“Guys, you’re just talking. Talking, ‘la-la-la-la’, like this is business as usual. It’s not.” Brad Pitt delivers that line playing real-life baseball General Manager Billy Beane in Moneyball. It is a movie about creating a competitive baseball team with limited funds by inventing a new way to choose players. As we witness dramatic changes to our healthcare system, I am reminded of how Moneyball shows the intense resistance to the dramatic changes Billy Beane made in scouting for baseball talent that ultimately revolutionized the game of baseball. Similarly, in the One Thoughtful Paragraph, I explain how healthcare must adapt to this decidedly not business-as-usual time.
The big news headlines are about health insurance, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and HHS Secretary Kennedy’s latest moves, but we are noticing the announcements by companies who are adapting to a changing healthcare landscape:
- Samsung plans to acquire Xealth and announced new features of its Galaxy Watch8, both designed to double-down on its wearable health devices and the data they collect on individual’s personal, daily health.
- Hippocratic AI is partnering with KPMG to use patient-facing AI agents to address provider shortages.
- Both Tempus AI and Microsoft (separately) announced how they are using AI to improve how we are diagnosing cancer.
“It’s an unfair game… We’ve got to think differently.” I hope this is what advocates representing health insurers, researchers, primary care doctors, and pharmaceutical companies are saying, but I worry that they are not. Instead, this is the wake-up call delivered by Brad Pitt in Moneyball, trying to convince his traditional, old-time scouts that they can’t recruit baseball players the same old way and expect different results. If you need evidence that our healthcare system is at an inflection point, look no further than Rock Health’s latest report: H1 2025 Market Overview: Proof in the Pudding. It reviews the big funding rounds for AI-powered health solutions, modern tools for providers that are being widely-adopted, and eye-popping IPOs for digital health companies – while acknowledging that it is the health policy plays that are moving these mountains. It is this coming together of policy and market trends that is creating a new roadmap for the healthcare system. For those that are trying to solve old health system problems with old solutions, it is time to watch Moneyball and take away a lesson or two about doing things differently. It is like how the Boston Red Sox owner explains to Billy Beane just how much his new approach revolutionized baseball: “Anybody who’s not rebuilding a team using your model, they’re dinosaurs.”
