| | | |   | Good morning, health tech readers! Mohana here with a couple deep dives from our team on the Wild West of direct to consumer telehealth, explainable AI, and the need to regulate the algorithms guiding crucial medical decisions. I’ve also got a question for you: Have you ever encountered expediting fees when requesting your medical data? Let me know on Twitter or at mohana.ravindranath@statnews.com. | | | Who watches pharma’s telehealth play? Online prescribing services have surged during the pandemic, driven in part by drug companies drawing patients in with online ads offering to connect them with clinicians who can quickly write prescriptions. That intersection of direct-to-consumer virtual care and online drug advertising has led to an alarming regulatory gray zone, experts tell my colleague Katie Palmer.
The FDA regulates drugs and the claims made by ads and labels, and states oversee the actual prescriptions. But when online drug ads prompt consumers to find virtual care services — especially when those services are directly linked to pharmaceutical companies — “telemedicine is kind of blurring the boundaries between manufacturer and prescriber,” Nathan Cortez, a health law expert at Southern Methodist University, tells Katie. It’s not clear whether federal or state regulators should take the lead on regulating them. Read more from Katie here. | Cerebral to cut a fifth of its workforce More potentially troubling news from the world of online prescribing. Telehealth prescription startup Cerebral — saddled with federal and state investigations into its prescribing practices including for controlled substances like ADHD medication — is laying off about 20 percent of its workforce, the Wall Street Journal first reported. CEO David Mou told staff Monday that the goal was to make operations more efficient and focus more on clinical safety and quality. (If you have questions for Mou, let me know.) It’s just also the latest health tech company to tighten its belt in the face of economic uncertainty. I’ll be interviewing Mou next month at our STAT Summit — details here. | Epic AI overhaul shows how important oversight is  Molly Ferguson for STAT
My colleague Casey Ross has another special report on mounting issues posed by flawed medical algorithms. While health record software giant Epic finally overhauled its flagship algorithm purporting to predict the onset of sepsis following Casey’s investigations revealing flaws, the stakes were higher than just bad PR — especially since missed sepsis cases could very often lead to death. It’s a case study of the opportunities and pitfalls of AI in health care, experts say. “The lack of standard empiric evidence supporting these algorithms is really bothersome for me,” Derek Angus, a physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and expert in treating sepsis, told Casey. “We don’t really know with strong enough cause when these algorithms are helping, and similarly we’re not really sure when they’re hurting.” Casey has more. | Delivering on the patient experience in the age of Web3 and the Metaverse As patients seek tools to better understand their health and as providers look for ways to optimize care delivery, Web3 sits at the intersection of the entire experience. Whether you serve the needs of providers, payers, or patients, Web3 will push the limits of what we thought possible. How digital health brands tell their story in these new environments will make the difference between staying ahead of the curve or being left behind. Begin planning for the future of content marketing and authentic storytelling. | How medical imaging AI makes its predictions A group of researchers is trying to elucidate how models that predict things like blood clots from medical images actually make those predictions — including by identifying the part of the image that most affects the prediction, my colleague Jayne Williamson-Lee writes. In a recent study in Nature Machine Intelligence, a research team examined how several “saliency methods” stacked up to radiologists. Spoiler: Not all of them did as well as radiologists when localizing pathologies. | More from the research drawer Another intriguing study we’re sure will spark lively dinner table debate: An analysis in JAMA Network Open examining data from more than 2,200 children suggests a link between playing video games and “improved cognitive abilities.” While several other studies have linked video games to behavior problems, this analysis came to the opposite conclusion, suggesting “there may also be cognitive benefits associated with this popular pastime, which are worthy of further investigation,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which supported the ongoing cognitive study from which researchers pulled data. | Industry news -
After two years of R&D, fertility startup Alife Health is now selling AI products designed to help fertility clinics with clinical decisions and operations. -
Public benefit corporation Waymark, which sells tech and hires health workers, pharmacists, care coordinators and others to help existing Medicaid providers reach underserved patients, is now working with CVS Health’s Aetna Better Health of Virginia to reach Medicaid patients in that state. Waymark is backed by Lux Capital among other investors. -
Online therapy company Talkspace’s board appointed Katelyn Watson as its chief marketing officer. Watson was previously chief marketing officer at Thirty Madison’s property Nurx. - Kate Sasser is joining precision medicine company Tempus as its chief scientific officer. Sasser most recently led translational research, precision medicine, data science and research & development operations at biotech company Genmab.
- Aledade, which sells tech to help independent practices manage value-based care, has hired Ritwik Tewari as its chief technology officer. Tewari most recently was senior director of engineering at Meta.
| | | | | Thanks for reading! More on Thursday,  | |
No comments