HealthTech4Medicaid is a new nonprofit group that includes about 40 health technology company CEOs who want to speed technology innovation to improve care for Medicaid recipients. The group represents more than $1 billion in venture capital, and its goals include increasing access to care, improving quality and decreasing costs.
Pharmaceutical companies are paying attention to the marketing potential of patients who have a social media following. Wego Health CEO Jack Barrette said micro-influencers can have a dramatic effect on people's behavior, but paying social media influencers can involve navigating a thicket of ethical and regulatory questions.
Lisa Suennen, a prominent digital health venture capitalist, is taking on a new role, but health care entrepreneurs should know there are some pitches that won't go over well. She says going to market with a minimally viable product doesn't work in health care, medication adherence apps are mostly worthless, and the goal of reaching $100 million revenue in five years is less than realistic.
An analysis of 2001 to 2015 World Health Organization data found the US had higher rates of drug overdose deaths for both men and women in 2015 than 12 other countries. The study in the Annals of Internal Medicine said overdoses caused an estimated 63,632 deaths in the US in 2016.
Cigna announced that it will be offering Happify Health and iPrevail's digital resources to employers as part of the company's behavioral health program starting in January. Happify offers personalized activities and guided meditations to support emotional health, while iPrevail has a private chat platform offering personalized mental health care guidance for people experiencing stress, depression and other mental health issues.
A study in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society showed most patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease do not get pulmonary rehabilitation after a hospitalization. Hospitals are trying to reverse this trend, and senior author Peter Lindeauer, a hospitalist at Baystate Medical Center in Massachusetts, said COPD readmission rates are decreasing as a result.
Black Book polled more than 3,000 hospital-owned or employed physician practice organizations in the US and found that 36% want customized integrated EHR, practice management and revenue cycle management systems. Eighty-nine percent of respondents said EHR and current practice management systems that are not integrated hinder the implementation of improved alternative reimbursement and payment methodologies.
Researchers who used cardiac F-18 FDG-PET/CT found that 37% and 18% of individuals with rheumatoid arthritis without known cardiovascular disease had visually assessed tracer uptake and quantitatively assessed mean standardized uptake values of at least 3.10 units, respectively, while those whose Clinical Disease Activity Index was at least 10 had 31% higher mean SUV, compared with those whose CDAI was below 10. The findings in Arthritis & Rheumatology also showed a similar decline in FDG uptake and mean CDAI scores among those with active RA who received escalated therapy after initial scans.
Researchers found that residents of areas in the highest quartile for environmental noise exposure were more than three times as likely to have a major adverse cardiovascular event during median follow-up of 3.7 years and also had elevated arterial inflammation and amygdalar activity on FDG-PET/CT scans, compared with those in the lower quartiles of noise exposure. The findings, presented at the American Heart Association's Annual Meeting, also showed the association between noise exposure and adverse CV events remained after adjusting for air pollution and other CV risk factors.
The Radiological Society of North America Research & Education Foundation and Canon Medical Systems USA awarded a one-year, $40,000 grant to Dr. Pedram Heidari of Massachusetts General Hospital to evaluate a PET probe in improving inflammatory bowel disease care. Grants worth $40,000 each were also given to Dr. Prashant Nagpal of the University of Iowa to compare 3D, self-navigated, free-breathing cardiac MRI sequences with breath-held CMRI sequences in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and to Dr. Adam Singer of Emory University to evaluate a new scoring and reporting tool in soft tissue sarcoma resection bed surveillance.