TOP STORIES
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services just announced a new, five-year primary care initiative meant to allow physicians to care for Medicare patients the way they want. The program, called the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus model, will be deployed in up to 20 regions and can include up to 5,000 practices – impacting more than 20,000 providers. –Healthcare Dive
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.
Intel healthcare maven Eric Dishman has been cherrypicked by the NIH to head up its Precision Medicine Intiative Cohort Program – overseeing the Obama-driven effort to sequence the genomes of one million Americans. –Fortune
LIFE SCIENCES
Intellia Therapeutics, one of the few biotech players using the powerful CRISPR-Cas9 technology to develop medicines, filed an IPO. This comes right on the heels of a $75 million deal with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. –Xconomy
Also on the IPO docket: North Carolina’s Viamet Pharmaceuticals, which is developing anti-fungal drugs, filed paperwork with the SEC to complete an initial public offering. This is its second effort at going public – it planned to raise $75 million in an IPO in 2014, but raised $60 million in a private placing instead. –Triangle Business Journal
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.
The Food and Drug Administration has withdrawn the approval of EMD Serono’s infertility drug Luveris, because the company didn’t run a post-market study that was required as a condition of its approval. –Regulatory Focus
Halyard Health – formerly Kimberly-Clark Health Care – just acquired Corpak MedSystems for $174 million, scooping up its broad portfolio of enteral access devices. –Sonoran Weekly Review
Celgene is paying out $50 million to Juno Therapeutics as an option of its CD19 CAR-T program. This is linked to its 10-year, $1 billion collaboration with Juno that was inked last summer, placing Celgene at the forefront of reengineered T-cell technology. –FierceBiotech
The FDA has approved AbbVie’s Venclexta, a drug that treats chronic lymphocytic leukemia in a subset of patients that have a chromosomal abnormality called 17p deletion. –FDA
PAYERS-PROVIDERS
A Medicare proposal to test out new ways to pay for chemotherapy and other drugs has enraged doctors, who are calling for the Obama administration to call it quits with the experiment. –Associated Press
TECHNOLOGY
John Glaser of Cerner says that analytics, big data and the Internet of Things are highly promising in improving how patients receive care. He emphasized, however, that that improvement doesn’t necessarily require new technology, but can stem from optimizing tech investments that are already in place. –HealthcareIT News
Teladoc has shown impressive growth: It has completed 240,000 telemedicine visits during the first quarter of the year – up 61 percent from 149,000 visits during the same period last year. –MobiHealthNews
POLITICS
The board of Valeant Pharmaceuticals has written a letter to its outgoing CEO, Michael Pearson, urging him to comply with a Congressional subpoena. He was supposed to be deposed April 6, but didn’t show up – which has led the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging to decide whether they’ll begin contempt proceedings against Pearson. This news sent Valeant’s stock down 7 percent. –Business Insider
A LITTLE BIT EXTRA
Scientists have developed a snazzy new way to organize the tree of life – expounding on the deep evolutionary relationships between flora, fauna and microbiota. –Nature
