a16z Podcast: Health Data — A Feedback Loop for Humanity
Sonal Chokshi, , and Vijay Pande
“We live in a world where we use millions of variables to predict which ad you’re going to click on. Whether or not you deserve to get a loan. What movie you might watch next. But when it comes to our bodies and even serious diseases, we want to reduce things down to just one or two variables.” It’s insane that we actually collect so little data about our bodies. The modern day physical is downright spartan in what it captures, not to mention that we’re using 200-year old tools to capture that very limited data.
Which is why we need to borrow from other domains of science and data and apply that to our bodies, in more ways than one, argues Q founder and CEO Jeffrey Kaditz with a16z bio fund general partner Vijay Pande (in conversation with Sonal Chokshi) on this episode of the a16z Podcast. But how do we get there? What would data “rights” look like — and could we possibly donate data much like we currently donate organs? And for catching diseases like prostate or breast cancer early, how can we use data captured over multiple points in time — something not really done right now in medicine — to be more predictive, sensitive, and specific beyond so-called “representative” population samples? What IS a ‘diagnostic’, really, anyway?
More About This Podcast
The a16z Podcast discusses the most important ideas within technology with the people building it. Each episode aims to put listeners ahead of the curve, covering topics like AI, energy, genomics, space, and more.