数字医疗投资重现火爆局面

Ah, November, that special time of year when Americans get to re-enroll for health insurance and find out whether their costs will go up “just” 5% or whether they face a double-digit increase for the year to come.
对于美国人来说，11月是个特殊的月份，因为他们要在这个月重新登记参加医疗保险，并且他们将算清楚来年的医保费用是“仅仅”增加5%，还是增加两位数。

This year technology’s potential role in controlling seemingly unjustifiable increases is getting more attention than ever—in part because of wildly optimistic expectations surrounding consumer gadgets such as fitness bracelets. By June, funding for digital healthcare technology companies reached $2.3 billion—surpassing the previous year’s total, according to Rock Health, a startup incubator.
今年，在控制这种看上去不合理的医保费用上涨方面，科技的潜在作用得到了更多人关注——这在很大程度上是由于人们对运动手环等消费类电子产品的乐观期望。据创业孵化器Rock Health统计，截至今年6月，数字医疗科技类公司的融资总额已达到23亿美元——超过了去年的总额。

Two illustrative examples from this month alone: Xerox’s uNPRecedented investment in telemedicine company HealthSpot, which plans to install its kiosks not just at medical facilities but also at big companies; and pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG’s growing interest in wearable technologies that can track the effectiveness of its drugs.
仅本月就有两个明显的例子：施乐（Xerox）史无前例地投资远程医疗公司HealthSpot，后者计划将其远端临场医疗设施安装到医疗机构和大公司内；制药业巨头诺华制药公司（Novartis）对能够跟踪药效的可穿戴技术表现出日益浓厚的兴趣。

Another indicator is the customer traction being reported this autumn by Castlight Health, which made its rather controversial I.P.O. in March. (The company debuted with a market cap of almost $3 billion, but its value currently stands around $1.01 billion.)
数字医疗成为热门的另外一个迹象，是移动医疗公司Castlight Health在今年秋天公布的客户吸引力。该公司在3月进行了颇具争议的IPO。（公司最初上市时的市值约为30亿美元，但其现在的市值却一直维持在10.1亿美元。）

Every year, U.S. employers spend a whopping $620 billion on healthcare benefits with very little visibility into where that money goes. Castlight puts those costs under the microscope for at least 40 Fortune 500 companies including Google, Kraft Foods Group, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart.
美国雇主每年的医疗福利支出达到惊人的6,200亿美元，但他们却很难跟踪这笔钱的去向。而Castlight则可以将这笔支出摸得一清二楚，供至少40家《财富》美国500强公司了解其流向，这些公司包括谷歌（Google）、卡夫食品集团（Kraft Foods Group）、微软（Microsoft）和沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）。

Its service, called Enterprise Health Cloud, shows the prices a company’s employees pay for everything from cholesterol tests to magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to wellness visits to their doctor. The vision is to help employers better understand these cost and to let employees make more informed decisions about what they can expect to pay and about the quality of care they will receive.
这项企业医疗保健云服务，将显示出公司员工的医疗支出，包括胆固醇测定、磁共振成像（MRI）扫描以及健康体检等多个项目。这些数据不仅可以帮助雇主更有效地了解医疗福利费用，也可以让员工对他们想要付费的项目和可以获得的保健质量做出更明智的决定。