TOP STORIES
Shire may not be done trying to buy Baxatla – they could be ready to up the ante. – Wall Street Journal
Your weekly Google-is-going-big-in-healthcare report: “Cowen cites three major trends in the sector that play to Google’s strengths: The digitization of health data; a shift toward paying for care based on value, rather than visits or tests; and genome sequencing.” – Re/code
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
LIFE SCIENCES
Sanofi’s LixiLan type 2 diabetes drug has succeeded (again) in a Phase III trial. – Reuters
Britain’s life science IPO market stays hot. Drug repurposer Acacia Pharma, which treats nausea and vomiting, is trying to raise more than $231 million through an offering on the London Stock Exchange. – Financial Times
Adam Feurstein sees dirty pool in the stock sale by Tetraphase’s chief operating officer (made possible by his 10b5-1 trading plan). – The Street
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Abbott is fighting back against a test that claimed Phensedyl contained too much codeine. Are India’s regulators accurate or overmatched? – Reuters
Valtech Cardio won a CE mark for its Cardioband mitral valve repair device. – MassDevice
Bluebird Bio made a pretty nice deal with Seattle Children’s to build gene-editing tools and examine pediatric diseases. – Puget Sound Business Journal
PAYERS-PROVIDERS
China’s message to patients: buy local. Which global healthcare vendors will take advantage of the strategy? – Reuters
Why John Muir Health is saying no to ACOs (sound familiar?). – San Francisco Business Times
Read this sad, illuminating look into what drives people – even neuroscience students – to try cryonics. It includes this important sentence: “We are nowhere close to brain emulation given our current level of understanding.” – The New York Times
Here’s what was going wrong at Cleveland Clinic’s Marymount Hospital, according to CMS. – The Plain Dealer
Healthcare behaving badly: A Sutter Health employee e-mailed more than 2,500 patient records to a personal account, while a Phoenix doctor was sentenced to four years in prison for forging patient records. – Sacramento Business Journal & Phoenix Business Journal
TECH
Is the reason we haven’t seen enough evidence of the value of Health IT because the research is bad (and badly designed)? – The Health Care Blog
Practo, a clinical management and doctor search platform, has acquired Insta Health. – TechCrunch
PureTech has added a new chief financial officer: former Iron Mountain executive Michael MacLean. – PRNewswire
Mobihealthnews’ always-tasty in-depth reports this week cover the changing relationship of health plans and virtual visits.
Most people agree that more payers are incorporating telemedicine into their offerings. But at the same time, providers are increasingly interested in becoming involved with telemedicine, either through their own independent efforts or as customers of the same vendors that serve payers.
POLITICS
Thanks, Obama. “But the boom in patients may be subsiding for the rest of the year, new industry reports indicate, as fewer states agree to expand Medicaid. Meanwhile, government payments are shifting away from hospitals to outpatient care settings.” – Forbes
A LITTLE BIT EXTRA
Max Beauvoir, a chemist who became the supreme leader of voodoo and is credited for debunking its “black magic” status, has died at 79. – Reuters
