DNA methylation assays as epigenetic biomarkers

Quantitative comparison of DNA methylation assays for biomarker development and clinical applications

A new milestone has been achieved in Medicine. Tracking epigenetic alterations is crucial to understand a disease. However, epigenetic biomarkers are needed to assess such changes. Its precision (sensitivity-specifity) is  paramount for its clinical application. Now a group of international researchers has certified its performance (partially). Have a look at this Nature article:

Genome-wide mapping and analysis of DNA methylation has become feasible for patient cohorts with thousands of samples, and epigenome-wide association studies have been conducted for numerous biomedically relevant phenotypes. To translate relevant epigenome associations into clinically useful biomarkers, it is necessary to select a manageable set of highly informative genomic regions, to target these loci with DNA methylation assays that are sufficiently fast, cheap, robust and widely available to be useful for routine clinical diagnostics, and to confirm their predictive value in large validation cohorts.

Among its conclusions I would like to highlight three of them:

(i) Absolute DNA methylation assays are the method of choice when validating DNA methylation differences in large cohorts, and they are also an excellent technology for developing epigenetic biomarkers.

(ii) Relative DNA methylation assays are not a good replacement for absolute assays. However, experiences of scientists in the contributing laboratories suggest that carefully selected, designed and validated relative assays can cost-effectively detect minimal  races of methylated DNA against an excess of unmethylated DNA.

(iii) Global DNA methylation assays suffer from noisy data and divergent results between technologies. Locus-specific assays (possibly combined with prediction) provide a more robust alternative

That's it. Very soon will see the epigenetic biomarkers in routine clinical use. And afterwards,  epigenetic drugs and treatments. Then, we'll confirm that the promise of precision medicine is a reality. The implications for medicine as a scientific discipline and clinical decision making are huge, and specifically, healthcare organizations will need to adapt to new knowledge and technologies.

PS. Neuroepigenetics: DNA methylation and memory

Food and risk perception

Food and the Risk Society: The Power of Risk Perception

This is the main message of the book: Do not send generic messages on food and its risks, the time for segmentation has arrived,

A generic approach, involving the provision of vast amounts of information to the general public, stands a real risk of leading to information overload, bewilderment and lack of interest among mainstream consumers. A more effective approach to change consumer food buying and consumption behaviour, is to focus on segmenting the population according to their information needs, and developing information with high levels of personal relevance to specific groups of respondents who may be at greater risk than the rest of the population. Such information is more likely to create attitudinal change and subsequent behavioural change as the perceived personal relevance is high.

Is the government already prepared for the task?

Voluntary health insurance, it's role and regulation

Voluntary health insurance in Europe: Role and regulation
Voluntary health insurance in Europe: country experience

A long time has passed since WHO published a book on voluntary health insurance, just a decade (!). Therefore, there are many reasons to review again what's going on, and this is precisely what you'll find in two recent books.
Before any recommendation, it is good to have a good analysis. And the best analysis comes from reliable data. Somebody should check the published data in the book. In the case of Spain it says 10% of suplementary insurance, while it is around 16% (!) (p.50) (and it is duplicate really according to OECD classfication). And beyond that, it says that there is 3% of voluntary health insurance that is substitutive, while it is exactly 0% (!). Therefore take care. I'll not comment anything else.

Why is it useless to predict future health expenditures?

National spending on health by source for 184 countries between 2013 and 2040

The Lancet has just published a new estimate of the size of health expenditures in the future up to 2040. Too often nobody looks backward and check what predictions said before. If somebody does it, it will get a surprise for the first time, however the following ones he will convey that predictions are useless, because there are too many uncertain situations to take into account. Basically most of the hypothesis are flawed. Take this statement from the article:

Despite remarkable health gains, past health fnancing trends and relationships suggest that many low-income and lower-middle-income countries will not meet internationally set health spending targets and that spending gaps between low-income and high-income countries are unlikely to narrow unless substantive policy interventions occur. Although gains in health system efficiency can be used to make progress, current trends suggest that meaningful increases in health system resources will require concerted action.

Is there anybody that can tell me what "internationally set health spending targets" are?.  Who sets them?. If anybody wants to check what I'm saying, have a look at the cutbacks from the great recession and the estimates by OECD or EU. Everybody was saying that technology innovation and aging would boost health expenditures forever, and now we know that this is not true. Forget the article. Distrust the fortune-tellers.

Is there room for healthcare in blockchain? (2)

THE BUSINESS BLOCKCHAIN: Promise, Practice and Application of the Next Internet Technology

Last month I was saying that business strategy à la Porter required a new perspective, the platform view. Beyond that, blockchain represents a potential disruption of current business and information and communication technologies as of today.
My suggestion is to have a look at the crucial book by Mougayar on The Business Blockchain. You'll get a clear understanding that a deep transformation is in process.

Some key concepts from the book:

• How to think holistically about the blockchain as a meta technology, a business model disruptor, and legal/regulatory policies challenger.
• The 10 properties exhibited by the blockchain (beyond its most popular one, as a distributed ledger)
• Blockchains as a new Internet layer, comprised of the new breed of decentralized applications.
• The unbundling of trust and how a new form of trust inserts itself between peer-to-peer relationships, and brings a new level of transparency, trust and truth.
• The rise of New Intermediaries. Just as the Internet replaced some intermediaries, now the blockchain is replacing other intermediaries, while simultaneously creating new ones.
• Industry cases in healthcare, energy and government, including an in-depth review of financial services.
• Practical recommendations for implementing the blockchain within the enterprise.
• The blockchain as the operating system that enables decentralization, and its technological, political and societal implications.
• The birth of a crypto economy that creates its own wealth via new business models, and peer-to-peer transactional relationships between producers and consumers.
• A new flow of value, with the blockchain acting as the digital leveler that moves value across a new variety of markets.
• 47 blockchain predictions about a not-so-distant future, when blockchain technology permeates our world and creates new companies and new services.

Promising contributions to healthcare:

The theory is attractive: publish your medical record safely on the blockchain and be assured that you or an authorized person can access it anywhere in the world. That is what the government of Estonia has done—a good case of blockchain technology in healthcare. Using Guardtime’s large scale keyless data authentication, in combination with a distributed ledger, citizens carry their ID credentials which unlock access to their healthcare records in real-time. From that point forward, the blockchain ensures a clear chain of custody, and it keeps a register of anyone who touches these records, while ensuring that compliance process is maintained.

