Star Wars: The Force Awakens isn’t a perfect movie. But there’s near-universal relief that it doesn’t stink — that the newest addition to the Star Wars franchise is parsecs better than the three flawed prequels.

After two decades of disappointment, you could even say fans have new hope.

Episode VIII is already in production, and I’m incredibly curious to see how it will pay off the mysteries of The Force Awakens. But I’m worried about some of Disney’s other moves, especially as the company rushes to mine the Star Wars universe for new stories, including a Han Solo spin-off movie, a possible live-action TV show, and more. All of those decisions offer some amount of risk. The adventures of a young Han Solo could be brilliant … or they could cheapen the original character.

Without spoiling the movie, the plot of The Force Awakens suggests the studio might be inclined to play it safe. To preserve the spirit of the original trilogy while giving fans what they want to see.

In that case, there’s a clear map for what the franchise should do next: Reboot the three Star Wars prequels.

Free idea for Disney: please reboot all the Star Wars prequels and actually make them good this time.

— Dr. Ed (@ICUDrEd) December 20, 2015

For those who don’t remember — or desperately want to forget — the 1999–2005 prequel trilogy was decidedly mediocre. Critics and viewers savaged the movies’ bad dialogue and worse plots. The kiddie snuff film Home Alone 2: Lost In New York has a higher score on IMDB than Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.

Main characters Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala were flat, boring, and at times unwatchable. “Anakin sucks,” screenwriter Max Landis said on Screen Junkies this week. “He’s one of the worst protagonists in film history.” And the overt racism and horrible CGI were unbearable.

Of course, all three prequels still made a ton of money. The Phantom Menace was the top-grossing movie of 1999, and Episode III — Revenge of the Sith sold the most tickets in 2005. (Episode II — Attack of the Clones was the only movie in the franchise to not win its year, finishing third in 2002.)

Imagine how much more money the movies would’ve made if they were good?

Critics (and many viewers) are rightly cynical when a studio reboots a film franchise. It’s often a cash grab: Remakes are safe bets for box office success. Data has shown that films that are part of a franchise tend to outperform other movies, even when they’re critical flops.

But in an era replete with remakes — Sony is currently rebooting Spider-Man for the second time in five years — redoing The Phantom Menace after nearly 20 years feels less like a cash grab and more like a necessary correction.

Especially because rebooting the Star Wars prequels would be a rare double win. While the films are guaranteed blockbusters, legions of fans would be grateful too.

The first person I saw make this argument was Dr. Ed Bajwa, a Boston-area ICU doctor, who tweeted out his disgust after trying to rewatch the prequel trilogy before going to see The Force Awakens.

Bajwa — who’s in the business of resuscitating critically ill patients, mind you — thinks the prequels can’t be rescued.

“This can’t ever be fixed by any special edition or director’s cut because the problems run too deep,” he told me. “The only solution is to ditch them outright and start anew. There’s definitely precedent, as J.J. Abrams wiped out literally dozens of previously canonical Star Wars stories from the novels, video games [and elsewhere] in order to film the new movie.”

I think Bajwa’s onto something, but I don’t believe the prequels’ plot points should be completely dropped from the canon. Too much time and merchandising dollars have been invested to build up characters like Anakin Skywalker and Darth Maul, and the overall Clone Wars plot arc is integral to the franchise.

Especially because a few simple changes — No racist characters! No long debates about taxation! No midi-chlorians! — would dramatically improve those movies.

Of course, a full reboot offers the opportunity for more significant fixes, too. Here’s one path that filmmakers could follow — and, like Bajwa, I’m offering it to Disney for free.

Episode I: Start with an older Anakin Skywalker

The Phantom Menace made many mistakes, including the decision to rest its giant ambitions on the tiny shoulders of an 8-year-old actor. As young Anakin Skywalker, Jake Lloyd wasn’t up to the task. And who wants to see Darth Vader as a little kid?

Starting the movie with an older protagonist would correct these blunders. Anakin is an inherently flawed hero, and a teenage or 20-something actor is far more capable of showing the necessary emotional range. An older Anakin also avoids a very creepy romantic subplot. Rather than an 8-year-old actor developing a weird fixation on a 16-year-old princess, the movie could build real chemistry between the future Darth Vader and his intended spouse.

