Guess who got kicked out of HLTH Europe?

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Last issue I wrote to you live from the HLTH Europe show floor. This one comes with a bit more distance, and a crazy story I'm sharing in the Deep Dive! But first:

On the last day of the conference, I got roped into an Oxford-style debate. Someone dropped out, I got the call, and suddenly I was filling in for an investor arguing against two German doctors and king of HLTH Henry Stoneley on the motion: “this house believes universal healthcare is unsustainable.”

Our side made the case on two fronts. First, morally—universal access is simply the right thing to do. Second, practically—it's the only model that makes large-scale, free-at-point-of-access research possible, including the HEAL-COVID trial I worked on where every patient in the system could be enrolled. We also leaned on rare disease care, where a private system means you see a doctor that lacks experience, so you're often better off in the public queue with someone that’s seen a wider range of outcomes.

We won 95 to 5. I'd love to tell you it was my rhetorical brilliance. It was mostly that nobody had a good counterargument for what they’d put in its place (maybe because we were all Europeans!).

But the debate isn't the story I actually want to tell you about this issue. The real one happened at the booth directly opposite ours.

Deep diveEscorted off the HLTH Europe Floor 

HLTH Europe is now in its third year, and this one felt different. Regulated medical devices everywhere. FDA clearances, CE marks, ISO certifications; people wearing their quality on their sleeve… except when they had no sleeves (see below).

I spent a chunk of the conference running an informal interview series with founders and CEOs, asking everyone the same question: which would you rather have—a peer-reviewed publication in Nature Medicine, or a signed million-dollar contract? 

Nearly everyone chose the publication. One founder told me, flatly, that a Nature Medicine paper would get him a ten-million-dollar contract anyway.

Which makes what was happening across the aisle so jarring.

Enter: the sleeveless.

The booth opposite us was selling red laser light therapy for fine lines and wrinkles. The sales team worked the floor like they were being paid by the compliment. "I love your shoes," to someone in a beaten-up pair of Sketchers. Transparently a hustle.

Yet… it worked. Once they had you at the table, they'd run a laser treatment on half your face while delivering the pitch: FDA cleared, doctors love it, this is a secret, and there's a big discount if you buy today. My colleague timed one of these sessions. Forty-three minutes, with someone's laser massager on your face and neck the entire time.

The devices retail for between four to eight thousand euros. A quick look at Trustpilot afterward turned up a string of one-star reviews: no refunds in the fine print, no support when the devices break. The pattern you'd expect. And it wasn't just casual conference-goers falling for it. I watched a very senior NHS figure walk away having bought one, joking that she'd tell her husband she got it for free.

Here's the part that actually made the story, though. 

HLTH's exhibitor rules are explicit: you can promote your brand, but you cannot sell product on the floor. This booth was doing exactly that, the organizers had been fielding complaints, and on day two, right around lunchtime, a wall of security in blazers arrived. Phones in pockets. Badges in hand. They put up barriers and walked the team off the premises.

I'll be honest, I enjoyed watching it happen. Not out of spite, but because it's rare to see consequences show up in real time. When I think about how many apps on the App Store make claims they can't back up, and how few of them ever get their metaphorical badge confiscated, this felt like a genuinely good sign; a community drawing a line and enforcing it.

It's also a warning. 

In this post-Theranos environment, a confident pitch and some borrowed scientific language can get past very smart people. Board members. Senior clinicians. People who spend their careers evaluating evidence for a living. If a forty-three-minute sales patter and an FDA buzzword can do that in the middle of a health tech conference full of skeptics, imagine what it does to a general consumer scrolling an ad at eleven at night.

The proof point here isn't subtle:

If your evidence is real, you don't need forty-three minutes and a discount code to make your case. You need the data on the table and a straight answer to a straight question. That's a harder business to build. It's also the only one that survives being asked to prove it.

More on where this pattern shows up next (including a much bigger company currently learning the same lesson in public) in the next issue!

— Paul

From our deskFrom P-Values to Financial Values

Everyone who stopped by the booth got early access to From P-Values to Financial Values before we put it anywhere else.

If you were there, you've already seen it. If you weren't, you can read it now here!

Next issue, we're going to talk about a company currently worth twelve billion dollars that responded to a critical research paper with a tweetstorm instead of a rebuttal… and why that decision is already looking like a mistake.

Podcast featureHow Peer-Reviewed Evidence Drives AI Discoverability

My podcast with Adam Turinas, founder of The Healthtech Marketing Show is now out now!

In this podcast, I share how to get cited by LLMs, the ProofStack evidence stack, how to put evidence to work in marketing, and more!

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Upcoming eventsWhat We're Attending

Thanks for reading,

Paul Wicks, PhD
Founder & CEO, ProofStack Health
Move Fast. Prove Things.

P.S. Here are 3 ways I can help you: 

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