Peanut medicine that won’t cost peanuts
Allergy to peanuts is a major issue and though prevention is now possible in infants there is a huge population for whom actual survival is connected to vigilan…
Interest and investment in digital health has increased rapidly in recent years. Some digital health software is impactful enough that it requires FDA approval, but current regulatory pathways are sl…
One century after the use of convalescent serum, convalescent T-cells
The use of tailored T-cells (e.g. CAR-T) is transforming our approach to (blood) cancers, but what about using T-cells against the…
Primary care organizations are better ACOs when it comes to achieving savings
Initial results from the Medicare Shared Savings Program ACO have been disappointing pointing to small to negligible net e…
Transthyretin heats up
Last month saw a couple landmark papers about the use of parenteral RNA drugs (from Alnylam and Ionis) in hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis with a focus mainly on mitigating …
RNA drugs coming of age
Hereditary Transthyretin Amyloidosis (ATTR) is a genetic disease in which one of the alleles of Transthyretin (TTR), a protein produced by the liver and with a role in thyroid …
It’s hard to quit (and E-cigs don’t help)
A large trial (6000 participants) comparing free cessation support, e-cigarettes, and a $600 cash incentive for sustained abstinence shows that none of these …
One more on the chin for Alzheimer’s
A report of a large phase 3 study of the highly potent oral BACE inhibitor verubecestat (Merck) with yet again a lack of therapeutic effect, despite a dramatic red…
Are we nearing an asymptote with implantable cardiac pumps?
Severe heart failure is common, and spare hearts for transplant are rare, which has led to the development of implantable mechanical alterna…
One way to think about disease[1] is as a loss of information[2] from the operating blueprint for human physiology. Broadly speaking, there are three main possible types of informational defects depe…
WMT is in talks with HUM about a relationship enhancement, possibly an acquisition. The two already know how to work together in alliances (narrow pharmacy network, marketing collaborations, points pr…
United’s OptumCare promises a lot of value for health plans. An integrated system supported by Optum technology should be able to deliver consistent, analytically sophisticated care. Its ambulatory-…
GWAS, Regeneron and Geisinger, and liver disease
Genome wide association studies (GWAS) look at broad populations for gene variants associated with a particular phenotype. Often, like in Type II diabe…
Last month, word got out that Verily is in talks with health plans to “jointly bid” on care management contracts. Medicaid populations might be a reasonable surmised as the target given that (1) manag…
Last December, UPMC announced plans to spend $2B on three new specialty hospitals in downtown Pittsburgh. Each will abut an existing UPMC hospital currently serving as system center of excellence for …
35%+ of consumers who purchased on Amazon over a 30-day period say they would be “open” to health insurance created by Amazon according to a new survey (see Becker’s headline and the LendEdu study des…
A-fib in heart failure – time to be aggressive
Over the last 15 years, there has been a growing body of evidence for the effectiveness of catheter ablation to treat atrial fibrillation (a-fib), a cond…
Amazon has many puzzled about its plans for healthcare. Arguably, Amazon is just as puzzled, but is – in effect -- running a massive Delphi process to sort out the plan. Amazon is, after all, the Brea…
The first approval of a gene therapy for congenital disease in the US (Luxturna) inaugurates a new – though long anticipated – era for therapeutics. Along with questions around durability of response …
During the UnitedHealth quarterly earnings call earlier this month, Larry Renfro, CEO of Optum, offered some additional color on the growth of OptumCare: “Combined with [Davita], OptumCare will be in …
Playing chess against cancer
Tumors are not intelligent, but, because they have escaped mutational control, they constantly probe for mutations that will allow them to escape chemotherapeutic suppress…
(For background on Pennsylvania market, please take a look at previous note here)
Summary
The UPMC/Highmark rivalry continues to open new fronts in Pennsylvania
Highmark’s response to UPMC is differe…
(For Louisiana market context, please take a look at previous notes on Ochsner here and here)
Before the holidays, Ochsner signed an LOI to take over the management of ailing University Health located…
Successes in gene therapy for hemophilia B and A
Hemophilia A and B are X-linked genetic diseases which prevents the formation of functional coagulant factors VII and IX respectively and cause a prope…
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