Other healthcare usages might include:

• Using a combination of multisignature processes and QR codes, we can grant specific access of our medical record or parts of it, to authorized healthcare providers.
• Sharing our patient data in the aggregate, while anonymizing it to ensure privacy is maintained. This is helpful in research, and for comparing similar cases against one another.
• Recording and time-stamping delivery of medical procedures or events, in order to reduce insurance fraud, facilitate compliance and verification of services being rendered.
• Recording the maintenance history of critical pieces of medical equipment, for example, an MRI scanner, providing a permanent audit trail.
• Carrying a secure wallet with our full electronic medical record in it, or our stored DNA, and allowing its access, in case of emergency.
• Verifying provenance on medications, to eliminate illegal drug manufacturing.
• “CaseCoins:” originating specific altcoins that create a cryptocurrency market around solving a particular disease, such as FoldingCoin, a project where participants share their processing power to help cure a disease, and get rewarded with a token asset.

Definitely, this is a key book to understand blockchain and again, there is room for healthcare. Wether the promise will become a reality, it's uncertain today.

Is there room for healthcare in blockchain?

BLOCKCHAIN REVOLUTION: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World

Blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, the virtual currency, could be the new tool that could change the current state of health records and healthcare information. Up to now we have been discussing about interoperability between systems. What would happen if the citizen is the owner of the information and he has all data available everywhere anytime?. This is what certain initiatives try to define right now. Something like this initiated by the physician would be the data owned by the patient:

 

We are at the begining of a great transformation. I don't now if the appropriate word is revolution. Anyway, if you are interested in the topic you may check som details here.

However if you want a deep review of whats going on in 12 critical disruptions, read chapter 6 of the book "Blockchain revolution". You'll find there the potential impact on health:

In the health care sector, professionals use digitization to manage assets and medical records, keep inventory, and handle ordering and payments for all equipment and pharmaceuticals. Today, hospitals are full of smart devices that oversee these services, but few communicate with one another or take into account the importance of privacy protection and security in direct patient care. Blockchain-enabled IoT can use emerging applications to link these services. Applications in development include monitoring and disease management (e.g., smart pills, wearable devices to track vital signs and provide feedback) and improved quality control. Imagine an artificial hip or knee that monitors itself, sends anonymized performance data to the manufacturer for design improvements, and communicates with a patient’s physician, “Time to replace me.” Technicians will be unable to use specialized equipment if they haven’t taken prerequisite steps to ensure their reliability and accuracy. New smart drugs could track themselves in clinical trials and present evidence of their effectiveness and side effects without risk of modified results.

If you are interested in innovation and want to follow the next wave, the internet of value, then you need to read such book. Definitely, there is wide room for health in blockchain.

Clinicians' wisdom of crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds of Doctors: Their Average Predictions Outperform Their Individual Ones

The book on "Wisdom of crowds" became popular claiming that  the aggregation of information in groups achieved decisions that are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. Now in Medical Decision Making you'll find an article that applies such reasoning to clinicians. And it says:

Little research has been done on whether the average of clinicians making predictions is more accurate than the individual clinicians themselves or whether their average prediction compared favorably to statistical predictions. The purpose of the present study is to examine the predictive accuracy of the average of individual clinician predictions and to compare this average to the accuracies of individual clinicians and to a published statistical model.

And the four conclusions are:

First, it would appear that the averages of the clinicians perform better than clinicians individually. All the clinicians on their own performed with a concordance index of 0.628. However, averaging the predictions of just a pair of clinicians had better performance. Second, the performance tends to improve as more clinician predictions are averaged. Interestingly, at least in this study of a limited number of clinicians, although performance was seen to continually improve as clinicians were added, there was decreasing marginal return for increasing group sizes. Third, as the group size increased (see Figure 2), the performance of the averaged clinicians approached that of the best individual clinician (from Figure 1), suggesting that much larger clinician groups are needed for the performance of the average to be better than that of the best clinician. And fourth, even averaging all of the clinicians’ predictions was inferior to that of the statistical model.

The authors recognise their study limitations, however some insights are useful to take into account. Let's ponder on how many "second opinions" would be approppriate.

This Wednesday at Saló del Tinell in Barcelona, great concert by Capella de Ministrers on Ramon Llull,the last pilgrimage

What's health and wellbeing?

Empirical redefinition of comprehensive health and well-being in the older adults of the United States

Once again, we do need a comprehensive definition of what is health and wellbeing,  and the current issue of PNAS provides us with an interesting approach:

The dominant model of health is a disease-centered Medical Model (MM), which actively ignores many relevant domains. In contrast to the MM, we approach this issue through a Comprehensive Model (CM) of health consistent with the WHO definition, giving statistically equal consideration to multiple health domains, including medical, physical, psychological, functional, and sensory measures. We apply a data-driven latent class analysis (LCA) to model 54 specific health variables from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a nationally representative sample of US community-dwelling older adults.

Although public health campaigns, such as “Choosing Wisely,” rightly emphasize the need to decrease unnecessary health interventions (52), they still accept the basic health conception of the MM as resting on organ system disease. Instead, the CM instantiates comorbidities and the equal importance of mental health, mobility, and sensory function in health and should inform policy redesign. For example, including assessments of sensory function, mental health, broken bones in middle age, and frailty in annual physician visits would enhance risk management. In addition to policies focused on reducing BMI, greater support for preventing loneliness among isolated older adults would be effective. In place of additional (expensive) new medicines for hypertension, helping older adults find social support through home care services or alternative living arrangements could be developed. In summary, taking a broad definition of health seriously and empirically identifying specific constellations of health and comorbidities in the US population provide a new way of assessing health and risk in older adults living in their homes and thereby, may ultimately inform health policy. 

And these are the results:

 The CM of health with six distinct health classes based on 54 health measures across six dimensions (listed in column 1). The column US population (US Pop.) reports the prevalence in 2005 of each disease or condition in the older US Pop. ages 57–85 y old (definitions and validation are in Fig. S1). Within each health class (columns), the prevalence of a given disease or condition indexes the likelihood that any member of the class has that particular disease [rows; n = 54 health measures ordered by prevalence within each health domain (column 2)] and shares similar constellations of disease and health.

We should reckon on something similar with our data, just to check if it fits with the final goal of measuring health and wellbeing. As you may imagine, there are many implications. If we agree on a comprehensive model of health, then we have to focus on how decisions and priorities should be made.

PS. The return of the big questions. JM Colomer opinion;:

The achievement of a human-made plan depends 1/4 on resources, such as money, education or physical strength; 1/4 on skill and decisions; and 1/2 on unpredictable circumstances, usually called luck. A student asked me how luck can be improved: well, I said, if you keep pursuing your goal with perseverance, the probabilities to get it increase (like if you keep playing the lottery, the probability to get the prize also increases)

Infinity Exhibition

Giving the priority to the worse off

Egalitarianism

Finally I've found a book that explains the concept of egalitarianism and its implications with a clear message.