A teenage Anakin would be a better parallel with the original Star Wars and The Force Awakens, too — a young adult’s journey, beginning on a desert planet. But whereas Luke Skywalker was whiny and Rey was strong, Anakin could just be reckless: He knows he has a gift, he’s had years to test it, but he’s grown up without any real mentorship. It would better plant the seeds for his future fall as a Jedi and rise as Darth Vader.

Episode II: Go deeper into the Clone Wars

The original Episode II concludes with an epic battle … of an army of CGI clones versus an army of CGI robots.

That’s just one reason why it feels like there’s very little at stake, character-wise, in the current iteration of this movie.

But the Clone Wars can be compelling source material. Just look at what happens when it’s in the right hands. A 2003 Clone Wars cartoon series from master animator Genndy Tartakovsky mined drama from the battles and characters, even when anonymous clones took on routine missions.

A better movie would kill the CGI in favor of practical effects. And it could start with the Clone Wars underway, but have the clone army unexpectedly (and traitorously) ally with the robot army, attempting to conquer the galaxy — with only the Jedi standing in their way.

Episode III: Follow the fall of the Jedi

Too much was jammed into the final act of the original Revenge of the Sith. As Honest Trailers brilliantly skewered, Anakin flips from life-preserving Jedi to child murderer in less than 10 minutes of screen time; thousands of Jedi are exterminated in a simple montage; Anakin loses his limbs because he can’t jump high enough; Padme dies from a “broken heart”; twins Luke and Leia are born and then rapidly shuttled to Tatooine and Alderaan, respectively; and Obi-Wan and Yoda go into their respective exiles.

There’s some good stuff here! But those plot points deserve a whole movie to breathe.

A better version of Revenge of the Sith would start with the twins already born, protected by a dwindling number of Jedi and being hunted by an Anakin who’s steadily losing his humanity along the way. Think of The Terminator in space, but with a proto–Darth Vader instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Martin Shkreli thinks he made a mistake: He didn’t hike the price of his drug enough.

And that willingness to say something so awful, so off-putting, is just one reason why he’s so darn useful to have around.

The controversial pharmaceutical CEO spoke at the Forbes Healthcare Summit on Thursday, and I had a balcony seat to watch Shkreli defend his decision to raise the price of Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent (and his subsequent choice to renege on promised price cuts). Shkreli’s justification: His responsibility is to shareholders, not patients.

“I’m going to maximize profits,” Shkreli said. “That’s what people [in health care] are afraid to say.”

One woman asked Shkreli how he would redo the past three months, if given the chance. After all, he was pilloried worldwide, scrutinized by regulators, and used as a political punching bag.

But Shkreli was unrepentant. “I would have raised prices higher,” he said. “That’s my duty.”

Even at a Forbes summit — a room packed with libertarians, industry executives, and Wall Street traders — there was more shock than awe.

“He either doesn’t care what people think, or he’s a sociopath,” one prominent pharmaceutical expert told me after Shkreli exited the stage.

Shkreli styles himself as a truth teller, saying the hard things that no one else is brave enough to reveal about health care. And in some ways, he’s right! Major insurers, drugmakers, and hospital systems collect billions of dollars in annual earnings … but cloak many profit-driven decisions by defending them as beneficial for patients. By being brutally honest about his motives, Shkreli is a rare exception. His comments may be odious, but they’re not baseless.

That doesn’t make them morally right, though. One reason we need Martin Shkreli is to protect against other Martin Shkrelis, who find ways to exploit the system and turn patients into profit centers. The cost of Daraprim — a drug that AIDS patients and others use to fight certain infections — went from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill after Shkreli bought the rights to produce the drug.

And make no mistake: The cost of drugs is a growing problem in health care. New data released by CMS this week found that prescription drug spending shot up more than 12 percent last year, significantly outpacing the 5 percent overall rise in health spending.

That’s not all on Shkreli and others like him. (Peter Bach, a Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist who spoke about 30 minutes before Shkreli took the stage, made the point that there’s very little downward pressure on pharmaceutical companies’ prices.) In fact, Shkreli is a rather small part of the problem—only 10,000 patients or so use Daraprim per year. There are bigger organizations than Turing Pharmaceuticals engaging in objectionable behavior but not taking the same body blows.

But in some ways, Shkreli’s very visible, unrepentant actions are playing the same role when debating drug costs that a mass shooting plays when talking about gun violence. Are most Americans directly affected? No. Is it a visible symptom of a larger problem? Yes. And does it mobilize would-be reformers? Definitely.

