News
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FDA Approves Blood Thinner Reversal Drug, But Requires More Tests to Assess Serious Risk
While Octapharma drug Balfaxar met the goal of its pivotal clinical trial, more deaths and blood clot problems were reported in the study drug arm versus the comparator group. The FDA is requiring a post-marketing study to further assess the drug’s risks.
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More Than 30% of Rural Hospitals Are at Risk of Closure, Report Warns
More than 600 rural U.S. hospitals — which is more than 30% of the country’s rural hospitals — are at risk of closing due to their financial instability, according to a new report. The report argued that the dire financial situation among the nation’s rural hospitals stems from two main issues: low financial reserves and inadequate payments from private health plans.
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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.
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MedCity Influencers, Devices & Diagnostics
To Optimize Health Outcomes, Home Medical Devices Must Operate Within Disease Management Programs
Rich multimedia content, chatbots and human interaction all play important roles in helping new health technologies become part of a patient’s lifestyle.
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Consumer / Employer, Health Tech
Spring Health Upgrades Family Mental Health Services
Spring Health’s Family Care solution now serves kids of all ages and their parents. It connects each family with a care navigator and offers a dashboard that allows parents and caregivers to track their child’s care.
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Startup Fundraising Spotlight: Octave Bioscience
Octave Bioscience, based in Menlo Park, California, just closed a $30 million extension to its Series B funding round.
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How to Improve Poor Data Quality Across the Healthcare Ecosystem and Make Workflows More Manageable
The webinar, sponsored by Intelligent Medical Objects, will explore the impact of poor data quality and methods to improve patient data quality. It will also highlight healthcare industry employee burnout and how to improve retention.
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Devices & Diagnostics, BioPharma
Rigorous Data Are Key to Convince Payers, Investors in the World of Digital Therapeutics
Pear Therapeutics was once regarded as a digital therapeutics pioneer, but its spiral into bankruptcy has the industry searching for the best path forward. While some favor going direct to consumers, others say the solution is in generating more robust clinical trial data to persuade hesitant payers.
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UpLift Secures $10.7M To Expand Access to Behavioral Health Services
UpLift’s Series A funding round was led by Ballast Point Ventures and included participation from Kapor Capital, Front Porch Ventures and B Capital. In total, UpLift has raised more than $22 million.
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Astellas Strikes Another Deal to Expand in Cancer, Partnering With PeptiDream
Astellas Pharma has identified targeted protein degradation as one of the key areas for growth. The PeptiDream alliance is the latest one Astellas has struck in this particular area of drug research as it aims to find new ways to go after difficult cancer targets.
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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.
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Hospitals’ Price Transparency Compliance Is Improving Despite Remaining Low at 36%
About 36% of U.S. hospitals are in compliance with CMS’ price transparency rule, up from 24.5% in February, according to a new report. This progress will remain slow unless CMS can do a better job of effectively enforcing its rule, the report declared.
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MedCity Influencers, BioPharma
The New Opportunity to Help Rare Disease Patients
In 2020, 46.9% of all novel drugs approved by the FDA were for rare diseases, as compared to 23.5% in 2012. Investment is expected to continue trending upward, with estimates suggesting that global spending on rare disease therapies will reach $260 billion by the end of 2025.
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MedCity Pivot Podcast: Season 3 Launches With A Conversation On the Potential Toxicity of Immunotherapy
Transformations in the Life Sciences is the focus of the second season of the MedCity Pivot Podcast. My personal journey as a caregiver of a cancer patient made me choose Dr. Sumanta Pal, co-director of the City of Hope’s Liver Cancer program as a guest after he co-authored an interesting study on immunotherapy that was published in the Lancet.
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Roche Expands Into RNAi Through Alnylam Alliance on Hypertension Drug
Alnylam pioneered RNA interference drugs for rare disease. The biotech aims to bring RNAI to prevalent disorders and its alliance with Roche on the drug zilebesiran for hypertension better positions the company to achieve this goal.
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MedCity Influencers, BioPharma
Closing the Oral Drug Gap
Patients are driving the push away from needles, and there are a number of novel approaches attempting to solve the difficult task of transforming biologics into orally administered treatments.
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Devices & Diagnostics, Health Tech
VR Can Alleviate Brain Tumor Patients’ Anxiety During Treatment, Study Finds
AppliedVR teamed up with the National Cancer Institute to study the feasibility of VR to alleviate anxiety in brain tumor patients undergoing imaging scans. The research partners recently announced interim analysis results from their clinical study — they said that not only would VR intervention be a feasible option to reduce patients’ anxiety, but that patients would report high satisfaction levels as well.
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Startup Sues Athenahealth, Alleging Trade Secret Theft & Deceptive Practices
Digital health startup Dorsata filed a lawsuit against EHR provider athenahealth and women’s health company Unified Women’s Healthcare. The startup alleged that athenahealth stole trade secrets, used deceptive business practices and breached its contract — and that Unified aided and abetted these purported practices.