Distributive justice is an area not only of philosophy, but also of several other academic disciplines. For example, the formal analysis of economics is extremely important and valuable for understanding the structure of egalitarian theories of distributive justice. However, it intimidates some people. I believe that the most fruitful way to present theories of distributive justice is to integrate the results of economics and political theory into philosophical analysis.

The concept:

Egalitarianism: a class of distributive principles, which claim that individuals should have equal quantities of well-being or morally relevant factors that affect their life.

What it is not egalitarianism, but maybe you are not aware of:

There are at least four well-known distributive principles that are not egalitarian in the sense I defined above, yet some people think that these are egalitarian in some sense.

The first example is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism can be defined in various ways. Take classical utilitarianism. Classical utilitarianism contends that an act is right if and only if it maximizes the total sum of people’s well-being in a given society. When we calculate the total sum, we assign equal weight to each person’s well-being and simply add up different people’s well-being. Classical utilitarianism endorses assigning equal weight
to every person’s well-being, and it might be claimed that it is egalitarian. However, it is not concerned with how people’s well-being is distributed. Thus, I do not consider it as a form of egalitarianism.

The second example is libertarianism.

The third is the Marxist principle of justice or communism

The fourth is the proportionality principle.

The book reviews several perspectives on egalitarianism with concrete descriptions and comments:

1 Rawlsian egalitarianism
2 Luck egalitarianism
3 Telic egalitarianism
4 Prioritarianism
5 Sufficientarianism

And two specific chapters:

6 Equality and time
7 Equality in health and health care

The chapter on health is specially welcome and is a required reading for health economists, and for supporters of QALYs:

It is obvious that the principle of QALY maximization is utilitarian in spirit. It adds up different people’s good, and claims that we should choose the allocation that maximizes the total good. In the context of health care resource allocation, the good is QALY, which measures health benefit. QALY is added up across individuals to estimate the goodness of different outcomes. Then, the alternative that maximizes the goodness of outcome is chosen. It is not surprising that, according to QALY maximization, it does not matter how QALYs are distributed across individuals. Needless to say, all sorts of objections leveled against utilitarianism are raised against QALY maximization.

Usually, QALY maximization is understood as the unweighted sum of QALYs. However, it does not need to be so.We can make it a weighted sum and give priority to the worse off. If we give priority to the worse off, then it is possible to bring egalitarian concerns to bear on the allocation of health care resources.

One chapter is not enough to disentangle the complexities of QALYs, but it is worth reading.

At the end the author explains his position:

My preferred distributive principle is the aggregate view of telic egalitarianism. I am not
willing to support Rawls’s difference principle, because I agree with Harsanyi(1975) that the difference principle in practice ignores the benefits to the non worst off groups and therefore fails to secure the stability of the basic structure of society. This stands in opposition to Rawls’s claim that the difference principle, together with other principles of justice, guarantees a satisfactory minimum, and therefore secures the stability of the basic structure.

My view is coincidental with the author.


PS The concept of telic (telelological) egalitarianism:

There are two main ways in which we can believe in equality. We may believe that inequality is bad. On such a view, when we should aim for equality, that is because we shall thereby make the outcome better. We can then be called Teleological – or, for short, Telic – Egalitarians. Our view may instead be Deontological or, for short, Deontic. We may believe we should aim for equality, not to make the outcome better, but for some other moral reason. We may believe, for example, that people have rights to equal shares. (Parfit 2000: 84)

Taxing the rich to feed the leviathan

Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe

In deep endebted states, the endless debate about direct taxes finally relies on one thing, where is the money to raise more resources?. Nowadays, you'll notice a different formulation, focused on redistribution: we want to raise more money to redistribute to those with unfulfilled needs.
A new book is specially welcome to clarify all the concepts in a politicaly troubled moment:

We argue that societies do not tax the rich just because they are democracies where the poor outnumber the rich or because inequality is high. Nor are beliefs about how taxes influence economic performance ultimately decisive. Societies tax the rich when people believe that the state has privileged the wealthy, and so fair compensation demands that the rich be taxed more heavily than the rest.

When it comes to thinking of what tax policy is best, few would disagree with the notion that governments should be-in part guided by fairness. It is a term used frequently by those on both the political left and right.1 How can this be? History suggests that the concept of fairness is up for grabs. Standards of fairness in taxation vary greatly across countries, over time, and from individual to individual.

If we believe that

 Political support for taxing the rich is strongest when doing so ensures that the state treats citizens as equals. Treating citizens as equals means treating them with "equal concern and respect".

Then, we'll agree that the current debate on taxing the rich in our country is absolutely biased and intentionally partisan. With this approach we can't build a new country.

What a country decides about taxes on the rich has profound consequences for its future economic growth and the distribution of economic resources and opportunities

Therefore, this is the book to read for those that have to prepare the next public budget, and for any citizen, a must read.

PS. A good comment on the book.

Trade-offs between publicity and secrecy in drug regulation

Secret-Public Voting in FDA Advisory Committees
Secrecy and Publicity in Votes and Debates

Most of us can remember the withdrawal of antiinflamatory drug Vioxx in 2004. And some of us still wonder about the FDA responsibility and its experts committees on that sad affair.

Criticism reached a peak in February 2005 following the work of a committee set up to determine whether or not two of Pfizer’s anti-inflammation medicines, CelebrexR and BextraR , should remain on the market and whether Merck’s anti-inflammation drug VioxxR could be approved again for marketing. The vote – a close one, slightly in favor of the highly controversial BextraR and VioxxR – surprised the informed public and raised suspicions, leading The New York Times to commission a study on committee members’ financial ties. It turned out that ten members (out of thirty-two) had financial ties with one or more drug companies, most with Pfizer (Harris and Berenson 2005; CSPI 2005). As the critics saw it, this was a sign that advisory committees themselves, like FDA’s top management before them, had come under the influence of the drug industry.

After that, the FDA changed its rules for voting to simultaneous and visual methods rather than oral. This option avoids the anchoring effect of first voters. But secret voting was never contemplated.
This is exactly the issue that is addressed in a chapter of the book Secrecy and Publicity in Votes and Debates and now that everybody backs transparency, it's a good moment to stop and read this chapter at least.

So although public voting may be preferred because it allows external actors to monitor expert behavior, secret voting may appear desirable as a means of preventing conformism among experts. Thus, the value of the voting method may depend on of the audience considered: other voters or external actors. There is, however, one procedure that reconciles the benefits of publicity and secrecy, and that is to vote secretly but reveal who voted how after the vote count has been recorded. This method, used in Dominican monasteries in the thirteenth century in a process called the scrutinium (Gaudemet 1979, p. 326) and recommended by Bentham (1999, p. 106), may be termed, following Jon Elster (2013), “secret-public voting.”