Just look at how Shkreli’s actions are leading to actual, incremental change. Last month’s budget deal contained an important provision to curb generic drug price growth, which was directly targeted at Shkreli-like behavior. Presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are talking about the need for drug price reform — and in an unusual development, Republicans such as Marco Rubio are speaking up too.

Shkreli on Thursday vowed that despite all the criticism, he’s not going away. (The negative attention “hasn’t hurt [my company] one bit,” he said on Thursday.) Let’s hope that’s true — and specifically, that Shkreli won’t be silenced.

There are real questions about whether American health care has a profit problem. As long as Shkreli is around, provocatively stirring the pot, we’ll have to face some uncomfortable truths — and hopefully get some necessary answers.

What’s worse than flying on a crowded airplane? When the passenger next to you is visibly ill.

It’s enough to make you sick with dread — and often leads to catching a cold, too.

This isn’t a hypothetical. Millions of Americans will take to the air across the Thanksgiving holiday. Sunday is expected to be the second busiest day to fly all year.

And by Christmas, peak holiday travel tends to coincide with peak flu season.

“During the influenza season, there is a reasonably high probability that one or more persons harboring the influenza virus will be on board,” Dr. Harriet Burge writes dryly in Air Quality in Airplane Cabins and Similar Enclosed Spaces, Volume 4.

A sniffling seatmate doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doomed to your fate. There are some simple measures you can take to protect yourself, experts say.

Avoid germ hot spots

Microbiologists have concluded that a typical plane will have some typically germy spots — the aisle seats, the tray tables, the magazines in the seat-back pockets. Basically, “high-touch” areas where many passengers have put their hands, and which can lead to clusters of influenza, E. coli, and other bacteria and viruses.

At the Daily Briefing, we pulled together a map of those hot spots and several basic preventive measures, such as using alcohol-based wipes to clean up a tray table before you eat from it.

And don’t get microbiologist Charles Gerba started on the most disgusting place on a plane: the onboard bathroom.

“There is one toilet per 50 people on an airplane—unless you’re flying Southwest. Then it’s one toilet per 75 people,” Gerba told us, when we interviewed him for the Daily Briefing a few years ago.

Gerba’s advice: Stay in your seat and away from the restroom. “If you can hold it, hold it,” he told us. “You’re more likely to pick up something from going to the bathroom than just sitting in your seat.”

Don't sit next to a sick person if you can help it

Not all illnesses are equally contagious or are transmitted the same ways — as we’ve been reminded by Ebola and measles outbreaks. But there are four common ways to spread an infectious disease:

• The small particles in the air as a person sneezes or coughs
• The large droplets that a sick person expels
• Directly touching surfaces that have been contaminated by an infectious person
• Direct person-to-person contact

So if you’re boarding a cross-country flight and next to a visibly ill person, brace yourself: You’re going to be exposed to many, if not all, of those vectors. And the longer that you’re next to a sick passenger, the more likely it is that you’ll get sick, too. Researchers also discovered a clear “hot zone” for infectious diseases like H1N1, which can extend several rows on an airplane.

How to protect yourself? It’s nigh impossible to move to a new row on a crowded plane, but some seat-yourself airlines do allow it. And on planes, as in life, it never hurts to ask.

It’s important not to get too worried about catching a cold from fellow passengers. Many people worry that just one coughing person will get an entire cabin sick, because of how planes recirculate their air. But that’s largely a myth: The onboard air is purified and viruses are essentially filtered out, so long as the ventilation system is working. (However, planes will sometimes shut off ventilation when parked on the tarmac.)

Of course, a sick person may walk around an airplane — and bring his hot zone with him.

Don't place your faith in multivitamins

Over-the-counter products like Airborne and Emergen-C are wildly popular for their mix of vitamins and herbal remedies, and their sales skyrocketed after being endorsed by Oprah and others.

But there’s no clinical evidence that they’ll actually make you healthier. Emergen-C packs 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C into a normal dose — 10 times the daily recommended intake, and five times more than a human body can even process at a time. And vitamin C’s healing powers are largely a myth.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission years ago charged the makers of Airborne with deceptive advertising for marketing its product as a cold prevention remedy. Airborne is now advertised as “clinically proven to boost your immune system” — which is very different from “clinically proven to fight colds.”

