Health care

does the Harvard Business School, Michael Porter, teach the essence of business strategy is the elimination of competition, by regulation if possible. Is this legal? Is this basically socialism or communism? – Quora

Posted by

0

Original question on Quora: Why does the Harvard Business School, Michael Porter, teach the essence of business strategy is the elimination of competition, by regulation if possible. Is this legal? Is this basically socialism or communism?

My response: Trying to pin this on Michael Porter is ridiculous. He says no such thing. Based on the way the question is phrased, I wonder if there is an ideological purpose in asking it.

But in any case, there is a serious issue behind the question, namely an increasing level of oligopoly (decreasing levels of competition) among companies in many US industries. See, for example, “Big Companies Are Getting a Chokehold on the Economy Even Goldman Sachs is worried that they’re stifling competition, holding down wages and weighing on growth.”  or.

“America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge”.

One theory about this trend is that it is partly due to growing power of corporations in Washington. That, in turn, may be traced partly to the increasing role of money in elections, largely as a result of the infamous Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision. For example, the way Trump’s massive tax cuts were put together without any hearings and in a VERY short period of time, and the amount of “goodies” for many industries in the resulting package, would never have happened with previous massive changes in taxes.

An effective strategy in some highly concentrated industries is to persuade the government to selectively regulate your industry, in ways that favor large and established companies. That is, all companies may experience higher costs because of a regulation, but if your company can respond more cheaply than anyone else, it is still a net win for you. An example is pharmaceuticals. For example pharma companies increasingly use the legal system, regulations, and side deals to keep generic drugs off the market for years after drug patents expire. The industry has also been very effective at keeping foreign competitors out – e.g. blocking imports by individual citizens from Canada.

(I buy one medication at $1 per pill from abroad, when it costs $30/pill at the local Rite-Aid. But it takes a lot of research and effort.)

Source: (32) Why does the Harvard Business School, Michael Porter, teach the essence of business strategy is the elimination of competition, by regulation if possible. Is this legal? Is this basically socialism or communism? – Quora

450,000 Women Missed Breast Cancer Screenings Due to “Algorithm Failure” 

Posted by

Disclosure in the United Kingdom has sparked a heated debate about the health impacts of an errant algorithm
By Robert N. Charette

Source: 450,000 Women Missed Breast Cancer Screenings Due to “Algorithm Failure” – IEEE Spectrum

It sounds like what we used to call a “bug” to me. I guess bugs are now promoted to “algorithm failures”. 

Nearly half a million elderly women in the United Kingdom missed mammography exams because of a scheduling error caused by one incorrect computer algorithm, and several hundred of those women may have died early as a result. Last week, the U.K. Health Minister Jeremy Hunt announced that an independent inquiry had been launched to determine how a “computer algorithm failure” stretching back to 2009 caused some 450,000 patients in England between the ages of 68 to 71 to not be invited for their final breast cancer screenings.

The errant algorithm was in the National Health System’s (NHS) breast cancer screening scheduling software, and remained undiscovered for nine years.

“Tragically, there are likely to be some people in this group who would have been alive today if the failure had not happened,” Hunt went on to tell Parliament. He added that based on statistical modeling, the number who may have died prematurely as a result was estimated to be between 135 and 270 women.

Source: 450,000 Women Missed Breast Cancer Screenings Due to “Algorithm Failure” – IEEE Spectrum

What snakes are growing in the Gardens of Technological Eden?

Posted by

0

Two emerging technologies are revolutionizing industries, and will soon have big impacts on our health, jobs, entertainment, and entire lives. They are Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data. Of course, these have already had big effects in certain applications, but I expect that they will become even more important as they improve. My colleague Dr. James Short is putting together a conference called Data West at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and I came up with a list of fears that might disrupt their emergence.

1) If we continue to learn that ALL large data repositories will be hacked from time to time (Experian; National Security Agency), what blowback will that create against data collection? Perhaps none in the US, but in some other countries, it will cause less willingness to allow companies to collect consumer data.

2) Consensual reality is unraveling, mainly as a result of deliberate, sophisticated, distributed, attacks. That should concern all of us as citizens. Should it also worry us as data users, or will chaos in public venues not leak over into formal data? For example, if information portals (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) are forced to take a more active role in censoring content, will advertisers care? Again, Europe may be very different. We can presume that any countermeasures will only be partly effective – the problem probably does not have a good technical solution.

3) Malware, extortion, etc. aimed at companies. Will this “poison the well” in general?

4) Malware, extortion, doxing, etc. aimed at Internet of Things users, such as household thermostats, security cameras, cars. Will this cause a backlash against sellers of these systems, or will people accept it as the “new normal.” So far, people have seemed willing to bet that it won’t affect them personally, but will that change. For example, what will happen when auto accidents are caused by deliberate but unknown parties who advertise their success? When someone records all conversations within reach of the Alexa box in the living room?