 The FDA 2007 reform replaced public voting with secret-public voting, but it also  replaced oral voting, which left ample opportunity for individual members to express
themselves, with “manual” followed by digital voting, which precludes all such expression.

These statements prompt many questions about how our close advisory committees are taking decisions. I don' know any detail about it. And details are important, specially if there are lives at stake.

Clap your hands

This is exactly what we have to do after reaching 150.000 visits to this blog!. Thank you so much for your interest!

Today just listen to Parov Stelar: Clap your hands

Clap your hands!
And you swing out wide.
Stomp your feet!
You swing out wide.
Do a bump!
And you swing out wide.

Truck a little bit.
Beat it out and
make it!
Everybody's happy when they're doing the jive.



Platforms, a business model (2)

A long long time ago Michael Porter wrote Competitive Strategy a book that has been used as the bible of strategy.

Porter’s model identifies five forces that affect the strategic position of a particular business: the threat of new entrants to the market, the threat of substitute products or services, the bargaining power of customers, the bargaining power of suppliers, and the intensity of competitive rivalry in the industry. The goal of strategy is to control these five forces in such a way as to build a moat around the business and thereby render it unassailable.
Thus, when a firm can erect barriers to entry, it can keep competitors out, and entrants with substitute products cannot storm the castle. When a firm can subjugate suppliers, competition among them weakens their bargaining power so the firm can keep its costs low. When a firm can subjugate buyers by keeping them relatively small, disunited, and powerless, the firm can keep its prices high.
In this model, the firm maximizes profits by avoiding ruinous competition for itself but encouraging it for everyone else in the value chain. Advantage is found in industry structures that create a protective moat—one that enables the firm to segment markets, differentiate products, control resources, avoid price wars, and defend its profit margins.
For decades, companies have studied the five forces model and used it to guide their decisions about which markets to enter and exit, what mergers or acquisitions to consider, what sorts of product innovation to pursue, and what supply chain strategies to employ.

Now platforms add a new perspective,

Enter platforms. Many of the insights embodied in the five forces, resource-based, and hypercompetition models remain valid, but two new realities are now shaking up the world of strategy.
First, firms that understand how platforms work can now intentionally manipulate network effects to remake markets, not just respond to them. The implicit assumption in traditional business strategy that competition is a zero-sum game is far less applicable in the world of platforms. Rather than re-dividing a pie of more-or-less static size, platform businesses often grow the pie (as, for example, Amazon has done by innovating new models, such as self-publishing and publishing on demand, within the traditional book industry) or create an alternative pie that taps new markets and sources of supply (as Airbnb and Uber have done alongside the traditional hotel and taxi industries). Actively managing network effects changes the shape of markets rather than taking them as fixed.
Second, platforms turn businesses inside out, moving managerial influence from inside to outside the firm’s boundaries. Thus, a firm no longer needs to seize every new opportunity on its own; instead, it can pursue only the best opportunities while helping ecosystem partners seize the others, with all partners sharing the value they jointly create.13
These two new realities add a dramatic layer of complexity to business competition. Platform strategy resembles traditional strategy much the way three-dimensional chess resembles the traditional game.14 Within the ecosystem, the lead firm negotiates dynamic tradeoffs involving competition at three levels: platform against platform, platform against partner, and partner against partner.

These are excerpts from the book "Platform revolution" a must read if you want to understand what's going on in value creation in a connected world. In chapter 12 you'll find some comments on health sector, very succint and general.

A prescription for pharmaceutical expenditure, is there any one?

Pharmaceutical Expenditure And Policies

If you want to know what's going on in OECD countries on pharmaceuticals, just read this paper. The challenges are huge, and policy answers are delayed. My impression is that beyond the standard approach (the one in the paper), somebody should start talking about priorities for research and innovation according to health needs and potential benefit from recent advances in basic science. There is a need for a dialogue between firms and governments about it. Just a signaling game, saying how much are willing to pay for new innovations if they fit with health needs and potential benefit.

PS.Drug prices: Tweaking the formula excellent article in FT

Income and longevity, almost all you need to know

The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014 

The estimates of impact of income on longevity are now available for US. And the results are clear. The summary of the article in 4 statements:

First, higher income was associated with greater longevity throughout the income distribution.The gap in life expectancy between the richest 1% and poorest 1% of individuals was 14.6years (95% CI, 14.4to 14.8years) for men and 10.1 years (95% CI,9.9 to 10.3 years) for women.

Second, inequality in life expectancy increased over time. Between 2001 and 2014, life expectancy increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women in the top 5%of the income distribution, but by only 0.32 years for men and 0.04 years for women in the bottom 5%(P < .001 for the differences for both sexes).

Third, life expectancy for low-income individuals varied substantially across local areas. In the bottom income quartile, life expectancy differed by approximately 4.5 years between areas with the highest and lowest longevity.Changes in life expectancy between 2001 and 2014 ranged from gains of more than 4 years to losses of more than 2 years across areas.

Fourth, geographic differences in life expectancy for individuals in the lowest income quartile were significantly correlated with health behaviors such as smoking(r = −0.69,P < .001),but were not significantly correlated with access to medical care, physical environmental factors, income inequality, or labor market conditions. Life expectancy for low-income individuals was positively correlated with the local area fraction of immigrants (r = 0.72, P < .001), fraction of college graduates (r = 0.42, P < .001), and government expenditures (r = 0.57, P < .001). 

Differences are huge. Confronting the issue from a policy perspective is not that easy. Individual health behaviors are the key to understand what's going on.

PS. Inequality on income or wealth?. This could be the next article...

Josep Segú
Encants Nous, oli sobre tela, 80 × 220 cm

European health regulation on lab tests, the final round? (2)

Last week, Theranos clinical lab has received more bad news. Though the final resolution is still pending, all available informations raise concerns about the acuracy of such lab.Could this happen in Europe? My feeling is that the outdated and obsolete regulation could replicate the story.
In Europe, in vitro diagnostics regulation was decided 18 years ago!. The last proposal debated two years ago in the Parliament got no final agreement. I have explained the inefficiency of european parliament formerly. Health care safety and quality deserves better regulation and specially in lab tests.
Beyond safety issues, the value of lab tests require deeper assessment. Current proposals are not taking into account properly this issue. Now is the moment to introduce it in the final proposal, otherwise it will forgotten for the next two decades.

PS. Have a look at this article: A Systematic Review of Health Economic Evaluations of Diagnostic Biomarkers

Manhattan i Queens (Fragment), oli sobre tela, 60 × 150cm

Next week Josep Segú starts its exhibition at Sala Parés

Platforms, a business model

Platform scale

Platform Scale (n): Business scale powered by the ability to leverage and orchestrate a global connected ecosystem of producers and consumers toward efficient value creation and exchange.