There is value in having a strong immune system, of course. It’s inevitable that for some of us, all the rushing to catch a flight raises the risk of catching a cold — we don’t get enough sleep and instead do other things to wear down our immune system.

But instead of placing your faith in over-the-counter remedies, follow simple, timeworn advice. Drink plenty of water. Eat a mixed diet. And for goodness’ sake, get enough rest.

At the recent Democratic debate, there was a moment — actually two moments — when Martin O’Malley was perfectly positioned to steal the spotlight.

And he just couldn’t get a word in.

“Governor, you’re breaking the rules,” moderator John Dickerson chided him the first time, as O’Malley tried to squeeze in his health care comments before a commercial. The second time — as Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton sparred over universal coverage — Dickerson told a pleading O’Malley that CBS had to cut to commercial again or “the machine breaks down.”

It was a memorable laugh line. (“Dickerson 2016,” Atlantic politics writer Molly Ball tweeted.)

But it was a frustrating moment for a cadre of health wonks, who knew what O’Malley wanted to talk about: Maryland’s groundbreaking global budgets for hospitals.

“I was throwing things at the TV,” Dr. Joshua Sharfstein told me.

As a health economist might say, Sharfstein had some skin in the game. He’s Maryland’s former health secretary. And he helped put together the plan that O’Malley wanted to tout on national television.

Ten days later, O’Malley is finally getting national attention for his health care ideas. On Tuesday, he unveiled an extensive health care proposal that includes a grab bag of reforms. More price transparency. New protections on prescription drug costs. Funds to fight everything from lead poisoning to hepatitis C.

But make no mistake: Global budgets are the centerpiece.

How global budgets work, and why Maryland pursued them

As Sarah Kliff and Lena Sun detailed in the Washington Post last year, global budgets take typical health care economics and flip them on their head. Traditionally, hospitals get paid based on the number of procedures they perform, which is known as the fee-for-service model. But global budgets set a cap on spending: Hospitals are assigned a predetermined amount of revenue and are required to meet quality goals to get paid.

Essentially, hospitals are incented to deliver the best care — not the most care.

Different hospitals and insurers had experimented with global budget pilots, but until Maryland there had never been a statewide global-budget project before.

So why did Maryland pursue it? It’s a complicated story, but it has to do with Maryland’s decades of experience of innovating around health care.

In the 1970s, the state did something remarkable: It set a standard price for every hospital procedure. Typically, health insurers negotiate in secret with hospitals, each trying to get the best deal. But in Maryland, a state agency helps set the price for everything from an appendectomy to a hip replacement. And Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers will all pay that set fee.

Health policy experts argue that Maryland’s price-setting model was instrumental in controlling the state’s health care costs. But it started running into some challenges in 2012, as costs were starting to rise quickly again.

Maryland has to get federal approval to run this type of program. And in 2014, officials announced a new cost-control program, one that committed the state to reducing Medicare hospital spending by $330 million over five years (alongside hitting certain quality metrics, too).

Within six months, every hospital in the state voluntarily signed on.

“This is without any question the boldest proposal in the United States in the last half century to grab the problem of cost growth by the horns,” Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt said at the time.

And what’s even more audacious: It appears that Maryland is succeeding.

Results published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month concluded that the demonstration already saved Medicare $116 million in 2014, more than one-third of the savings that Maryland had pledged by 2019. Per capita hospital costs actually shrank by more than 1 percent in the state.

A regularly updated dashboard shows off Maryland hospitals’ progress against their goals.

O'Malley's campaign promise

In his new plan, O’Malley says he’ll “create an option for states to adopt hospital global budgeting,” although it’s worth noting that some states already are moving forward.

For instance, Vermont is piloting an all-payer project. States like Hawaii are reportedly interested, too. Some policy experts predict that interest is going to tick up: Under the Affordable Care Act, states will be able to start implementing their own cost-savings experiments in 2017. (Given the emerging wave of requests, Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins is hosting a series of webcasts on early lessons.)

But there’s a question over whether other states can really follow suit.

Take California, which is known as a famously progressive state on health care — it’s the home of integrated care, Kaiser Permanente, and a wave of health reforms. And in 2013, a panel of more than a dozen prominent health care leaders called on California to institute global budgets. But the state was never able to follow through.

And don’t forget, Maryland also had decades of experience with all-payer rate setting. Essentially, the state had spent decades building a runway — which helped the global budget plan successfully launch.

