Health Stories: Computational Care, Computational Biology, and "Taking a Crowbar to the Health System" with Scott Barclay and James Hardiman

On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by James Hardiman (@hardimanjames) and Scott Barclay (@SABarclay) of Data Collective, a deep tech and AI venture fund.Scott and James are live in-studio with Erik to discuss a number of interesting topics around the health space. Scott and James explain what they mean when they say innovation in the last 50 years was driven by the semiconductor but the next 50 years will be driven by biotechnology. The three of them discuss the state of the healthcare in the US and how entrepreneurs and investors can “take a crowbar to the health system.” They discuss the misaligned incentives in the US healthcare system and how payers might be incentivized to pay for preventative care. They mention that the US pays about 18% of GDP for healthcare while still having poorer health outcomes than countries in Northern Europe that pay about 9% of GDP. They explain why they are predicting a contraction in the number of hospitals in the US and why there are double to triple the number of hospitals per capita in the US than there are in a country like Denmark. They also talk about a number of interesting developments in health tech these days, including a company that can verify the integrity of a supply chain by analyzing the microbiome of the resultant products and a company that is using computer vision to detect falls.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.