare innovation industry. I was there just to meet with clients and of course bump into some old colleagues at the coffee shop. Stretches of San Francisco streets looked as bad as the horror stories you’ve heard, of course contrasted with the enthusiasm for what’s happening at the cutting edge of health technology and pharma.

Immediately after JPM I was off to Vegas for a couple of days at CES. The show feels like it’s still bouncing back from COVID a bit, and the impact of the current funding situation in startup land was apparent as the sports & fitness and digital health areas of the conference were definitely smaller than their heyday a few years ago. A handful of things caught my eye. One was the continued blurring of the line between hearing aids and over the counter hearing augmentation, it was great to see Sennheiser make another run at ear based HR (and temperature) sensing, and Luxottica-Nuance had quite elegant looking glasses with hearing augmentation built in. This Korean company has a sleep enhancement device that relies on vibration. I was skeptical but they cited a number of published studies on the matter. This is another Korean company and technology that I’ve never heard of. Their website could use some copy editing but nevertheless it was a novel approach. In general Korean companies seemed more prominent in the healthtech area this year. Withings is still working to get their at-home urine sensor to market, it generated a lot of excitement last year but when it’s been a year and it’s still not available, the enthusiasm wanes.

More news at the intersection of fitness and the GLP-1 craze, as Equinox announced they will be designing training programs tailored for members on GLP-1s. I really wonder if we won’t see in 5-10 years that the fitness clubs were the most successful at helping people use these drugs to jump-start a healthier lifestyle, as opposed to just taking the drugs for the rest of their lives and going on with their bad habits.

I mentioned that my older ChiliPad Ooler was dying, and I decided to try out a low-cost option I found on Amazon. As things turned out I also got a opportunity to get a good deal on a ChiliPad DockPro, their newest unit. The Aquabed actually isn’t a terrible unit for the price. If I were on a tight budget and just looking for a solution to address the most basic cooling need, it’s probably a decent solution. What bugged me about it was that it would occasionally turn off early in the morning for no apparent reason, which has a big impact on early waking, one of my key sleep issues. After only a few nights I’m definitely liking the DockPro more, and wow does it make the bed cold. I suspect in summer the superior performance will end up really outpacing the AquaBed as well. I’m actually adjusting the temp settings that I had copied over from my Ooler, they are proving too cold with the power of the new DockPro system.

I’ve written about lactate as an indicator of exercise intensity but I believe it should also be used as a biomarker and indicator of metabolic health. This paper goes into exactly that topic.

If you’re a Vince Vaughn fan and need some movies to watch, I enjoyed Arkansas and Queenpins. Arkansas if you like dark comedy and Queenpins for a story so ridiculous it had to be real. 

I’m continuing to make progress learning Python and Langchain, and if all goes well next month I’ll share a phone number where you can SMS the AI agent I’ve been building in my spare time. This is what happens when both your kids get driver’s licenses and you have a new block of free time open up in your calendar.

There wasn’t enough snow to bring out the best at Palisades, but I got in a couple of good days there in early January. With the storms coming through the last few weeks, I’m excited to get back there soon. I have 6 days on the mountain planned for February.