This week I had the founder (Matteo Franceschetti) of Eight Sleep (he told me to think of sleep as fitness) and Carbon Health founder Eren Bali on my podcast. They will go live in a few weeks. I really was blown away by by their vision and their products.
Yesterday I mentioned that a big trend will be deflation in healthcare costs. I believe entrepreneurs armed with piles of venture money and software are very focused on helping Americans lower their health care costs.
Software, hardware, data and education will do their thing, but of course not everyone can or will take advantage of the products.
On the software, hardware and data side, Social Leverage has made investments in Nayya, 1upHealth and Robin Healthcare.
I liked this post from Craig Shapiro of Collaborative Fund titled ‘Investing in Health Data‘. Craig begins…
We have harnessed technology to enable an incredible amount of information sharing around business and finance over the last two decades.
I have detailed data on thousands of publicly traded companies at my fingertips. What is their market cap? Who are their largest shareholders? Has the CEO sold stock recently? What is their business model and how do their unit economics compare to last quarter (or last year or five years ago)? I can essentially access the financial health of virtually all household brands at the press of a button.
But when I try to perform the same exercise (accessing data) on humans, including myself, it’s much harder.
What is my cholesterol? Respiratory rate? Resting heart rate? Posture/alignment? Sleep patterns? Blood oxygen level? Blood sugar level? The vast majority of us are totally in the dark on these metrics.
It has never made sense to me that I had access to so much data about businesses, and yet until last year, I didn’t even know what blood type I was.
The good news Craig points out is the changes…
Companies like: WHOOP, Levels, Eight Sleep, Oura Ring, Apple Watch, among others are using sensors and biometric data to provide much more detailed information to consumers. And I believe we are only at the beginning.
The technology is improving quickly and the costs are coming down, allowing for accessibility more broadly.
I bet we will look back in ten years and have a hard time believing we were all managing the stresses of life without the tools and information to help us optimize and make better decisions regarding what we eat, when we eat, when we go to sleep, what temperature is optimal for sleep, when to rest, and when to push.
Craig is right.
I’m going to start investing in my sleep ‘fitness’ and personal data starting next week.
