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Morning Read: Abbott pays $225M for heart valve replacement developer Tendyne, NuVasive coughs up $13.5M for false Medicare claim allegations

Abbott Laboratories is paying $225M for the heart valve replacement developer Tendyne, and NuVasive is spending $13.5M in order to settle after false Medicare claim allegations.

TOP STORIES

Abbott Laboratories has reached a deal to pay at least $225 million for Tendyne Holdings Inc., a developer that makes a replacement heart valve for treating mitral valve regurgitation.

The price excludes the $25 million that Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott already invested in Tendyne, which is eligible for additional milestone payments under terms of the deal. The companies expect the transaction to close in the third quarter.

Minneapolis/St.Paul Business Journal

NuVasive has agreed to pay $13.5 million to resolve allegations that it caused healthcare providers to submit false claims to Medicare and other federal health programs for spine surgeries, the Justice Department said.  Reuters

LIFE SCIENCES

Scientists have identified five types of prostate cancer, each with their own genetic signature. — BBC News

Iowa’s Corvida Medical won 510(k) clearance from the FDA for its Halo Closed System Transfer Device to prevent healthcare workers from hazardous exposure to chemotherapy drugs. Fierce Medical Devices

Centers for Disease Control said the number of teens who received vaccinations against the human papillomavirus rose a bit but is still dwarfed by other vaccine rates. Boys had the largest increase 8.1 percentage points to 41.7 percent. The rate for girls increased by 3.3 percentage points to 60 percent. Reuters

PAYERS-PROVIDERS

The largest hospital system in St Louis, BJC Healthcare, had to contend with a 20-hour computer outage impacting everything from email to electronic medical records and scheduling across its 13-hospital system. The bed tracking system also went down, which complicated the process of transferring patients from the emergency room to a hospital bed.  — HIStalk/St. Louis Post Dispatch

The Rhode Island health insurance commissioner has announced an overhaul of the office’s “affordability standards,” requiring insurers to increase the percentage of their primary care networks that operate as “patient-centered medical homes” by 5 percentage points in 2016. Fierce Health Payer

TECH

San Francisco-based Glow, which has developed a suite of women’s health apps, launched a new app designed to help women manage their sex life and their menstrual cycle, called Ruby. MobiHealthNews

POLITICS

Did Medicare help spur desegregation of hospitals? — NPR

Should things like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other emotional/mental injuries be considered “bodily injury” when it comes to the law?

…this traditional physical/emotional distinction no longer holds up because substance dualism is no longer a viable theory. If neurons and glia cells are physical (and last I checked they were), then emotions and emotional pain must be physical too. Harvard Law Blog

A LITTLE BIT EXTRA

Could television screens or any sort of physical displays soon be a thing of the past due to augmented reality? Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Epic Games, said in a speech at the ChinaJoy trade show that this is a real possibility if we can see what would be the equivalent of a 40-foot screen in our glasses.

“I believe that augmented reality will be the biggest technological revolution that happens in our lifetimes,” Sweeney said in his outstanding speech. “If we had this AR display, the deep thing to realize is this. Once you have an augmented reality display, you don’t need any other form of display. Your smart phone does not need a screen. You don’t need a tablet. You don’t need a TV. You just take the screen with you on your glasses wherever you go.” VentureBeat

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