We’re adding another new journalist to the MedCity News team. His name is Dan Verel and he will explore the ways hospitals and health insurance companies are leveraging cutting-edge technologies transforming our industry. We aren’t talking about coverage of ICD-10. Instead, he’ll chronicle the new approaches to everything from telemedicine to analytics to healthcare social media.
Dan fills an important need for our audience of innovators: the desire to hear more about best practices and get examples of how healthcare is applying technology.
He’ll be reaching out to many of you, but please reach out to him too. E-mail him at [email protected], follow him on twitter at @DanVerel and connect with him on LinkedIn.
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.
Dan already has a healthcare background. In four years at the North Bay Business Journal he tracked how healthcare changes through the implementation of the Affordable Care Act: from hospitals and clinics, non-profit providers, physician groups, ambulance companies, insurance carriers and brokers and employers.
His byline’s also appeared in the Oakland Tribune and the San Francisco Bay Guardian (he’s essentially been raised in San Francisco, getting his degree at San Francisco State University).
So Dan will remain in San Francisco and serve as a point of contact for any healthcare innovators in the city who want to connect with MedCity. But, like all of our journalists, he’ll be covering news from across the nation. You can meet him face-to-face next week in Philadelphia at MedCity CONVERGE conference.
Thank you as always for reading MedCity News.
