Blog and Whitepapers
Recon takes an analytical look behind select developments in healthcare
- By Marc Herant
Preempting severe genetic disease
Around 2% of births come with a genetic disease, often with devastating impact. While some appear de novo (either from germplasm dominant mutations or from chromosomal accidents), a fraction are inherited (from the mother if X-linked, from both parents if autosomal recessive) and can be predicted (before conception) by gene sequencing parents. In a fascinating stu…
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- By Marc Herant
Huntington’s disease: light at the end of the tunnel?
The awful thing about Huntington’s is that in most cases, people know they are going progressively lose their mind at an early age, but there is …
- By Marc Herant
A clinical vignette: the cases of Jane and Joe
Imagine if you will two individuals both at age 50. Jane is a project manager whose recent health care has focused on managing menopausal symptoms, a kn…
- By Tory Wolff
Summary
The Capital Region of Pennsylvania is shifting in “real time” from traditionally separate plan vs. plan competition and provider vs. provider competition to integrated vertical plan/provider …
- By Marc Herant
TAVR for all?
TAVR has become the standard of care for patients who need an aortic value replacement but are at high/medium surgical risk. But what about those at low-risk? Two studies answer that qu…
- By Sophie Ranen
Amazon’s healthcare play appears to be heavily focused on platforms rather than specific applications
They would prefer startups focus on elements that are truly differentiating for consumers and let …
- By Tory Wolff
By bringing together accountable-minded physicians, urgent care and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) on a national scale, OptumCare could prevent a lot of avoidable hospital care and move much of wha…
- By Marc Herant
He’s dead, Jim
As previously widely advertised, the BACE-1 inhibitor verubecestat (Merck) (and in journal correspondence atabecestat, Janssen) has now failed in a population with very early signs of c…
- By Marc Herant
Target assessment with genetic polymorphisms
Please bear with me for a long (but interesting!) story. Bempedoic acid (Esperion) is an inhibitor of ATP citrate lyase (ACLY), an enzyme in the cholestero…
- By Marc Herant
Targeted conjugated cancer therapeutics – so few, but may be more soon
The idea that one could combine the precision of a targeted biologic with the potency of a traditional cytotoxic to demolish a tu…
- By Sophie Ranen
With the closing of the CVS/AET and CI/ESRX combinations, healthcare services are now led by a triumvirate of vertically-oriented goliaths. And we can anticipate that there will be more care delivery …
- By Marc Herant
The bundle
Unlike many other CMMI experiments, the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) program was a true randomized control trial in that participation was mandatory in a selection of metr…
- By Marc Herant
Genetic trade secrets
In 2012, the US Supreme Court decided a case known as “Prometheus” establishing that therapeutic methods based on biomarkers were not patentable – this essentially blocked one of…