Sure it's satire, but none of it is untrue. And I am increasingly wondering about this era of consumer adjacent health AI-- I say consumer adjacent because health policy is catching up. The wearables and the virtual visits are going to be covered by insurers, and the willingness to pay for this mode of care is increasing. AND I joke but it has been a very convenient and pleasant experience to have care augmented by AI and the expanding wellness+ health industry...so where does this leave the traditional health system? Largely intact for complex care, but the sands are shifting below are feet.
The traditional system is in trouble imo. You can self select everything you laid out, pay cash or use your insurance, get it all coordinated and orchestrated with actual primary care, and everything set up for the future on autopilot at generalmedicine.co. The website looks like a store but the backend is incredibly complex yet simple for consumers and the clinicians who power it.
Adam, I concur with your statement on traditional system troubles. I do think having a real primary care or specialist care (I'm a "specialist" who focuses on 360 degree health) who sits in your AI loop and personalizes your care and helps interpret the frequent AI truths and reassurances into real language that resonates into behavior changes. I will look into generalmedicine.co further.
Very provocative but I can’t say I do something different. My new model of care incorporates all wearable data and all labs (working on imaging) and puts a physician in the loop. I think this is the winning strategy. I believe that personalized healthcare with real humans face-to-face sharing real time and episodic but trajectory focused testing ( labs + imaging) is going to be the most satisfying to consumers (patients).
I also love that you refer to patients as consumers— I think a better word is customers. And I agree the AI enabled data enriched physician hub is going to win. Personalized healthcare is overdue. The brand and the expertise aren’t sufficient to justify exorbitant waits and lack of connectivity and information we offer to customers (patients).
I believe the smart incumbent systems will adapt and adopt quickly — and the insurgents enabling this new model of care should be seen as partners instead of threats. (Though they are certainly the latter right now)
Fascinating to think about the clinical warfare between old system, new system, payers. I really and I think most busy physicians want to focus on the patient and patient experience. I do think scaling personalized medicine is going to be difficult and will degrade the patient customer experience. Genuine human 1:1 connection is superior to all AI. Human in the loop. Physician in the loop.
The satire works because it is mostly true, and that is the uncomfortable part. The consumer AI front door is not winning because it is better medicine, it is winning because you could not reach your own primary care doctor for seven months, and a system that cannot answer the phone has already ceded the ground. I build these kinds of tools and I wear the wearables, so I am not the skeptic in the corner. But from the ER I see the failure mode of the I am so healthy dashboard up close: the person who optimized every number and still walked in with the one thing none of those numbers were watching. A wearable gives you precision, not accuracy, and an agent that sounds certain is not the same as one that is calibrated. The open question for me is governance: when Dr. Atlas is confidently wrong, who is accountable, and how does the patient ever know?
This tracks, and you are not the only one! Primary care is in trouble! I do the Oura + PreventScripts version of this, except for the female stuff! And you are much younger than me! Access is a problem!
Enjoyed this article, Christian. We live in a very interesting time. There's a lot to like about your approach, especially in an age where there's so much friction in the healthcare system (prior auths, wait times, short visits, etc etc) - you provide a certain degree of health care on your terms.
But it likely works best for individuals who are educated and informed about their health and these tools and facile in using them (although that should become easier over time for the general population), and for those individuals who are either generally healthy or who have low complexity needs. Or for just the 'routine check up'.
This strategy might become more fragile for the elderly, patients with chronic and/or complex care, or edge cases.
But for a large portion of the population, your take might not be far off! I've also had the experience at times, after leaving my doctors office, thinking, 'did I really need to have this visit today'?
Absolutely agree! I wrote the article from a funny place of dunking on the biohacking crew while sheepishly being a member of that milieu. There are hard questions about wellness especially in the age of AI. I had largely dismissed wearables and longevity hacks as instruments of the worried well, but the upswell is hard to deny. I agree there are hard questions to ask about whether this exciting layer of care is sustainable or scalable and whether it will simultaneously empower patients while further driving disparities as you point out.
For a fun more on the nose satire check out my little vibe coded game 🫠
Thanks for these comments - the disparities/access angle is an interesting one. I wonder whether long-term this type of strategy you described will act as a 'first-pass filter' that will let a certain percentage of the population skip in-person care (or have very perfunctory virtual visits), leaving the in-person care to the rest. Definitely in line with the trend of hospital-based --> home, and in-person --> virtual, and generalized --> personal. Appreciate the vibe coded game as well!
Christian, the satire lands because the regime actually works, for the reason that makes it hard to argue with. He is healthy. Every number he is flexing is feedback on a body that is not yet sick, the state self-optimization is built to serve. All of it trains a single relationship to the body, the body as a system you read and tune.
The moment he is reserving the real system for is where that relationship stops holding. Illness is the body refusing to be optimized, and the dashboard has no row for that. So the cost may land less on the health system than on him, later, when he meets the first thing he cannot tune, having spent years treating his body as something he runs rather than something that can run out.
Absolutely, and this is the missing thread in the wellness wave. 🌊
I do wonder if with technology we can make the leap from worried well care to informed and equitable indigent care. For that to work will take adoption and adaption as well as policy reform. I’m here for it!
