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The 8 Health Moonshot Principles

To us, the ‘health moonshot’ is a powerful metaphor for meeting the great health challenges of our time. If we put a person on the Moon, then we know we can also transform global health by curing diseases and delivering care to all people regardless of location or income.

But moonshot thinking isn’t enough on its own. By dissecting the original Moon landing we can see key ingredients that made the dream possible. We also see pretty clearly why we haven’t been back to the Moon, and why we find achieving health moonshots so difficult. Moonshots take a long time — they take commitment.

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Featured

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Articles of Interest

Bright side of the moonshots

Covid-19 has brought together biomedical technologies that will transform human health.

A genomics revolution is rapidly improving cancer care

Foundation Medicine was launched in 2010 on the premise that cancer is a disease of the genome. It’s a revolutionary idea, in more ways than one. “The two revolutions I’m excited about at Foundation Medicine are the genomic revolution in cancer [care] and the digital revolution in health care,” Dr. Alexander said. “We’re now able to capture a lot more of the patient journey and apply new learnings and new methods.”

A medical moonshot would help fix inequality in American health care

Medical breakthroughs, as well as new ways of delivering existing treatments, can help advance health equity. How? Improved testing, diagnosis and treatment can help identify those who need care and can get them better care. But innovations don’t do that on their own.

Can a Moonshot Approach to Mental Health Work?

Obi Felten used to launch projects for X, Google’s innovation lab, but she’s now tackling mental health. She explains why Steve’s dream job was soul-destroying for her, and how peer support could transform the therapeutic industry.

Can aging be cured? Scientists are giving it a try

Cutting-edge technologies are revealing the intricacies of human aging and sparking research into drugs to slow it, or even reverse it.

Embrace ‘moonshot medicine’ to make the leap to a new era of human health

The moonshot mindset embraces the idea that audacious goals are the best way to bring revolutionary changes to health. Over the past several decades, the term “moonshot” has been used broadly to describe an ambitious approach to tackling society’s most intractable challenges, starting with the work that led to the first moon landing in 1969 and now encompassing research on the world’s biggest health issues, such as ending cancer, curing infectious disease, and extending healthy life.

Google's Medical Moonshots Take Aim at Mental Health

After pledging to take on diabetes, human genomics and death itself, Google has indicated the next colossal medical industry in its crosshairs: Mental health. And it has hired another big name to lead the charge — this one from the government.

Google's New Moonshot Project: the Human Body

Google Inc. has embarked on what may be its most ambitious and difficult science project ever: a quest inside the human body. Called Baseline Study, the project will collect anonymous genetic and molecular information from 175 people—and later thousands more—to create what the company hopes will be the fullest picture of what a healthy human being should be.

How to Apply Moonshot Thinking to Primary Care

At PreventScripts we believe the most drastic cost reductions and biggest Moonshot Health outcome can be had with a focus on the primary care provider (PCP). We know the chronic disease problem is enormous. We know the scientific, medical and behavioral practices that can make an impact.

Innovating the healthcare sector by organizing 10 health moonshots in the next 25 years

Well really what we're trying to do is reinvent the future of health. We're organizing a global army of what we call health transformers. These are the entrepreneurs and innovators. We're organizing this global army to achieve 10 health moonshots over the next 25 years. And it's very important to couple things of this out there.

Moonshot Science—Risks and Benefits

We suggest that a successful moonshot requires a sufficient understanding of the basic science underlying a problem in question so that efforts can be focused on engineering a solution. Current gaps in our basic knowledge of cancer biology make the cancer moonshot a uniquely challenging endeavor. Nevertheless, history has shown that intensive research efforts have frequently yielded conceptual and technological breakthroughs with unanticipated benefits for society. We expect that this effort will be no different.

There’s no ‘Moonshot’ or ‘Warp Speed’ for rare diseases. There should be

The term “rare disease” is both an apt descriptor and a misnomer. Individually, each rare disease affects a relatively small number of people. But taken together, more than 30 million Americans, and 400 million people worldwide, are affected by one of the 10,000-plus rare diseases — 95% of which have no approved treatment. More than half of those with rare diseases are children, one-third of whom won’t live to celebrate their fifth birthdays.

‘Moonshot’ Medicine Will Let Us Down

The push toward precision medicine could also lead to unintended consequences based on how humans respond to perceptions of risk. There is evidence that if people believe they are less at risk for a given disease, they feel excessively protected and their behavior gets worse, putting them at increased risk.

‘Moonshot’ Metaphor on Cancer Is a Failure to Communicate

The moonshot metaphor is appealing because it describes a seemingly impossible task that was nevertheless achieved through good old American know-how and lots of federal spending. Decades of research have suggested, however, that the NASA space program is not a good comparison.

‘Moonshot’ Review: In the Virus War, a Rapid Attack

As welcome as the vaccine is, the process works best when research findings are peer-reviewed and verified by independent scientists.

Resources

StartUp Health

StartUp Health is the health innovation ecosystem dedicated to achieving health moonshots. We drive sustainable impact through Health Transformer University, our moonshot program designed to help ambitious healthcare founders succeed at every stage.

X - The Moonshot Factory

X is a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people. Our goal: 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement. We approach projects that have the aspiration and riskiness of research with the speed and ambition of a startup.

Abstractive Health

Abstractive Health uses NLP and machine learning to summarize clinical notes and improve healthcare.

Cancer Moonshot

Since the initial launch of the Cancer Moonshot in 2016, the cancer community has made measurable progress toward three ambitious goals: to accelerate scientific discovery in cancer, foster greater collaboration, and improve the sharing of cancer data

Healthcare Transformers

Healthcare Transformers is a content hub for c-suite and executive leaders in healthcare. Our aim is to deliver valuable, cutting-edge, and non-promotional thought leadership material from the very leaders that are tackling healthcare transformation head-on so that you can make effective decisions for your organization, personnel and patients.

Moonshot Health Consulting

Moonshot Health Consulting is your resource for all things telehealth. Utilizing technology to deliver care is not the wave of the future, it is how care is delivered today. We have been on the forefront of this change and have the experience of creating telehealth strategy, building successful teams, scaling past pilot phase, and providing a real return on investment.

Moonshots for Health

We’re bringing together industry leaders to discuss the biggest breakthroughs in chronic care

The Wellness Moonshot: A World Free of Preventable Disease

A key Global Wellness Institute (GWI) program, The Wellness Moonshot: A World Free of Preventable Disease was created to be a powerful, collaborative force to educate people about prevention and inspire them to take control of their health.

Tidal

Protecting the ocean with technology systems while feeding humanity sustainably.