Regardless of whether Maryland’s success is replicable, economists are thrilled. And they say that Maryland’s plan deserves more attention — whether at primetime debates or in statehouses around the country.

“We need a lot more experimentation in health care,” Harvard economist Amitabh Chandra told me. “Right now, we have Massachusetts and Maryland experimenting with new models. We need the other 48 states to do more.”

O’Malley’s plan also feels especially fresh given how it stands out compared with other Democratic candidates’ health care proposals. Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” plan has a fair amount of popular support but is probably politically unfeasible.

“I suppose there’s some value in having Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton debating universal coverage,” Sharfstein told me.

“But what Gov. O’Malley has done is real — right now.”

The national unemployment rate in October fell to 5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday — the lowest mark of the Obama presidency.

Politicians might battle over the “real” unemployment rate, but don’t be fooled: The BLS data is trusted by economists, and Friday’s new number is a key milestone for economic policy. Namely, 5 percent unemployment means we’re on the edge of the 4.9 percent level that the Federal Reserve considers as necessary for “full employment,” Sho Chandra writes for Bloomberg.

The timing couldn’t be more important; Fed economists are meeting next month, and Friday’s strong jobs report and low unemployment rate could encourage them to hike US interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.

And 5 percent unemployment is an incredible symbol, too. Six years ago this week, BLS reported that unemployment had passed 10 percent, the first time in decades that the US unemployment rate had hit double digits, and a visible sign of how bad the Great Recession really had become.

Obama can now argue that under his watch, unemployment has been cut in half. It’s a striking improvement — especially when measured against Obama’s predecessor.

President George W. Bush inherited 4.2 percent unemployment in January 2001. That rate had grown to 7.8 percent when he left office eight years later and hit 8.3 percent in the first full month of Obama’s presidency.

The quick rise and dramatic fall of the unemployment rate during the Obama years is unusual. In the past 50 years, there’s only been one other president — Ronald Reagan — who saw a bigger swing between high and low unemployment during his terms in office.

(Under Reagan, unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent in December 1982. By his final full month as president, it had fallen to 5.3 percent.)

How much credit does a president deserve for unemployment?

Americans tend to praise presidents for job creation or blame them for economic collapse, but that’s not entirely fair.

For example, the early 2000s US economy was floating on the tech bubble, which happened to pop while Bush was in office. And near the end of Bush’s second term, deep structural problems in the economy and global fears fueled the recession.

But it’s also wrong to say that presidents have nothing to do with job creation or the broader economy. Bush made the decision to enact major tax cuts, launch two wars overseas, and spend about $1 trillion on homeland security — and each one of those moves significantly increased the US deficit and contributed to a weaker economy.

Meanwhile, Obama’s January 2009 stimulus package and the March 2010 Affordable Care Act clearly affected the economy, too, and seemingly in more positive ways. For instance, the stimulus created about 2.5 million jobs, according to Michael Grunwald, who wrote a history of the stimulus called The New New Deal.

“Job losses peaked the month before [the stimulus] passed,” Grunwald wrote in August 2012. “The jobs numbers that spring, while grim, marked the biggest quarterly improvement in almost 30 years. The Recovery Act launched a weak recovery, but even a weak recovery beats a depression.”

It’s 11:30 am on a Monday, we’re on the 30th floor of a fashionable New York City hotel, and Ricky Bloomfield is getting excited.

And given what he and his colleagues just showed me, I can’t blame him.

“We [took] an entire medical study and put it into an app,” says Bloomfield, an energetic pediatrician and the head of mobile technology strategy for Duke Medical Center.

The specific app that Bloomfield has previewed for me is called Autism & Beyond. It’s the result of a years-long project led by a team of Duke doctors, researchers, and programmers, including Helen Egger, who’s head of child psychology, and Guillermo Sapiro, an engineering professor. It’s one of several new apps that Apple is making available through its ResearchKit platform today.

And if the Duke team — and Apple executives, who hand-picked them — get their wish, the app could help transform how autism is diagnosed and treated around the world.

Autism & Beyond works like an elaborate, interactive selfie. The app is set up to play 20-minute videos while using an iPhone or iPad’s built-in camera to scan viewers’ facial expressions, analyze their microreactions, and then indicate if there’s a potential risk of autism.