Sure it's satire, but none of it is untrue. And I am increasingly wondering about this era of consumer adjacent health AI-- I say consumer adjacent because health policy is catching up. The wearables and the virtual visits are going to be covered by insurers, and the willingness to pay for this mode of care is increasing. AND I joke but it has been a very convenient and pleasant experience to have care augmented by AI and the expanding wellness+ health industry...so where does this leave the traditional health system? Largely intact for complex care, but the sands are shifting below are feet.
The traditional system is in trouble imo. You can self select everything you laid out, pay cash or use your insurance, get it all coordinated and orchestrated with actual primary care, and everything set up for the future on autopilot at generalmedicine.co. The website looks like a store but the backend is incredibly complex yet simple for consumers and the clinicians who power it.
Adam, I concur with your statement on traditional system troubles. I do think having a real primary care or specialist care (I'm a "specialist" who focuses on 360 degree health) who sits in your AI loop and personalizes your care and helps interpret the frequent AI truths and reassurances into real language that resonates into behavior changes. I will look into generalmedicine.co further.
Very provocative but I can’t say I do something different. My new model of care incorporates all wearable data and all labs (working on imaging) and puts a physician in the loop. I think this is the winning strategy. I believe that personalized healthcare with real humans face-to-face sharing real time and episodic but trajectory focused testing ( labs + imaging) is going to be the most satisfying to consumers (patients).
I also love that you refer to patients as consumers— I think a better word is customers. And I agree the AI enabled data enriched physician hub is going to win. Personalized healthcare is overdue. The brand and the expertise aren’t sufficient to justify exorbitant waits and lack of connectivity and information we offer to customers (patients).
I believe the smart incumbent systems will adapt and adopt quickly — and the insurgents enabling this new model of care should be seen as partners instead of threats. (Though they are certainly the latter right now)
Fascinating to think about the clinical warfare between old system, new system, payers. I really and I think most busy physicians want to focus on the patient and patient experience. I do think scaling personalized medicine is going to be difficult and will degrade the patient customer experience. Genuine human 1:1 connection is superior to all AI. Human in the loop. Physician in the loop.
So insightful and I like customer terminology as well.
The satire works because it is mostly true, and that is the uncomfortable part. The consumer AI front door is not winning because it is better medicine, it is winning because you could not reach your own primary care doctor for seven months, and a system that cannot answer the phone has already ceded the ground. I build these kinds of tools and I wear the wearables, so I am not the skeptic in the corner. But from the ER I see the failure mode of the I am so healthy dashboard up close: the person who optimized every number and still walked in with the one thing none of those numbers were watching. A wearable gives you precision, not accuracy, and an agent that sounds certain is not the same as one that is calibrated. The open question for me is governance: when Dr. Atlas is confidently wrong, who is accountable, and how does the patient ever know?
This tracks, and you are not the only one! Primary care is in trouble! I do the Oura + PreventScripts version of this, except for the female stuff! And you are much younger than me! Access is a problem!
Enjoyed this article, Christian. We live in a very interesting time. There's a lot to like about your approach, especially in an age where there's so much friction in the healthcare system (prior auths, wait times, short visits, etc etc) - you provide a certain degree of health care on your terms.
But it likely works best for individuals who are educated and informed about their health and these tools and facile in using them (although that should become easier over time for the general population), and for those individuals who are either generally healthy or who have low complexity needs. Or for just the 'routine check up'.
This strategy might become more fragile for the elderly, patients with chronic and/or complex care, or edge cases.
But for a large portion of the population, your take might not be far off! I've also had the experience at times, after leaving my doctors office, thinking, 'did I really need to have this visit today'?
Absolutely agree! I wrote the article from a funny place of dunking on the biohacking crew while sheepishly being a member of that milieu. There are hard questions about wellness especially in the age of AI. I had largely dismissed wearables and longevity hacks as instruments of the worried well, but the upswell is hard to deny. I agree there are hard questions to ask about whether this exciting layer of care is sustainable or scalable and whether it will simultaneously empower patients while further driving disparities as you point out.
For a fun more on the nose satire check out my little vibe coded game 🫠
https://techysurgeon-im-so-healthy.netlify.app/
Thanks for these comments - the disparities/access angle is an interesting one. I wonder whether long-term this type of strategy you described will act as a 'first-pass filter' that will let a certain percentage of the population skip in-person care (or have very perfunctory virtual visits), leaving the in-person care to the rest. Definitely in line with the trend of hospital-based --> home, and in-person --> virtual, and generalized --> personal. Appreciate the vibe coded game as well!
Christian, the satire lands because the regime actually works, for the reason that makes it hard to argue with. He is healthy. Every number he is flexing is feedback on a body that is not yet sick, the state self-optimization is built to serve. All of it trains a single relationship to the body, the body as a system you read and tune.
The moment he is reserving the real system for is where that relationship stops holding. Illness is the body refusing to be optimized, and the dashboard has no row for that. So the cost may land less on the health system than on him, later, when he meets the first thing he cannot tune, having spent years treating his body as something he runs rather than something that can run out.
Absolutely, and this is the missing thread in the wellness wave. 🌊
I do wonder if with technology we can make the leap from worried well care to informed and equitable indigent care. For that to work will take adoption and adaption as well as policy reform. I’m here for it!