The new hype on business models is around platforms. Well, this is not new, a decade ago David Evans wrote Catalyst Code but its impact was limited. Now "Platform scale" and "Platform revolution" are the two required business books. If you want to understand the economic foundations go to "Platform Economics".
The topic requires more elaboration than a post in a blog. How this trend affects health care in practice remains to be seen.

The Platform Manifesto
1. The ecosystem is the new warehouse
2. The ecosystem is also the new supply chain
3. The network effect is the new driver for scale
4. Data is the new dollar
5. Community management is the new human resources management
6. Liquidity management is the new inventory control
7. Curation and reputation are the new quality control
8. User journeys are the new sales funnels
9. Distribution is the new destination
10. Behavior design is the new loyalty program
11. Data science is the new business process optimization
12. Social feedback is the new sales commission
13. Algorithms are the new decision makers
14. Real-time customization is the new market research
15. Plug-and-play is the new business development
16. The invisible hand is the new iron fist

 The book

Economic Ethics

Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics

Some economists, while watching the film Inside job, were astonished by Martin Feldstein statements and justifications of banks with toxic assets. I was one of them. Too many conflicts of interest sorrounded his words. When I saw him, I thought, this is the "health economist" that wrote: Economic Analysis for Health Service Efficiency: Econometric Studies of the British National Health Service. n 1967 (!). This was one of my first readings in health economics many-many years ago.
While I was reading the following paragraph in a new book, I thought that the topic deserved a deeper approach to economists' ethics:

The question of whether there is a profound tension between our professional norms and our self interest deserves careful attention. Conflict of interest in economics gained much  (unwanted) attention after the documentary Inside Job accused some finance economists of doing analysis favorable to financial industry interests while receiving undisclosed  pay from those same interests. Even if you believe, as I do, that Inside Job was unfair to some of its targets, it did fuel a crisis of confidence in economists that we all have a  strong interest in correcting. The response has been to strengthen the norms that we  disclose possible conflict of interests in our research and policy recommendations; this is surely a good thing. An example from my own field of development is that researchers on foreign aid should disclose whether they are employees of or consultants to agencies  dispensing foreign aid (or conversely, recipients of funding from antiaid interests).

Yet the issue of conflict of interest is too complex to be so quickly dismissed by a simple  disclosure requirement.

The handbook by DeMartino and McCloskey is an excellent contribution to shed some light on the issue:

The case for economic ethics is simple and, we think, undeniable. Economists enjoy tremendous influence today over the life chances of others—innumerable others. That is the heart of the matter. The influence of economists arises from their expertise in a field vital to social wellbeing,
freedom, and other valued goals. As economists know better than anyone, when you monopolize a resource that others need, you exert power over them. Moreover, in recent years, economists’ influence has been amplified by institutional developments. Independent central banks, the  multilateral development banks, and other international financial institutions are often in a position to set economic policy and even engage in social engineering without much oversight by elected  officials or the public. Economists are at the helm of such institutions and occupy staff positions in the departments where the actual work gets done. Combined with its intellectual monopoly,  institutional power enhances the ability of the economics profession to alter the course of human affairs—for the better, of course, but also, sometimes, for the worse.

 ...

Influence over the lives of others, which can be immense, coupled with the risk of doing even substantial foreseeable and unforeseeable harm, implies that economic practice is ethically fraught. And yet the profession largely manages to ignore the attending burdens. Perhaps because economists understand that harm is universal in economics, the Hippocratic tradition appears to offer no insight into how economists should comport themselves. What does “do no harm” mean in a world where there are no free lunches and where all actions (including doing nothing) entail tradeoffs? And perhaps because economists often paint on big canvases, where they affect the lives of thousands or even millions of people all at once rather than individual clients one by one, clinical ethics seems largely irrelevant. The scale of economic interventions generates among economists a fear that serious and open engagement with professional ethical issues  would paralyze them with doubt in those moments of human need when what is called for instead is focused audacity.

 This is a real call for action into an improvement of practices and behaviors of economists.

Art Basel Hong Kong

Where is the trade-off?

The fallacy of the equity-efficiency trade off: rethinking the efficient health system

What goes first? An equitable health system or an efficient one?. You'll see in some textbooks this biased trade-off formulation.

 A more appropriate question would be, “what is more important for a population, a health system that delivers equitable (fairly distributed) health outcomes or a health  system that maximises health gains?” The difference between the meaningless first question (which does not contrast outcomes) and the potentially meaningful second question (which does contrast outcomes) is critical.

 On a continuum of health gains and equity, possible goals of a health system include:
✯ Achieving the greatest health gains for a given input without regard to whether this means concentrating the gains in one (social) group: a traditional health outcomes focus,

✯ Achieving the fairest distribution of health for a given input without regard to the actual level of health achieved: a non-traditional outcome focus on (one form of) health equity, and

✯ Achieving an appropriate balance between the greatest health gains for a given input subject to the constraint of fairly distributing the health gains across social groups: an outcome balancing health equity and health gains

If finally there is a prioritisation on waiting lists, we would focus on the third option. Unfortunately I wrote a post 5 years ago on the same topic...and still waiting for its application.

PS. The trade off started with A. Okun 40 years ago, from a macroeconomics perspective. Have a look at the anniversary at Brookings.

PS. "Public health refers to all organized measures (whether public or private) to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life among the population as a whole. Its activities aim to provide conditions in which people can be healthy and focus on entire populations, not on individual patients or diseases. Thus, public health is concerned with the total system and not only the eradication of a particular disease." WHO dixit. Can you imagine asking citizens about a Public Health Survey?. The term doesn't make any sense. All over the world the common term is Health Survey if you want to ask people about their health perception, except in Catalonia. So weird, somebody should check it, maybe it's a mistake.

The badness and the wrongness of inequality

 On inequality

Two ideas from the philosopher Harry Frankfurt: (1) from a moral point of view, economic equality does not really matter very much, and (2) there is a misunderstanding of the relationship between treating people equally and treating them with respect.

Both ideas are covered in an new book. Some selected statements:

Economic equality is not, as such, of any particular moral importance; and by the same token, economic inequality is not in itself morally objectionable. From the point of view of morality, it is not important that everyone should have the same. What is morally important is that each should have enough. If everyone had enough money, it would be of no special or deliberate concern whether some people had more money than others. I shall call this alternative to egalitarianism the “doctrine of sufficiency”—that is, the doctrine that what is morally important with regard to money is that  everyone should have enough.

Some philosophers believe that an equal distribution of certain valuable resources, just by virtue of being egalitarian, is a significant moral good. Others maintain that what actually is of moral importance is not that the resources be distributed equally but that everyone enjoy the same level of welfare. All of these philosophers agree that there is some type of equality that is morally valuable in itself, quite apart from whatever utility it may possess in supporting efforts to achieve other morally desirable goals.