Each of these scenarios has at least a 20% chance of becoming common. At a minimum, they will require more spending on defenses. Will any become large enough to suppress entire applications of these new technologies?

I have not said anything about employment and income distribution. They may change for the worse over the next 20 years, but the causes and solutions won’t be simple, and I doubt that political pressure will become strong enough to alter technology evolution.

Reality versus belief, and the American right

Posted by

0

Warning: this post is entirely opinion about American politics.

Bret Stephens had an interesting op-ed in the NY Times recently. On first reading, it was great. Then I went through the comments, and realized it was quite one-sided. (He is a conservative, over from the WS Journal.) So I wrote the following letter to the editor.

In his column of Sept. 24 Mr Stephens sharp eye noticed, and sharp tongue castigated, only the left’s fundamental error in today’s discussions: judging arguments based on the speaker’s identity. But even more destructive is the fundamental error found primarily on the right: judging arguments based on the desire to believe them. That Congressman R believes something, no matter how strongly, does not make it true, nor a valid basis for setting policy.

I  am at a university that emphasizes science and engineering, and teaches little about Mr. Stephens’ Great Books. But we  teach our students that objective reality exists, and that it matters.  We base our arguments on empirical evidence. And if evidence is insufficient, we look for more.

Here are a few examples of facts that are somehow viewed as controversial: making contraception and information more available to teenagers reduces unwanted pregnancies, and abortions. (See Colorado for a large-scale proof.) Vaccinations reduce disease. Cutting income taxes of the rich will do little to stimulate the economy when the economy is near full employment. Pumping gases into the atmosphere creates a “greenhouse effect.” There is room to disagree about what actions to take as a result of these facts, but not about the facts themselves.

I have elsewhere argued that America (and other parts of the world) are retreating from Reason back to Faith, reversing the Enlightenment of the 1600s. If this continues, the consequences for our country will be dire. But that is a longer discussion.

Theranos as innovation+disaster case study

Posted by

0

I just taught the Theranos case in my course on “Innovation and Industry Development,” co-taught with Prof. Elizabeth Lyons. The first half is about positioning a startup: powerful new technology, established incumbents, how should we enter to disrupt the industry and make the world a better place? Any moderate set of numbers makes Theranos’ reputed  $9,000,000,000 valuation look reasonable.

Der Untergang der Titanic

The “case” presently consists of four articles. I put together a set of overhead slides to generate and lead the discussion. The first half ends with some general lessons about disruptive innovation and whether to follow an open or closed IP strategy. The second half starts in December 2015 and discusses the crash. I also compare Theranos with the Google contact lens (another technically impossible pseudo-invention).

“That’s a type of Silicon Valley arrogance,” he said. “That isn’t how science works.” (re Google, not Theranos)

Continue reading →

One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick – The New York Times

Posted by

Sniffing disease markers is a fundamentally promising concept. We know that dogs have very good smell, so that is an existence proof that something interesting can be detected in the air. (In my family’s experience, human smell can also become amazingly good, at least for pregnant women!) In fact, if B.F. Skinner were still alive, I wonder if he would be training pigeons to sniff out disease?

But although air is feasible, it does seem like blood is a better choice because it is likely to have stronger signals and lower noise. Air-based sensors would be non-invasive, so perhaps that is why some groups are pursuing air.

…a team of researchers from the ..Monell Chemical Senses Center and the University of Pennsylvania [are working] on a prototype odor sensor that detects ovarian cancer in samples of blood plasma.

The team chose plasma because it is somewhat less likely than breath or urine to be corrupted by confounding factors like diet or environmental chemicals, including cleaning products or pollution. Instead of ligands, their sensors rely on snippets of single-strand DNA to do the work of latching onto odor particles.

“We are trying to make the device work the way we understand mammalian olfaction works,” … “DNA gives unique characteristics for this process.”

Judging by research at UCSD and elsewhere, I envision tests like this eventually be run as add-on modules to smartphones. Buy a module for $100 (single molecule, home use) up to $5000 (multiple molecules, ambulance use), and plug it into your phone. Above $5000, you will probably use a dedicated electronics package. But that package might be based on Android OS.

This is also another example of Big Data science. It could be done before, but it will be a lot easier now. Blood collected for other purposes from “known sick” patients could be used to create a 50,000 person training set. (The biggest problem might be getting informed consent.)

 

Lots of technology policy stories this weekend

Posted by

0

There are lots of technology-policy-related stories this weekend.  The first three concern about excess market power in tech markets, and its effects. The remaining three are miscellaneous subjects at the intersection of technology, policy, and politics.

Suggestion: If a newspaper is refusing to let you read an article, you can often get it by searching for it (on Google – irony alert, see one of the stories below), and visiting from the search result.

And a humble brag: Only the last of these stories directly concerns He Who Must Not Be Named. Nor did I mention Juicero, whose idiocy I tweeted about when it first came to market.

Is It Time to Break Up Google?

In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.

They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.

Continue reading →