Item — HN Reader

I think the title is deliberately provocative, but they're not wrong.

Heart disease is largely solvable from a biomedical standpoint: we have accurate biomarkers (e.g., ApoB, Lp(a), hs-CRP), long-term risk prediction models, precision nutrition, and highly effective next-generation drugs (PCSK9 inhibitors, lepodisiran, etc).

But practically speaking, heart disease remains the #1 cause of death due to bottlenecks in care delivery: e.g., 46% U.S. counties have no cardiologists, providing guideline-recommended preventive care would require ~27 hours per doctor per day, and incentives are misaligned (health systems profit when hospital beds are full, not from prevention).

2 comments

Supposed that we have an incentive aligned health care system. What would that look like?

I think one outcome is that the healthcare system eventually expands due to population growth and less death. Accidents happen, rare cases become more common, even as we get good at fixing or preventing them.

Is it naive to say:

1. Check your ApoB, Lp(a), hs-CRP every 4 months

2. Feed that into a current-gen LLM and ask it to tell you what drugs to take and at what dosages

Would that solve about 90% of the issue?

I started a company that does exactly that (except we also have doctors who can prescribe the medications, not just LLMs). So I don't think the approach you describe is naive, but others might. :)