ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT REASONS FOR A UNIVERSAL HSA SYSTEM...:

A16z's high level thesis - with which I strongly agree- is that there are profound opportunities at the confluence of biology and technology, especially as more undergraduates emerge who are trained in both (apparently the majority of Stanford students take at least one computer course, even though most don't wind up in computer science or engineering). It's also true that the new opportunities aren't simply being able to do existing activities faster or at larger scale - rather, it's the opportunity to ask and pursue questions you couldn't have even conceptualized in an earlier era. [...]

The central arguments of a16z:

(1) Digital therapeutics. Many healthcare problems are behavioral, and digital health companies might address these challenges more effectively, and less expensively, than drug companies. Representative (and portfolio) company: Omada Health (my 2012 post on the company is here; our recent Tech Tonics interview with founder Sean Duffy is here).

(2) Cloud Biology. The arrival of highly automated labs will revolutionize biology startups in the same way the arrival of cloud computing revolutionized technology startups. These lab facilities will enable biotech startups to do the experiments they need with greater reliability and without the capex spend; scalable research facilities will be available when needed, and you only pay for what you use (again, like cloud computing). Representative companies in this space: Emerald Cloud Labs; Transcriptic.

(3) Computational Medicine. Physicians and researchers must contend with an overwhelming and ever-increasing amount of data. For instance, a key challenge in oncology is matching many potential cancer drugs to the exact characteristics of the tumor in question. These sorts of problems can be solved with software, which is continuing to get better and cheaper.  Representative companies: Foundation Medicine cited as company in the oncology diagnostics space.

Collectively, a16z says, these three trends will lead to an "explosion" of experimental biology and digital health startups, offering the opportunity to develop clinically impactful products for a fraction of the cost of a traditional life science startup, and representing a pointed contrast to the ever-increasing cost of traditional biotech drug development, which seems to follow so-called Eroom's Law (Moore's Law in reverse).

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