Duncan Reece retweeted
🚨Direct to Medicare companies are facing increased attention and scrutiny from CMS if the codes aren't being used in the way they're intended.
Compliance is everything.
Read the full analysis from @RuthReader.
secondopinion.media/why-cms-…
Duncan Reece retweeted
2+ years ago, @vivnat and I asked a simple question with our amazing team @GoogleDeepMind @GoogleResearch: what would it take for conversational diagnostic AI to safely enter into a real medical clinic?
That sparked many London<>Boston flights over the pond, enduring friendship and collaboration with @AdamRodmanMD @BIDMChealth and our amazing teammates, rigorous safe-stopping protocols, and our first prospective study now in @TheLancet: goo.gle/4i7Fx9N
Duncan Reece retweeted
Our clinical trial of AMIE, a patient-facing AI system, was just published in The Lancet.
I want to explain what *I* think this study ACTUALLY means.
It's about a fundamental question: how do we know that clinical AI works?
🧵⬇️
xitter.cf/Google/status/21083245…
Our medical research system, AMIE, is the first patient-facing conversational diagnostic tool of its kind to be studied prospectively in a real-world clinical setting.
In a study, published today in @TheLancet, we found that when patients chatted with AMIE before an in-person appointment, the interaction built their confidence and helped them organize their thoughts. And physicians who reviewed the information from the patient conversation got more time back to focus on collaborative care and shared decision-making instead of digging through data.
Duncan Reece retweeted
1/ This @sundarpichai post is less an indicator of progress in Medical AI than a signal of how important it is for frontier developers to be able to say that they are improving health and healthcare.
For contrast, read the very careful post by BIDMC senior author @AdamRodmanMD
Today @TheLancet published our AMIE study with @BIDMC_Medicine, the first prospective study of patient-facing conversational diagnostics in a real clinic.
AMIE is a research system people can chat with before doctors appointments. Testing AMIE outside the lab with real urgent care patients showed how technology can help gather medical histories safely. Clinicians reported that the summaries helped them prepare for visits in 75% of cases and influenced their approach to care in more than half. AMIE’s differential diagnoses also matched the doctors’ final diagnoses 90% of the time giving clinicians more time to focus on patient care.
It’s Google’s first-ever paper in The Lancet’s main journal!
Duncan Reece retweeted
Do 👏 not 👏 present 👏 AI 👏 slop 👏 slides 👏 that 👏 you 👏 cannot 👏 explain 👏 because 👏 AI 👏 made 👏 them
Duncan Reece retweeted
Three years ago @alan_karthi basically called me up out of the blue to ask how I would evaluate a patient-facing AI project that would become AMIE, which to my mind was a very strange thing to ask a nerdy physician-historian who is obsessed with ...
xitter.cf/AdamRodmanMD/status/21…
Our clinical trial of AMIE, a patient-facing AI system, was just published in The Lancet.
I want to explain what *I* think this study ACTUALLY means.
It's about a fundamental question: how do we know that clinical AI works?
🧵⬇️
xitter.cf/Google/status/21083245…
Duncan Reece retweeted
There could not be a more perfect illustration of the fact that tying health insurance to your employer is at the root of all idiocy in US healthcare. GLP-1s probably improve long-term outcomes and reduce costs. And yet no employer can pay for them because their employees will stay just 2-3 years on average. The only solution is a universal individual market with insurers that have incentives to offer great products that maximize retention and long-term outcomes.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Duncan Reece retweeted
Roughly two-thirds of Americans support the idea of Medicare-for-all, according to a new KFF poll, the highest share since the health policy research and news organization began polling on the idea 10 years ago. wapo.st/4AQCScZ
Duncan Reece retweeted
We've spent decades in healthcare obsessing over who pays for things. That's not actually why people dislike the system. We dislike it because we don't get to be the customer.
General Medicine is fixing that. We’re building a healthcare store where you see real prices, real options, and a clinician is there to help you choose.
Duncan Reece retweeted
General Medicine has raised a $120M Series B led by @a16z. We're using it to build the healthcare store.
The only way healthcare will work is to make the customer the most powerful participant in the system. And the only way to do that is to let them shop.
