TOP STORIES
“Just another billion-dollar exit for a Massachusetts company most people have never heard of.”
In this case, it’s Framingham, Massachusetts-based HeartWare International, maker of a heart pump for minimally invasive implantation. The buyer is Medtronic and the price is $1.1 billion in cash. That represents a whopping 93 percent premium over HeartWare’s closing price on Friday. — Xconomy, USA Today
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Sequenom, letting stand a lower court’s ruling that the company could not patent a prenatal test involving the screening of fetal DNA. The move already seems to be sending shock waves though the biotech and pharma industries. — STAT
To the surprise of nobody, a new study shows that average out-of-pocket costs per hospitalization for commercially insured adults in the U.S. went up by more than a third from 2009 to 2013. — Reuters
LIFE SCIENCES
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
AstraZeneca is seeking to extend its patent on Crestor for another seven years by getting the blockbuster statin approved for a rare pediatric disease under the Orphan Drug Act. — The New York Times
Zimmer Biomet’s planned $1 billion acquisition of LDR Holding has cleared the federal antitrust waiting period and is on track to close in the third quarter. — MassDevice
Forum Pharmaceuticals, Waltham, Massachusetts, is going out of business following several failed trials of its lead drug. — Xconomy
Josh Kornberg, former CEO of Skyline Medical, was paid $1.3 million last year even though the Eagan, Minnesota-based device company only had $654,354 in revenue. — Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal
Charles River Laboratories International has acquired analytical CRO Blue Stream Laboratories for an undisclosed amount. — Business Wire
Accuray won FDA 510(k) clearance for its Radixact image-guided radiotherapy treatment platform. — MassDevice
PAYERS/PROVIDERS
Dr. Gary Kaplan won’t be stepping down as CEO of Virginia Mason Medical Center after all now that the hospital has fixed safety issues cited by the Joint Commission. — Puget Sound Business Journal
New York University has shut down eight clinical trials and let a top psychiatric researcher go after medical school officials and the FDA discovered serious irregularities in a study of a mind-altering, experimental drug. — The New York Times
In deals with Novartis and Eli Lilly, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has become the latest insurer to tie drug reimbursements to patient outcomes. — STAT
TECHNOLOGY
The nonprofit Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation is launching what it said is the nation’s first bioinformatics lab to tackle pediatric cancer through Big Data. — PR Newswire
Research and Markets has pegged the global telemedicine market at $40.9 billion by 2021, up from $17.9 billion in 2015. — Business Wire
McKesson’s RelayHealth Financial introduced RelayAssurance Appeals Assist to help healthcare providers create, file and manage appeals for denied claims. — Business Wire
A front-page story in Monday’s WSJ took an in-depth look at the telemedicine industry. — The Wall Street Journal
POLITICS
CMS has proposed a 1 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements for home health in 2017, a savings of $180 million. — Modern Healthcare
That long-awaited Obamacare alternative that House Republicans offered up last week? Much of it is apparently based on a book by Independent Institute Senior Fellow John C. Goodman, whom the Wall Street Journal called the father of health savings accounts. (Maybe in 15 years, the Independent Institute can plead ignorance like the conservative Heritage Foundation now avoids mentioning that it came up with the idea of an individual insurance mandate.) — PR Newswire
A LITTLE BIT EXTRA
A fungus sometimes called the Himalayan Viagra is now going for upwards of $50,000 a pound in parts of China. — The New York Times
Photo: Flickr user Charlie
