News
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In Same Day, UCB Lands Two FDA Drug Approvals in Autoimmune Diseases
FDA approval of UCB’s Bimzelx gives the Belgian drugmaker a contender in the crowded plaque psoriasis therapies market. In the rare disease generalized myasthenia gravis, the agency approved Zilbrysq, a UCB drug with advantages over two blockbuster AstraZeneca drugs addressing the same target.
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Allara Snags $10M to Scale Its Platform for Women’s Chronic Hormonal Conditions
Allara raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by GV. The startup offers membership-based virtual services to treat women’s chronic hormonal conditions, such as PCOS and endometriosis. CEO Rachel Blank — former executive at Ro and investor at General Catalyst — founded the company partly due to the difficulty she experienced arriving at her own PCOS diagnosis.
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Jorie Healthcare CEO Shares Why Automation is Critical to Revenue Cycle Management
The revenue cycle management business is using AI tools to automate cumbersome tasks to help hospitals operate more efficiently. It’s beginning to attract the attention of major healthcare organizations.
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Consumer / Employer, Health Tech
Amazon Starts Delivering Medications via Drone
Amazon Pharmacy is now offering a drone delivery service for prescription medications in College Station, Texas. The service is free and allows patients to receive their medications within 60 minutes.
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Heard at HLTH: Healthcare Execs Share Perspectives on AI, Virtual Health and Value-based Care
As part of the Heard at HLTH video series, MedCity News Editor in Chief Arundhati Parmar and Senior Reporter Katie Adams interviewed healthcare executives about innovations in health tech at HLTH 2023 in Las Vegas earlier this month.
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How Mass General Brigham Is Integrating Behavioral Care Into Its Primary Care Model
Mass General Brigham launched a program this month in collaboration with behavioral health medical group Concert Health. Under the program, more than 400 Mass General primary care providers can refer their patients to Concert. The health system’s goal is to increase patients’ access to diagnoses and treatment for mild to moderate behavioral health issues — particularly for Medicaid patients, who are the most underserved.
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Thermo Fisher Adds Proteomics to Its Portfolio Through $3.1B Olink Acquisition
Thermo Fisher Scientific is acquiring Olink, a company that provides proteomics analysis tools and services used in drug discovery research. Olink’s growing revenue will help shore up a Thermo Fisher business segment whose sales have fallen due to declining Covid-19 testing demand.
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Cedars-Sinai’s CMIO Has A Piece of Advice for AI Startups
At HLTH, Shaun Miller — Cedars-Sinai’s chief medical information officer — pointed out one thing he thinks healthcare AI companies haven’t quite gotten right yet. He said he would “really like there to be a lot more recognition around the personalization of AI and the ability for technology to understand that not every clinician is the same.”
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Roche Deal Aims to Get Molecular Glues to Stick to Elusive Cancer, Neuro Targets
Roche is paying $50 million up front to begin a drug R&D alliance with Monte Rosa Therapeutics, a biotech whose molecular glue technology could address targets previously deemed undruggable. It’s Roche’s second such deal in the past month.
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What Will Rite Aid Need to Do to Recover from Bankruptcy?
Rite Aid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday amid decreasing sales, billions of dollars in debt and more than a thousand lawsuits claiming the chain filled illegal prescriptions for opioids. In order for the company to get back on its feet, experts say it will have to start acting more like its competitors, such as Walgreens and CVS, by leaning more into care delivery, forging strong payer partnerships, and improving its digital offerings.
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Navigating Healthcare’s Data Revolution: Priorities, Opportunities, and Challenges for Health Systems
Arcadia recently partnered with HIMSS Market Insights to survey executives, IT, technology, and clinical leaders. Here’s what we found.
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Microsoft’s Healthcare AI Efforts Holds Huge Promise for Patients
In a preview before the official announcement at HLTH last week, Microsoft executives and its hospital customers shared use cases of how its suite of AI tools can be used by health systems to improve healthcare delivery and alleviate provider burnout.
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Novo Nordisk Strikes Deal for Late-Stage Hypertension & Kidney Disease Drug
The KBP Biosciences drug Novo Nordisk is acquiring has reached Phase 3 testing as a potential treatment for uncontrolled hypertension and advanced chronic kidney disease. It’s the latest in a string of business deals aimed at expanding the Novo Nordisk pipeline beyond diabetes.
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How Mayo Clinic Is Approaching Generative AI Risk Mitigation
At HLTH, Mayo Clinic Platform President John Halamka gave a window into how his health system is mitigating generative AI risks. Some of the measures Mayo is taking include running analyses on how well algorithms perform across various subgroups and training models only on internal de-identified data.
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Pfizer Shaves Revenue Projections, Starts Cost-Cutting Plan Amid Lower Covid-19 Product Demand
Pfizer lowered its revenue projections for 2023, a change it attributed to declining demand for its Covid-19 vaccine, Comirnaty, and antiviral drug, Paxlovid. Citing this revenue decline, Pfizer is implementing a companywide cost-cutting plan projected to save $3.5 billion.
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What the Radiopharmaceutical Pipeline Means for Patient Care
With increased access to cutting-edge imaging, improved treatment options, greater personalization of treatment, reduced radiation exposure, and potential for future advances, patients can expect to receive more advanced medical care tailored to their specific needs through radiopharmaceuticals.
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Technology Contributes to Clinician Burnout. Here’s How It Can Make It Better.
The next wave of Medtech innovation must deliver truly smart connected care—not only building on our progress in collecting and integrating information about a patient, such as vital signs, diagnostic results and health history—but also using software to prioritize this information, streamline care delivery and provide actionable insights.
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Financial Pressures Drove Nearly 40% of Hospitals M&A Deals in Q3
Hospital M&A activity has been returning to pre-pandemic levels this year, according to a new report. There were 18 M&A transactions in Q3, compared to seven in Q3 2021 and 10 in Q3 of last year. The reason why M&A activity is regaining its momentum is because hospitals are seeking partnerships to grow and protect their long-term financial sustainability — the report found financial distress was the driving factor behind nearly 40% of deals announced during Q3.
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Artificial Intelligence, Consumer / Employer, Health Tech, Payers, Startups
11 HLTH Announcements You Don’t Want to Miss
This year’s HLTH conference brought a bevy of news announcements — from partnerships to new product features to acquisitions and more. In this list, MedCity News compiled short summaries for 11 of the conference’s most notable announcements.
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Artificial Intelligence, BioPharma, Health Tech
FDA Forms New Digital Health Advisory Committee to Cover Growing Role of Tech
The FDA’s digital health advisory committee will discuss technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, virtual reality, and digital therapeutics as well as topics like decentralized clinical trials and patient-generated health data. Committee member nominations are due in December.
Promoted
Payer’s Place: Dawn Maroney
Dawn Maroney, President, Markets of Alignment Health and CEO of Alignment Health Plan, to discuss how they are using technology to provide better service and care to consumers.
Promoted
Applying Remote Patient Monitoring to Surgery Prep and Recovery, Oncology and Women’s Health
Join us to learn about the latest trends in remote monitoring and how to extend its benefits beyond chronic conditions to more patients – all while using fewer staff resources.