It’s intended for parents to use with their children, who see videos of lights, sounds, and storytellers. The demo I get is far less comprehensive. But it’s a good example of how Autism & Beyond is designed to work.

When I smile, the dots that line the video version of my face turn green. When I frown, they shade red.

After the app collects enough of those visual patterns, it’s able to offer real-time and evidence-based feedback, such as whether a parent should seek out a doctor based on the child’s indicators for autism.

The app was created to provoke the same instinctual responses that a psychologist like Egger wants to gauge in a clinic, as she tries to diagnose autistic children. And the Duke researchers hope that parents will start using Autism & Beyond to build up a video library of a child’s reactions, which could help doctors prioritize the most at-risk children and bring them into the office for in-person diagnosis.

(Parents who don’t want to have their child’s face and features captured on video can opt to just record the patterns of dots.)

“Our goal is to develop a screening, like hearing or eyesight at schools,” Sapiro said in a statement. “They don’t get glasses; they get a referral.”

Expediting autism diagnoses could have important ramifications for our health-care system: As the total number of confirmed and suspected autism cases has skyrocketed, parents often wait months or years to see a clinician. Egger told me that Duke’s waiting list can last a year.

And although autism can be diagnosed in children as young as 18 months, the average age of diagnosis in the United States is more than 4 years old. Overseas, it can be far longer. Those delayed diagnoses have a real cost, from the emotional toll on families to the child’s stunted intellectual development.

“I’m often asked if autism is being overdiagnosed,” says Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes, the new bestseller that traces the history of autism. “For the most part, I think it’s still being underdiagnosed, particularly among women and people of color.”

Silberman adds that we still don’t know about the prevalence of autism in adults.

The Duke researchers hope to go further than speeding up diagnosis: Mining the massive amount of video data collected through Autism & Beyond could reveal new insights and patterns about the behaviors of children with autism.

So far, Duke researchers say that preliminary results are promising; they’re presenting a study at a mobile health-care conference this week on the technical feasibility of using an app to measure autism risk behaviors. And every Wednesday morning, a cross-collaborative team pulls up to ensure that their computer software is flagging the same behaviors as human observers.

Apple's involvement in health care

While Duke’s facial recognition software is exciting, it’s worth noting that a number of companies are developing similar technologies, albeit for different purposes. A firm called Emotient, for example, recently touted its ability to read the reactions of viewers to Super Bowl TV ads.

What makes the Autism & Beyond app especially notable is that Apple is throwing its not-insignificant weight behind the project. The company’s executives were “immediately interested” when they first learned about the software six months ago, the Duke researchers say, and asked the team to start developing a ResearchKit app.

Apple’s focus on health care is nothing new. The company has spent several years steadily trying to position itself as a player in America’s $3 trillion health-care system, primarily by launching three new products. Apple’s year-old HealthKit software collects data from a range of health and fitness apps, and transmits it to doctors and hospitals. The Apple Watch is being promoted as a health-care “game changer” for its ability to track users’ mobility and basic vitals.

And Apple’s ResearchKit portal is designed to help the company carve out a new, unprecedented role: as the go-to platform where medical researchers can post their studies and millions of iPhone and iPad users can come and sign up.

So far, the strategy is working. After Apple launched ResearchKit in March and highlighted a new Stanford heart study, more than 10,000 people signed up for the corresponding ResearchKit app overnight.

“To get 10,000 people enrolled in a medical study normally, it would take a year and 50 medical centers around the country,” Stanford cardiologist Alan Yeung told Bloomberg News. “That’s the power of the phone.”

But to be perceived as a force in health care, Apple needs more than sheer volume. The company needs results — evidence that its studies and apps are uncovering provocative insights, and leading to real health-care improvements.

Could Autism & Beyond be one of Apple's first big health-care wins?

The Duke researchers are thinking big, at least. They’re partnering with researchers in China and South Africa, in hopes of collecting international data. And assuming Autism & Beyond is successful, they plan to launch similar initiatives like “Anxiety & Beyond” and “Temper Tantrums & Beyond.”

“Our ambition is to transform how, where, and when we identify, treat, and monitor young children’s development, mental health, and well-being,” says Egger. “Our work emerges from our conviction that information science and engineering are the keys to creating transformative change.”

Bloomfield says that the project is personal for him: His own autistic daughter wasn’t diagnosed until she was nearly 7 years old — which meant years of unnecessary stress, guilt, and lost opportunities for his family.

