TOP STORIES
Theranos, a lab testing company seems to be trying to shed its secretive ways, has added its first private insurer in a deal with Capital Blue Cross. The company will provide lab testing to Capital Blue Cross members. Although all the Blue Cross Blue Shield groups operate independently, it does open the door that could see the adoption of Theranos by other private insurers. One of the company’s selling points is that it claims its tests are at least 50 percent below the Medicare reimbursement rate. Theranos also has a strategic partnership with Intermountain Healthcare and a similar agreement with Cleveland Clinic among other institutions. Capital Blue Cross CEO Gary St. Hilaire said:
“Our members will have easy access to best quality and most convenient testing and will know up front how much their out-of-pocket payments may be, including precise deductibles. As an insurance provider, it is important for us to partner with companies who are using innovation to address and solve the toughest problems in health care.”
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Jeffrey Holt and his team at Harvard Medical School are the first to use gene therapy to treat hereditary deafness.
Inherited conditions account for at least half of all childhood deafness. More than 70 genes are known to cause various forms of hereditary deafness, but Holt chose to focus on one called TMC1, which accounts for 4 to 8 per cent of cases.
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LIFE SCIENCE
University of Kentucky researchers see a way to develop more potent drugs that could overcome challenges such as multi-drug resistance to treat cancer and viral infections, according to a study published in Nanomedicine. — Medical News Today
Allergan is buying two of Merck’s migraine drugs in a $250 million deal.
PAYERS-PROVIDERS
Medicare is proposing to reimburse physicians, nurses and for talking about end-of-life plans with patients, about one year after the Institute of Medicine recommended doing so in a report last year. — The Wall Street Journal
Nurses have accused Lahey Health of violating the mandatory overtime law in Massachusetts. — Becker’s Hospital Review
POLITICS
Republicans blocked an amendment Wednesday that would have removed a provision from a spending bill exempting electronic cigarettes and other products from the Food and Drug Administration’s pre-market review process. — The Hill
TECH
The state of Delaware became the 29th in the United States to have a telehealth parity law put in place. In addition to that, a few representatives in Congress have now also re-introduced a nationwide telehealth parity law similar to one the group put forward last year. — MobiHealthNews
Core Informatics, which provides a software as a service platform for lab scientists, has closed a $17.5 million Series B round led by growth equity fund Oak HC/FTpartly to add staff.
“We’re going to use this investment to continue to scale up all functions of our business, with a particular focus on our customer success organization, product engineering team and expanding our Platform for Science Marketplace,” Core Informatics CEO Josh Geballe, a former IBM executive, told FierceBiotechIT.
A LITTLE BIT EXTRA
Microsoft has revealed another round of restructuring that will lead to “up to” 7,800 job cuts, “primarily in the phone business,” and plans to “restructure the company’s phone hardware business to focus and align resources.” – VentureBeat