| | | |   | Good morning, health tech readers! Welcome back from the long weekend. Mohana here with the latest on Signify Health, and how how failed tech ventures impact patients. If you've got tips, drop a line at mohana.ravindranath@statnews.com. | | | CVS beats out Amazon on Signify Health deal CVS Health plans to acquire home health technology Signify Health in a cash deal valued at $8 billion, beating out other suitors such as UnitedHealth Group and Amazon. Signify has about 10,000 clinicians conducting home-based health assessments across the country, as well as its own analytics and tech platforms to crunch patient data. And as Casey and Katie reported last month, Signify's rich datasets are likely what's attracted these heavyweight bids. | What happens to patients when tech ventures fail? Telehealth companies facing uncertain economic outlook are laying off staff, shuttering entire business lines and pursuing surprising new deals — like Amazon’s plan to snap up primary care tech company One Medical. And all the activity in the market could prove disruptive to patients who’ve signed on for these companies’ services, designed to make appointment scheduling, clinician consultations and treatment similar to that of consumer products. Amazon, for instance, is shuttering its virtual and in-person health care service covering 40,000 patients by the end of the year. (The company said staff would be available to help patients find other options, and that records could be shared upon request.) “Failure can be good, but just acknowledge that when we break things or when we fail fast in health care, we are leaving a person’s health on the other end of the line,” said Brian Hasselfeld, senior medical director for digital health and innovation for Johns Hopkins Medicine and a practicing internist and pediatrician. But others say the churn is necessary to innovate and ultimately produce better services for patients. Read the full story. | Tablets vs desktops: What the pandemic told us about telehealth access White patients were more likely to use a desktop or laptop computer for their telehealth visits compared to Black or Hispanic or Latino patients, finds a new study of 55,000 Penn Medicine patients. Though it’s not clear exactly why they differed — whether higher phone or tablet use was associated with limited broadband or computer access, or it just came down to preference — the findings suggest that there might be demographic differences in the way patients access care. And that could shape efforts to increase that access, potentially by expanding beyond investments in broadband and further into financial support for data plans and bringing 5G networks to underserved areas, researchers wrote. How in-person diagnoses stack up to video: On a related note, an investigation in JAMA Network Open finds that provisional diagnoses made over video visits matched the in-person diagnosis during a follow-up visit in 87% of cases. The findings, which came from an analysis of thousands of Mayo Clinic patients, could address concerns that clinicians wouldn’t be able to accurately diagnose patient diseases through telemedicine, researchers wrote.
 There were still some variations by speciality. Diagnoses made to new patients in primary care telehealth settings were less likely to line up with in-person diagnoses than virtual specialty clinic consults, for instance. And provisional diagnoses for conditions that might require in-person exams, neurological testing and pathology, including some skin conditions, were also less likely to align. | RCTs with smaller control arms put patients first When existing treatments fall short, patients turn to clinical trials for the chance to receive a potentially effective one. Being assigned to the placebo group means patients face yet another barrier towards recovery. Randomized controlled trials with smaller control arms give patients a greater opportunity to take the experimental treatment, while also giving providers more care options for their patients. Learn how TwinRCTs help to run more patient-centric trials. | The latest on Amazon’s health equity accelerator The newest Amazon Web Services health accelerator — this one is focused on health equity — has chosen ten startups to receive technical support, mentorship, and AWS computing credits. Among them is SameSky Health, which uses text and personalized messaging to engage underserved patient populations; CognitiveCare, which uses machine learning to triage and offer care plans to pregnant patients and infants; and Vincere Health, which offers smoking cessation services. | Money moves - Mental startup Limbix is partnering with the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles to evaluate the efficacy of its depression-focused cognitive behavioral therapy app SparkRx.
- Health care cloud company Innovaccer has laid off 90 employees — about 8 % of its workforce.
| What we’re reading - Q&A with Zus Health and athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush, FastCompany
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