Marc Herant, Author at Recon Strategy

NEJM Highlights for June 2015: the flavor of the month is distinctly cardiovascular

Marc Herant June 29, 2015

Interventionalist treatment for stroke: In the 80s and 90s, treatment of myocardial infraction was greatly advanced by the introduction of systemic clot busting drugs (t-PA and others); further advance occurred in the 90s when it was shown that immediate cardiac catheterization produced even better results. Acute embolic stroke has followed the same path – in the 90s, it was shown that t-PA treatment within 3 hours of onset of symptoms was beneficial, and ever since there has been a move toward treatment modalities where an interventional radiologist acts on the

NEJM Highlights May 2015: a read on ACO performance, progress in cystic fibrosis treatment, yes developing new drugs is expensive, rethinking industry-medicine relationships, CVS Caremark and smoking cessation

Marc Herant May 29, 2015

Early results of the ACO experiment: directionally right, but impact is still small In this study, the authors compare metrics for Medicare beneficiaries assigned to the 32 ACOs part of the Pioneer program vs. matched beneficiaries who were not in an ACO. With respect to costs, they find that compared to contemporaneous trends observed in non-ACO members, the ACO beneficiaries yearly spending was approximately $100 below trend (a 1% savings). In a hint of a reversal of a secular trend in health care, office spending visit expenditure increased more in

NEJM Highlights April 2015

Marc Herant May 1, 2015

The rise, fall, and rebirth of the Chinese healthcare system A fascinating account of the evolution of the Chinese healthcare system which almost seems to be an upside-down picture of the rest of the country’s development. Tremendous public health improvements occurred in the 50s, 60s, and 70s but the transition to a free market model of healthcare in the 80s seems to have been a disaster only mitigated by the general increase in wealth of the population. Seeing this as a major threat to social stability, the Chinese government has been

NEJM Highlights March 2015: Progress against Crohn’s, PCSK9 inhibitors coming through, comparative effectiveness for diabetic macular edema, Eric Lander encourages the FDA on genomic testing regulation

Marc Herant April 1, 2015

A promising agent for Crohn’s Disease, a miserable illness Crohn’s is an inflammatory bowel disease that is notoriously unpredictable; flares can affect any part of the digestive tract and lead to grave complications. In this double-blind phase 2 study, patients were dosed with mongersen (licensed by Celgene) an anti-sense oligonucleotide that down-regulates the expression of a protein implicated in the inflammatory cascade. In general these classes of medications have to be given parenterally but in this case the target is the gut so it can be taken orally. At two weeks

NEJM Highlights February 2015: the most boring month in my NEJM reading memory

Marc Herant March 2, 2015

Our selection from a month with relatively few exciting articles – perhaps this long Boston winter has us all down. Precious metals and health plan buying: The implementation of the ACA has placed new decision making on individuals purchasing health insurance on the exchanges. In this report, the authors argue based on experiments that for many individuals, reversing the gold-silver-bronze nomenclature (gold becomes bronze and vice versa) reverses the preference independently of the underlying characteristics of the plans. For the public health advocate this highlights the need for educating shoppers, and

NEJM Highlights January 2015: Dengue vaccine, Informed consent, Cancer drugs and Tiering for selection

Marc Herant February 5, 2015

A vaccine for dengue finally nears the market Dengue is a mosquito transmitted viral infection that is often severe and occasionally fatal, and that has been identified as a growing public health threat, largely in the developing world but also with inroads in developed countries with hundreds of millions of cases yearly world-wide. At this time, there is no vaccine or treatment for dengue other than supportive care. In a placebo-controlled study, a dengue vaccine from Sanofi-Pasteur covering all 4 serotypes of dengue was found to be 60% efficacious in preventing

Author: Marc Herant

Recon takes an analytical look behind select developments in healthcare

NEJM Highlights for June 2015: the flavor of the month is distinctly cardiovascular

NEJM Highlights May 2015: a read on ACO performance, progress in cystic fibrosis treatment, yes developing new drugs is expensive, rethinking industry-medicine relationships, CVS Caremark and smoking cessation

NEJM Highlights April 2015

NEJM Highlights March 2015: Progress against Crohn’s, PCSK9 inhibitors coming through, comparative effectiveness for diabetic macular edema, Eric Lander encourages the FDA on genomic testing regulation

NEJM Highlights February 2015: the most boring month in my NEJM reading memory

NEJM Highlights January 2015: Dengue vaccine, Informed consent, Cancer drugs and Tiering for selection

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