“We’re not going to cure autism,” Bloomfield concludes. “But we can help put the structure in place to help manage it and move [treatment] forward. And that’s why we’re all so passionate about this.”

The season debut of Saturday Night Live featured a wickedly funny fake drug commercial that perfectly nails the self-delusion of some presidential candidates: believing that you’ll win, even when all the evidence says you’ve got no chance in hell.

At first, it’s not clear where the fake ad is headed. A woman tells the camera that she’s concerned about her husband’s “mental illness.” That he’s “say[ing] things that didn’t make any sense.” Then the camera pulls back and reveals: The woman is Rick Santorum’s wife, watching her husband declare that he’ll be our next president.

“That’s when I knew. He had dementia,” the fake Karen Santorum moans, as SNL’s audience laughs.

The wives of Jim Gilmore and Mike Huckabee are similarly bereaved, until all three men start taking a new drug — “Abilify for Candidates” — that cures their presidential delusions. SNL’s clips of the fake candidates are pure fiction, but it’s not that far from real life.

“I’m ready to lead this country,” the actual Rick Santorum said in a speech last week, as he campaigned to win the GOP presidential nomination. “I’ve got experience to do it, the backbone to do it, and the vision to do it.”

Why candidates with low odds run for our highest office

Santorum may be ready to lead, but the country may not be ready for him. The former senator placed 12th in recent polls of GOP candidates, and he has virtually no national support. Of course, Santorum has company: At one point this summer, there were 17 major candidates in the Republican race, all of whom professed to be the best person for the job … even though a dozen of them were receiving 3 percent or less support in the polls. And that’s what SNL was poking fun at.

“Prescribed for 11 specific people,” the fake drug’s tagline reads. “Return to reality. Feel less confused. Feel happy and sane.”

The spoof is brilliant for skewering the delusion necessary to run for president — the conviction that yes, a Rhode Island governor with zero percent national support, or a doctor who’s never held public office, are somehow ready to win the nation’s most important job. And SNL’s sketch also contains an Easter egg that health-care wonks will appreciate. There really is an Abilify — an antipsychotic drug used to treat schizophrenia — with an identical logo, albeit with no American flag colors. (SNL took further creative license and shortened the name of Abilify’s active ingredient from aripiprazole to just arirazole. In case you were wondering.)

Not everyone can be the president. And that’s okay. #MileyOnSNL pic.twitter.com/jhDMrSuqZI

— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) October 4, 2015

SNL’s fake ad does miss one huge reality: There’s usually a method to presidential candidates’ madness. Even if they believe they truly are the best person to lead the nation, many politicians tell themselves it’s okay being a runner-up, because the exposure of running for president tends to be career-enhancing.

This delusional duality is perfectly captured in What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer’s epic chronicle of the 1988 presidential campaign. Cramer follows a half-dozen presidential candidates as they stump, schmooze, and scheme to win the presidency. Here’s a telling passage about then-Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt, who was a second-tier candidate in that year’s Democratic primaries:

Of course he wanted to win—wouldn’t have tried if he didn’t think he could. But when he started… Dick Gephardt didn’t think he could lose. Not that he thought himself inexorable victor — no, the odds were always against him. But if he just did well, if he ran a decent race… he’d have to end up better. A national figure, a force for the future!

Gephardt was right: Although he dropped out of the race after being thumped on Super Tuesday, Gephardt’s higher profile helped him win the job of House Majority Leader the following year.

There’s also another key factor. The spotlight that comes with a presidential campaign is addictive, which is one reason so many also-rans seem to keep running again and again.

Just look at another candidate profiled in What It Takes: Joe Biden. The 1988 presidential campaign was rough on Biden. He was caught badly plagiarizing a speech, followed by allegations that he plagiarized in law school. As his poll numbers began to plummet, Biden dropped out of the race in September, stressed out and politically damaged. Just a few months later, he suffered two brain aneurysms. (Biden did better when he ran for president in 2008, but not by much: he barely broke 1 percent in the Iowa caucus in January, and quit the race that night.)

Yet Biden refuses to rule out running this year — despite every indication that he’d get clobbered by entering the race so late.

But who can blame him? For a politician, being in the national political conversation is intoxicating. The thrill of running another presidential campaign distorts reality. And there’s no drug that cures those symptoms — except on SNL.