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brandonb
9,345karma·1,335submissions·January 17, 2011
about
Data for good.
Co-Founder at Empirical Health (https://empirical.health). Don't die of heart disease.
Before: Co-Founder @ Cardiogram (ML for heart health)
CTO at Sift Science (YC S11, machine learning to fight fraud)
Data Science @ UCSF Cardiology
HealthCare.gov rescue team
Google (Android speech recognition, search ads ML)
brandonb.cc
recent activity (1,335 total)
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Interesting that you can do this in Greece. In the US, a doctor has the order the labs. (Direct-to-consumer lab testing technically exists, but is always ordered by a doctor.)
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Can you expand more on why you'd want regular CRP over hs-CRP (specifically for cardiovascular risk)? For homocysteine, one proxy is B12 or folate (which are more cost-effective to test). To my k…
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That panel is $190.
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Not a cardiologist, but adjacent to this type of research. I'm an MLE but have published research in cardiology.
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This is a nicely-designed study. For decades, we've known that inflammation is a risk factor for heart attacks. In this study, the researchers designed a custom antibody that binds to oral bacter…
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The reason they do this is that their algorithm makes errors, and setting it this way means they can tune for a high specificity (giving up some sensitivity). The breathing disturbances notifications …
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Pretty comprehensive panels are available online for <$200: https://www.empirical.health/product/comprehensive-health-pa... …
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Every 20 mmHg increase in your systolic blood pressure, or 10 mmHg increase in diastolic blood pressure, doubles your mortality. And only 23% of people with high blood pressure have it under control. …
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It doesn't give you a blood pressure number -- just alerts if it thinks you have high blood pressure. I wrote a bit about the science of blood pressure on the wrist here: https://www.e…
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Part of the mechanism is that potassium lowers your blood pressure, whereas sodium raises it. High blood pressure slowly damages the cardiac walls, leading to less blood flow, which impairs kidney fun…
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PCSK9 inhibitors are advanced drugs for heart disease that cost $5,850 per year. They use a different mechanism than statins. While this FDA approval for primary prevention doesn't guarantee insu…