Crazy eyeball innovations, Hep C’s big Medicare price tag and a beautiful patient story (Morning Read)

Get ready to talk all your non-healthcare buddies down about futuristic eyeball innovations. It's going to get very public very fast. Do you know what else has to happen fast? A proven ROI on pricey Hep C drugs. It was an amazing weekend for news healthcare innovators need to know. Open up the Morning Read.

TOP STORIES

Sticker shock on the costs of Hep C drugs means the industry better show ROI fast. Read this ProPublica piece for all the gaudiness: Medicare spent $4.5 billion on new hepatitis C drugs last year

A great Q&A with Anne Parker, one of the first women to learn she had the BRCA gene mutation. She discussed, among other things, the power of the Internet to support patients. “Whether the communities are real or on-line, the goal is the same,” she said. “I don’t think one is better than the other, necessarily.”

Get ready to talk all your non-healthcare buddies down about futuristic eye innovations. It’s going very public very fast. Last week, we discussed 3D printed eyes with WiFi. Now people are talking about injecting eyes with night vision, and there’s the news of Hawaiian surgery that installed “bionic” retinal implants. The implants are the most immediately important, so here’s a picture of what the system looks like:

LIFE SCIENCES

Britain will roll out a nationwide meningitis B vaccine and GSK will be distributing it. It comes soon after GSK settled a deal with Novartis and acquired Bexsero.

Pharma and biotech M&A is at an all-time high. But Sanofi’s Chairman Serge Weinberg is cool on mergers, saying: “We looked at potential deals but found the asking prices to be too high for the businesses.”

Novartis is pumping $250 million into Aduro Biotech – and may pay out $500 million – to commercialize a cancer immunotherapy drug.

Novan Therapeutics has closed on $50 million to develop dermatology treatments.

Last week’s SEC decision means “more expensive sectors, like biotech and clean tech, can now look to crowd funding as a viable option.” Really?

AbbVie and Biogen’s MS treatment, Zinbryta, is getting an EU review.

A little dramatic, but… “Mandatory genetic screening by a government agency. What could possibly go wrong?

Here’s the head of Accenture’s life science practice in Europe talking digital pharma: “Where we see the best results is when organizations have complete alignment on objectives, are enabled by strong collaboration tools and fuse different functional teams to achieve those goals.” That’s the least convoluted sentence in the whole interview.

BM is consolidating its health brands – and the ones it acquired from AdvanStar – into a Life Science group. Meet the new boss.

PAYER-PROVIDER

Lots of end-of-life discussions this weekend, led off with The New York Times’ piece on teenagers who are facing death. But NPR also had a great piece on how end-of-life videos are helping patients. Tangentially, Physicians Practice did an in-depth look at a doctor’s role on helping patients die.

ACOs hit some of New York’s most poor and diverse neighborhoods.

UnitedHealth’s OptumRx has acquired Catamaran Corp., a pharmacy benefit management company.

The risk – and courage – of being a real doctor.

Yet I refuse to practice defensive medicine.  I know there’s a risk I’ll be sued. But what of the thousands I stop from going down anxiety-provoking imaging rabbit holes? They’re people, too. I’m patient-centered as well.

Objections to needle exchanges are starting to crumble.

Stop. Measuring. Kids’. Drugs. In. Spoonfuls.

Orac reminds us that there is still anti-vaxxer craziness out there – but it’s surrounded by hope and intelligence.

TECH

The tragedy surrounding the actions of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz is turning to a debate over European Union medical privacy laws. An interesting Bloomberg report noted that confidentiality regulations that were set up to protect medical data and encourage people to consult doctors without fear of repercussion makes patients responsible for disclosing potentially hazardous diagnoses to authorities and their employer.

POLITICS

The Hill looks at how Republicans and Democrats got the Doc Fix done (hey, btw, it’s not done).

Your over-the-weekend list of Obamacare stories:

Another in the latest in-depth look at the White House’s superbug initiative.

A LITTLE EXTRA

Some analysis – there will be more – on the Ellen Pao-Kleiner decision.

The Morning Read provides a 24-hour wrap up of everything else healthcare’s innovators need to know about the business of medicine (and beyond). The author of The Read published it but all full-time MedCity News journalists contribute to its content.

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