It is easy to confuse being treated with the sort of respect in question with being treated equally. However, the two are not the same. I believe that the widespread tendency to exaggerate the moral importance of egalitarianism is due, at least in part, to a misunderstanding of the relationship between treating people equally and treating them with respect. The most fundamental difference between equality and respect has to do with focus and intent. With regard to any interesting parameter—whether it pertains to resources, welfare, opportunity, rights,  consideration, concern, or whatever—equality is merely a matterof each person’s having the same as others. Respect is more personal. Treating a person with respect means, in the sense that is germane here, dealing with him exclusively on the basis of those aspects of his particular character or circumstances that are actually relevant to the issue at hand.

Demands for equality have a very different meaning in our lives than do demands for respect. Someone who insists that he be treated equally is calculating his demands on the basis of what other people have rather than on the basis of what will accord with the realities of his own condition and will most suitably provide for his own interests and needs. In his desire for equality, there is no affirmation by a person of himself. On the contrary, a concern for simply being equal to others leads people to define their goals in terms that are set by considerations other than the specific requirements of their own distinctive nature and of their own circumstances. It tends to distract them from recognizing their most authentic ambitions, which are those that derive from the character of their own lives, and not those that are imposed on them by the conditions in which others happen to live.

I found the reference while reading The New Rambler. You'll find there the critical view. Strongly recommended for those interested in this topic and specially those that reject demagogy on using this term.

The key piece of gear

La peça clau de l'engranatge

This is the original version of my abridged op-ed in El Punt Avui published last Sunday. (in catalan, you may use Google translator)

Tots aquells que han intentat definir les característiques determinants d’un sistema de salut eficient acaben observant que la coordinació assistencial esdevé una peça cabdal. Això vol dir que la presa de decisions clíniques és més acurada quan diferents professionals i organitzacions treballen en la mateixa direcció, la de millorar la salut i qualitat de vida de les persones. Dit així sembla força elemental, però la realitat és més complexa. Davant d’un procés d’atenció calen moltes aportacions diferents, des de molts àmbits diferents, amb un nivell de qualitat determinat. L’engranatge ha de funcionar sense grinyolar ni una mica.

Hayek fa 70 anys explicava en un article clàssic -“The use of knowledge in society”- com el mecanisme de preus és un instrument extraordinari per coordinar les decisions econòmiques, i com una peça d’informació tant limitada era capaç d’orientar les accions dels que produeixen i dels que consumeixen. En realitat, sabem que és va quedar curt i per tant sense desmerèixer el potencial del mecanisme hi ha prou evidència de les seves mancances si el prenem de forma aïllada.

El sector salut és un exemple de com la formació dels preus és controvertida per la pròpia naturalesa  de l’activitat.  L’oferta i la demanda de serveis assistencial no es coordinen majoritàriament pel mecanisme de preus, són els prescriptors que determinen quins altres professionals i organitzacions han de prendre part en la cadena de valor. És el criteri professional el que guia les decisions en el marc d’unes organitzacions sanitàries que tenen les seves regles de funcionament. I aquesta peça clau de l’engranatge és la fonamental: la de l’organització sanitària integrada que és capaç de definir rutes assistencials davant problemes de salut. Es tracta de definir qui fa què, quan i com. I això esdevé encara més rellevant en el cas de les malalties cròniques, motiu pel qual el Pla de Salut a Catalunya hi ha situat tot l’èmfasi de forma molt encertada.

Substituïm doncs els preus pel professionalisme en la coordinació i assignació de recursos, però no n’hi ha prou. Tota organització té un disseny d’incentius, d’allò que motiva l’acció per part dels seus membres, el professionalisme n’és una part però n’hi ha d’altres. La cultura organitzativa i els valors que la sustenten són determinants del comportament dels diferents actors. El valor que s’atorga al mèrit professional, a l’esforç, i a la qualitat esdevé singular de cada organització. Quan una organització és incapaç de enaltir l’excel·lència i reconèixer-la, aleshores hi ha dues possibilitats: aquells que s’han esforçat no es consideren reconeguts i se’n van – encara que algunes vegades ho fan parcialment-, o tots plegats acaben al que se’n diu regressió a la mitjana. En ambdós casos, hi ha una pèrdua potencial per a tothom. Cal dir que no em refereixo a una qüestió estricta del que se’n diu incentius tipus “pal o pastanaga”, de resposta a un estímul concret. Cal triar entre el context de “mediocràcia” o meritocràcia que és el que defineix l’actitud, el contracte implícit.

Per tal d’assolir la integració assistencial de forma exitosa cal garantir uns incentius acurats. L’enfoc professionalista és necessari però no suficient. I aquests incentius inacurats és precisament la història del que s’ha esdevingut a Catalunya des del 2003, quan va començar la prova pilot de compra poblacional en el sistema sanitari públic.  En aquell moment, determinades zones geogràfiques van assajar d’impulsar organitzacions sanitàries integrades a canvi d’una compensació de l’activitat de forma capitativa. Es trencava doncs des d’aquell moment el criteri de volum, quan més fas més gran és la compensació. S’entrava en una nova dinàmica on el conjunt de serveis de salut poblacionals de proximitat es compensaven pel nombre d’habitants. La innovació era extraordinària i de nivell, anava en la direcció correcta. En alguns casos va mostrar uns resultats excepcionalment bons. Però com sempre, una bona idea aplicada a mitges o sense calibratge fi en el temps, es dilueix. Lluny de reconèixer les mancances en l’aplicació, fins i tot sortien aquells que assenyalaven el desencert del pagament capitatiu.

Ens cal un exercici d’humilitat i aprendre de les realitats recents. El sistema sanitari català té un elevat potencial per desenvolupar l’atenció integrada però té males peces al teler. La primera de totes és el disseny institucional. L’obsessió per la controvèrsia “públic-privat” ens ha fet perdre el guió de la pregunta clau, quins són els valors i quins resultats volem. Si el principi que pretenem preservar és que no hi hagi distribució dels beneficis quan el finançament és públic, aleshores el problema està acotat i no cal donar-hi més voltes. Afecta molt marginalment al conjunt. La segona peça és la següent: si l’objectiu que pretenem és assolir el millor nivell de salut amb els recursos disponibles, aleshores ens hem de preguntar quins són els resultats relatius de les diferents organitzacions i professionals, i  admetre que cal compensar  diferencialment l’esforç per l’excel·lència i la qualitat. Si a tots els professionals i organitzacions se’ls assigna un criteri homogeni de compensació sense ajustar pel valor, aleshores cal alertar la ciutadania que no val queixar-se, tindrem el sistema de salut que no motivarà prou l’assoliment d’objectius. L’equitat s’haurà aigualit en l’igualitarisme. Al final, els incentius sempre treballen en la seva pròpia direcció. Quan algú interpreta uns resultats d’un sistema com erronis, insuficients o millorables, cal que pensi també que són la conseqüència dels incentius. És a dir, que els incentius dissenyats han conduït a un resultat perfectament equivocat.