Here’s why healthcare needs a store, and what we had to build to make it possible:
Duncan Reece retweeted
I’m stepping back from venture capital for the best possible reason – to get back to operating. Starting today, I’m CEO of General Medicine, leading the company alongside my friends and cofounders Ashwin Muralidharan and Elliot Cohen. Ashwin explains it below, and I’ll just add that these are my two favorite people to work with, and we have lots to do. More soon.
I joined Amazon Pharmacy in 2019 to lead pricing because I wanted my work to really matter.
I didn’t know much about pharmacy pricing, or healthcare, for that matter. But, I knew how to build marketplaces and create simple, lovable consumer experiences, even when everything under the hood was wildly complex. I also thought the newly acquired PillPack team was exceptional and that we might have some fun along the way.
We kept pulling on that thread — reorienting healthcare around the consumer while working with the existing system — first at Amazon, and then at @GeneralMedicine , which I co-founded with @tjparker and @elliotcohen in 2023 and have led as CEO since.
A few years in and it’s working. General Medicine’s store is the only place where a customer can shop for and purchase whatever care they need, from a simple medication refill all the way to finding the right in-person specialist, nationwide, with clear, upfront pricing both with and without insurance. 83% of our customers tell us we’ve helped them address something they had been putting off. A third say it was something they had put off for six months or longer.
The business has never been in a stronger position. And we’re just getting started.
Earlier this year, TJ — who led our first funding rounds, serves on our board, and has been a co-founder since the beginning — told me he wanted to leave venture, get back into the weeds of operating, and do it with us at General Medicine.
Bringing him on full-time was an obvious yes. Figuring out how to organize ourselves to make the most of the opportunity ahead was a harder question. I spent a lot of time thinking about where each of us could have the greatest impact and I ultimately concluded that TJ should join as CEO and that I should move into the CPO role.
It’s an unconventional decision, particularly at a moment when the company is doing so well. But, that momentum is exactly why it felt like a unique moment to reorganize ourselves to maximize the opportunity ahead of us.
As CPO, I’ll continue to own our consumer business and lead product, engineering, design, clinical and ops and much of the company’s day-to-day work. My focus will remain what it has been from the beginning: building a healthcare experience that puts the consumer first.
One of the beautiful things about startups is that when we win, we win together. Titles, roles, and responsibilities are all downstream of organizing ourselves to have the greatest possible impact.
There’s no one I’d rather build this with than Elliot, TJ and the rest of the General Medicine team, and I’ve never been more excited about what’s ahead for us.
TJ, I’m sure the venture world will miss you, but we’re pretty stoked to have you back in the weeds with us. More to come from us later today.
Two ways to think about our AI future.
1) we are 103 years old playing ping ping with each other
2) we are 103 years old doomscrolling videos of humanoid robots playing ping pong.
This video from Hebrew Senior Life is pretty awesome. youtu.be/CEeUsfH1z1o?si=0bFf…
Duncan Reece retweeted
Remarkable summary in @TheEconomist of the (many) surgical procedures that appear no better than non-operative care (or placebo).
Appendectomy, meniscal “repair,” spinal fusion, rotator cuff…🤯
Many surgical interventions are little better than placebo
economist.com/science-and-te…
Duncan Reece retweeted
Dario Amodei is at the desk to assure that the future of humanity is safe from AI
Duncan Reece retweeted
AI is a big W for 40-somethings. Old enough to have learned how to do things the right way, young enough to learn some new tricks.
AI doctors in the existing payment model likely will increase costs unfortunately
Hopefully we don’t design AI doctors to augment the existing system @kvnwang the way we designed/implemented EHRs. Otherwise AI doctors will increase upcoding/denials too
Duncan Reece retweeted
One of the scarcest resources in healthcare is time. We’re building @almanac_health so physicians have more time to care for patients.
After spending the last few months building, we’re thrilled to be launching Almanac, the first milestone in our mission to improve healthcare delivery. Almanac is a collaborative agent that works across your EHR and workspace to help you delegate work, explore research directions, and more!
We’ve raised a total of $12M, starting with a $2M pre-seed led by @generalcatalyst, and a $10M seed led by @FPrimeCapital with participation from General Catalyst and @lightspeedvp.
We're just getting started, and we can't wait to build the future of care alongside the physicians who use Almanac every day


























