Annual family premiums for employer-sponsored coverage reached $23,968 in 2023, according to a new KFF survey. Of that family premium total, workers are contributing $6,575 annually.
Investing in Friction-reducing tactics such as community building and providing benefits, training, and personalized support to employees will yield compounding long-term benefits while reducing churn rate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ilant Health launched out of stealth Tuesday. The company serves employers and payers and helps identify patients in need of obesity treatment and matches them to the care best for them.
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.
Psychedelic-assisted therapy is currently used to treat severe mental health conditions. But there is evidence it could help with prevention as well, and more research needs to be done on this, said Sherry Rais, CEO and co-founder of Enthea.
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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.
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.”
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.
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.
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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Arcadia recently partnered with HIMSS Market Insights to survey executives, IT, technology, and clinical leaders. Here’s what we found.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Patients are looking for a quick, seamless and simple payment experience from their medical providers.Here are four trends to follow that are impacting the patient payment experience today.
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.
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.