Ara tenim davant nostre el repte de la integració social i sanitària al costat de la transformació digital del sistema de salut. No es tracta tant sols de la integració assistencial, ara més que mai cal incentivar l’excel·lència i la qualitat en un entorn d’estancament pressupostari profund. El sistema de pagament dels serveis assistencials que s’ha aplicat d’ençà del decret de 2014 i la compensació dels professionals requereix una revisió en profunditat que no es resoldrà amb tímids ajustos segons entorn socioeconòmic. L’entorn està canviant massa ràpid i la regulació ha de refer-se des dels seus fonaments. Altrament tothom resta avisat, tindrem el resultat d’acord amb  els incentius que hem dissenyat. Som a temps d’escollir entre apostar per la “mediocràcia”, un sistema de qualitat mitjana, o d'excel.lència si incorporem la meritocràcia a les organitzacions sanitàries. Tindrem un resultat justet, o un resultat excel·lent, tot depèn de l’opció escollida.

Next Thursday at Llibreria Jaimes, presentation of love poems by Marcel Riera

A selection of:

LI BAI, DU FU, ONO NO KOMACHI, BEATRIU DE DIA, DANTE ALIGHIERI, FRANCESCO PETRARCA, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, AUSIÀS MARCH, PIERRE DE RONSARD, CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JOHN DONNE, FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO, ANNE BRADSTREET, WILLIAM BLAKE, LORD BYRON, JOHN KEATS, HEINRICH HEINE, ALEKSANDR PUIXKIN, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, EDGAR ALLAN POE, CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI, ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, THOMAS HARDY, PAUL VERLAINE, ÀNGEL GUIMERÀ, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, W.B. YEATS, PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR, RAINER MARIA RILKE, EDWARD THOMAS, LOUISE BOGAN, SARA TEASDALE, D.H. LAWRENCE, EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, CARLES RIBA, JOAN SALVAT-PAPASSEIT, VICENTE ALEIXANDRE, JOHN BETJEMAN, W.H. AUDEN, MÀRIUS TORRES, JOSEP PALAU I FABRE, GABRIEL FERRATER, VICENT ANDRÉS ESTELLÉS, JOAN VERGÉS, FELIU FORMOSA, JOSEPH BRODSKY, PERE ROVIRA, MARIA-MERCÈ MARÇAL i JOSEP PEDRALS

Introducing nudging in the law

Nudge and the Law. A European Perspective

Alberto Alemanno is an HEC law professor focused on issues on behavioral policies and regulation. Now he has edited an interesting book. You can check it from this index:

1. The Emergence of Behavioural Policy-Making:A European Perspective

Part I: Integrating Behavioural Sciences into EU Law-Making
2. Behavioural Sciences in Practice: Lessons for EU Rulemakers
3. Nudging and Evidence-Based Policy in Europe: Problems of Normative Legitimacy and Effectiveness
4 . Judge the Nudge: In Search of the Legal Limits of Paternalistic Nudging in the EU

Part II: De-Biasing Through EU Law and Beyond
5. Can Experts be Trusted and what can be done about it? Insights from the Biases and Heuristics Literature
6. Overcoming Illusions of Control: How to Nudge and Teach Regulatory Humility

Part III: The Impact of Behavioural Sciences on EU Policies
7. Behavioural Sciences and EU Data Protection Law: Challenges and Opportunities
8. Behavioural Sciences and the Regulation of Privacy on the Internet
9. EU Consumer Protection and Behavioural Sciences:Revolution or Reform?
10. What can EU Health Law Learn from Behavioural Sciences? The Case of EU Lifestyle Regulation
11. Conduct of Business Rules in EU Financial Services Regulation: Behavioural Rules Devoid of Behavioural Analysis?

Part IV: Problems with Behaviourally Informed Regulation
12 . Making Sense of Nudge-Scepticism: Three Challenges to EU Law ’ s Learning from Behavioural Sciences
13. Behavioural Trade-Offs: Beyond the Land of Nudges Spans the World of Law and Psychology
14. Epilogue: The Legitimacy and Practicability of EU Behavioural Policy-Making

The book deserves time reading it, specially if you are interested in latest trends on nudging and regulation. However, if you don't have enough time, go straight to chapter 10. This is what you should read about implications of nudging on Public Health. He says,

Our previous analysis made a case for more experimentation in behaviourally informed regulation in the EU lifestyle policy. This seems particularly true when examined in light of the limited results attained by self-regulatory schemes led by the food, alcohol, and tobacco industries. While the evidence of what works in terms of behaviour change strategies is limited and too often anecdotal, several success factors have progressively been identified in policy-making.

 These success factors are those we have to check in our close environment and test wether it is worth taking this regulatory approach.

Income and health over lifetime

Redistribution from a Lifetime Perspective

An IFS paper says:

Most analysis of the effects of the tax and benefit system is based on snapshot information about a single cross-section of people. Such an approach gives only a partial picture because it cannot account for the fact that circumstances change over life. This paper investigates how our impression of redistribution undertaken by the tax and benefit system changes when viewed from a lifetime perspective.

We find that much of what the tax and benefit system achieves is effectively to redistribute across periods of life and, as a result, it is much less effective at reducing lifetime inequality than inequality at a snapshot.

If distribution of income over lifetimes matters as much as among individuals,  at least in UK, then we have to review certain common place views. I've said that before in this post. Now, Martin Wolf highlights the role of welfare state as a "piggy bank", not only redistributing among people, it reallocates resources among lifetime. "Income is far les unequal over lifetimes than in any given year". Health and education are contributing mostly with benefits when we are old and young respectively.
Unfortunately in our country there is a long way to go, to confirm such intuition.

