Beautiful coverage of Zeebo by Laura Sanders today in Science News, edition 207. Laura is comparing Zeebo Pure Honest Placebo to, what I call, placebos with side effects.

And in fact, many of us may have a similar placebo, of sorts, sitting in our medicine cabinets. It’s phenylephrine, and it’s been on the market for decades. This decongestant is in over-the-counter cold medications sold by brands such as Sudafed PE and DayQuil.

The Impact of Honest Placebo

Zeebo is receiving a good amount positive, direct feedback from consumers. Clinical studies with Zeebo show excellent results. We are creating awareness and transparency of what works in healthcare. That leads to giving more credit to fostering the patient’s inherent ability to self-heal and feel better, and maybe a little less to some conventional health remedies. On Amazon, however, our retail competitors seem to try to give us sinking ratings. I think giants like Boiron, a $1/2 billon revenue, worldwide leader in homeopathic medicine, are starting to feel the heat from Zeebo Placebo. Ever since Zeebo got traction in 2017, Boiron sales decreased, see chart. For a while, to protect sales and deserting claims of homeopathy, Boiron would even advertise on Amazon as a placebo pill. Try it out, search for “Zeebo Placebo Pills” on Amazon USA. You might be surprised to find out who else wants to get a share of the pure placebo market.

 

The Next Healthcare Revolution

In the pioneer days of Digital Health, years before I launched Zeebo, I developed much acclaimed health apps such as Mindful Eating Tracker, the IBS Tracker Bowel Mover Pro, or Autism Tracker – and a few more that I won’t mention here. The group of my users counted several hundred thousand, which were mainly highly motivated patients, feeling the suffering and looking for solutions. Tracking and analysis was work. Even Zeebo Placebo had its own Patient Reported Outcomes tracking app and research platform, asking people to assess their symptoms before and after taking placebo. Not many are willing to put in the effort to gain insight into what works. I understand, we have lives to live. Not everyone gets a dopamine kick from entering a complete, useful dataset, even if some do 😉 Thanks to AI and advanced sensing technology, consumer health tools are now at another level. Not only geeks empower themselves with personal health tracking support and insight today. Self-tracking tools, once called the future of healthcare in an article about one of my first apps, have found broad acceptance by millions of users. The potential benefits though, are mainly untapped.
I’m intrigued by how we will use the new generation of tools at our disposal. Over the next months I am going to try several of them out. One of my goals is to pioneer how insight and skill can maximize the placebo effect. On a broader scale I see a radical shift from conventional medical care to self-care. Cost of healthcare might seem like a driver, but the benefits of empowering patients will go much beyond potential cost savings. In key domains of care, especially where it comes to care continuity and personalization, consumers will have more insightful and life changing tools available to increase their quality of life and longevity than our fragmented, “ill-incentivized”  healthcare system can deliver today.

Upcoming Launch of my Substack Thread

In 2001 I developed a self tracking prototype and software to empower patients, eight years before the advent of the iPhone. I get the same exciting feeling again with the upcoming care revolution. And this time, it’ll happen much faster. Join me on this pioneering journey, that will explore new potential, practical uses, ethical guidance, and ways to scale up to come out with a better healthcare system than we have today.

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