Phillips Collection in Barcelona

Obamacare, a book and a documentary

Inside National Health Reform (California/Milbank Books on Health and the Public)

If you want to know the details about how Obamacare was created, the most remarkable book was written by John McDonough five years ago. Today I would like to highlight these statements about the origins:

We decided to focus the first meeting on coverage for all Americans. We conceptualized three avenues we could travel in search of consensus:
• The first we called Constitution Avenue, meaning a radical, systemic shift away from the current system, in which mostAmericans get insurance through their jobs. It could be achieved with a  government-run Canadian-style “single payer” system replacing private insurance with public coverage, sometimes called “Medicare for All.” Or it could be done through the private sector, through the Healthy Americans Act, the scheme devised by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), which replaced employer coverage and Medicaid with an individual choice of private plans. Either way, employer-based coverage was eliminated.
• The second we called Independence Avenue, meaning an incremental “go slow” approach to minimize conflict. The federal government could support state high-risk pools to cover those with preexisting conditions, subsidize uninsured lower-income folks, expand Medicaid a bit, and implement limited insurance market reforms. Though it did not come close to universal or even a major expansion, and though it would disappoint and anger many on the Democratic and progressive side because it would fall far short of their expectations, it might get done quickly as a bipartisan measure.
• The third we called Massachusetts Avenue, meaning reform based on the key elements of the near-universal coverage law enacted in Massachusetts in 2006. Those elements include deep and systemic health insurance market reform, a mandate on individuals to purchase insurance, subsidies to make insurance affordable, and an insurance “exchange” to connect people easily with coverage.
After ninety minutes of talking, we wanted them to choose. We would not let them leave without getting a sense of their preferences. “How many want to go down Constitution Avenue?” I asked. Zero hands were raised. “OK, how many want to take Independence Avenue?” Zero hands. “All right, how many want to travel down Massachusetts Avenue?” Of the twenty or so in the room, fifteen hands went up. Impressive, I thought. I noticed the five unraised hands all belonged to business representatives:those from the Business Roundtable, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Benefits Council, and the National Retail Federation. “What’s up?” I asked.“Couldn’t we have a Wisconsin Avenue?” asked Paul Dennett from the American Benefits Council, a large corporate-benefits coalition.“Sure,” I said. “Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, whatever. You five folks get together, work out what your Wisconsin Avenue looks like, bring it back. Let’s compare it with Massachusetts Avenue, and if that’s where people want to go, that’s what we’ll do.” They came back the following week but had no alternative avenue to propose.

It helps to understand the begining, not the current situation. These statements are in chapter 2, you should follow the whole book to get a clear undestanding. Highly recommended.

And the BBC has recently released a documentary, unfortunately I can't watch it from my location.

Fiduciary duty in medicine

Professionalism, Fiduciary Duty, and Health-Related Business Leadership

Professionalism is a key concept to understand the practice of medicine. I have emphasized many times this issue in this blog. Today I would like to take one step further and to define the fiduciary duty of all healthcare professionals, specially those at management positions. In JAMA you'll find an article that elaborates the idea:

Fiduciary duty captures the simple idea of an obligation to act in the best interest of another person or party. The fiduciary is entrusted with the care of another person and must ensure that the person’s interests take precedence over the fiduciary’s own interests. Fiduciary duty is familiar to physicians in their relationship to patients, but in business, executives have a fiduciary duty to “the shareholders and the corporation.” A fiduciary relationship contrasts with a contractual one (in which mutual obligations are largely spelled out), and it imposes more extensive expectations of leaders. Fiduciaries are held to a higher standard precisely because of their power to affect the well-being of others who rely on their judgment and cannot adequately monitor and assess the fiduciary’s actions.

PS. Fiduciary duty concept is better developed under common law rather than civil law. Therefore, we need to rethink its implications.

Toni Catany, Photo-Exhibition in Barcelona

Rational emotions

Feeling smart

Game theory is a crucial contribution to science. However it is not that easy to get a clear understanding unless experiments that confirm hypothetical outcomes are well described. And experiments are context dependent.
If you want a good overview of the main insights of Game Theory, have a look at this book "Feeling Smart, why our emotions are more rational than you think" by Eyan Winter. It goes beyond game theory, this is the most fortunate part.You don't need maths to understand it. Mostly it is devoted to applications in a useful way, using behavioral and information views .
Let's take a statement on trust:

Trust is an engine of cooperation between individuals. Cooperation, in turn, is an engine of economic growth and social welfare. Trust cannot be sustained in a society without credibility, the behavioral trait that fosters trust. On the other hand, just as trust cannot survive for long without credibility, credibility is eventually destroyed without trust. If trust is virtually nonexistent in a social setting, then there is no point in trying to develop or sustain credibility; in that situation you are better off adopting selfish and unreliable behavior. Societies and nations can be in one of two equilibria: a “good” equilibrium in which individuals trust each other and behave in a reliable and cooperative manner toward others (justifying the trust), or a “bad” equilibrium in which individuals do not trust each other, with that lack of trust becoming self-justifying as people act without any sense of a need to be trustworthy or reliable. It is easy to guess, even without empirical data, which of these equilibria leads to greater economic growth.

If you are interested in trust games, then go to part II, "On trust and generosity", this is what you should read. I highly recommend it, I've enjoyed reading it.

 

PS. I have a vague feeling these days about what's going on health policy in my country. May be credibility is starting to be undermined? Any health model relies on the credibility and trust of different actors. It is not possible to build a health system without trust among all stakeholders. Instead of creating the conditions for a new health policy based on cooperation, may be the new foundations are departing from conflict?. Is this the way to create a successful health policy?

The building blocks of healthcare payment systems

The Building Blocks of Successful Payment Reform: Designing Payment Systems that Support Higher–Value Health Care

The implementation of healthcare payment systems is a complex task for any insurer, either public or private. Any option for reform is path-dependant and uncertain. The context and the inertia are the sources of lack of support for a change, unless a larger amount of Money -a big carrot- is put on the table.
A new report highlights the building blocks of a payment system. This is the instruction manual, and it refers to 4 issues:

Building Block 1: Services Covered by a Single Payment
Option 1–A: Adding new service–based fees or increasing existing fees.
Option 1–B: Creating a treatment–based bundled payment for a single provider
Option 1–C: Creating a multi–provider treatment–based bundle.
Option 1–D: Creating a condition–based payment.
Option 1–E: Creating a population–based payment.

Building Block 2: Mechanism for Controlling Utilization and Spending
Option 2–A: Adjustments in payment (pay for performance)based on utilization.
Option 2–B: Adjustments in payment (pay for performance)based on spending or savings.
Option 2–C: Bundled payment.

Building Block 3: Mechanism for Assuring Adequate Quality and Outcomes
Option 3–A: Establishing minimum performance standards.
Option 3–B: Payment adjustments (pay for performance) based on quality.
Option 3–C: Warrantied payment

Building Block 4: Mechanisms for Assuring Adequacy of Payment
Option 4–A: Risk adjustment or risk stratification.
Option 4–B: Outlier payments.
Option 4–C: Risk corridors.
Option 4–D: Volume–based adjustments to payment.
Option 4–E: Setting and periodically updating payment amounts to match costs.

A must read, keep it for your files.

 Halley meets Hortal, at Galeria Senda

 

PS. The revolving door of those that claim against revolving doors