| | | |   | Good morning, health tech readers! I’m hoping you had a restful end to 2022. I’ve got some news from our Katie Palmer about the companies clamoring to finance health care and new data-sharing rules that just took effect. What else should we be tracking as we enter 2023? Bestow upon us your tips and thoughts at mohana.ravindranath@statnews.com. | | | Buy-now, pay-later health care is exploding Some patients struggling to pay for health care are seeking out a version of the layaway plan: a new crop of buy-now, pay-later services from companies like Afterpay and Affirm, which were originally established for online retail. While these services make up a small fraction of health care, they are rapidly growing, economist Jay Zagorksy tells Katie: They ballooned from about $10 million in 2019 to $230 million in 2021, according to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report surveying five lenders. While these companies pitch themselves as help for patients facing skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs, consumer advocates warn they could put patients at risk of overextending themselves. “When people are vulnerable and they feel that they need health care services and are being offered a pathway to access those services — even though it might be outside of what is covered by their insurance or are typically covered by insurance plans — it can be risky,” Eva Stahl, vice president of public policy at RIP Medical Debt, told Katie. Read the full story here. | What to watch in 2023: Bulk data sharing Federal rules forcing electronic health record vendors to make it easier to call up large batches of patient data took effect at the end of last year, and we’ll be watching what health systems, payers, and researchers do with this population-level data. (Got an interesting use case? Let us know!)
“[This] really for the first time ever allows you the ability to do true comparisons between providers, with what I would call apples to apples data,” Don Rucker, the former national coordinator for health information technology, told Katie. He also said the rules make it easier to collect clinical and claims data in the same format — a key part of demystifying the exact cost and quality of providers’ care. Read more on opportunities for population data. | Taking stock: FDA’s breakthrough device program 
Katie has also continued her and Mario Aguilar’s dogged reporting on an FDA program designed to expedite access to new diagnostics and therapeutics — an effort that so far appears to have boosted the medical device industry more than patients. Still, the “Breakthrough Device” program gained steam in 2022, she writes in her latest rundown for STAT. Get up to speed here.
| The future of Alzheimer’s disease research needs solutions that benefit trial patients It’s an exciting and cautiously optimistic time for Alzheimer’s disease research. Eisai and Biogen’s lecanemab and Eli Lilly’s donanemab are at the frontlines and over 143 new drugs are in the development pipeline. There couldn’t be a more urgent time to adopt innovative solutions that benefit patients and accelerate clinical development programs. Unlearn’s TwinRCTTM solution does just that, lessening the burden on trial patients while moving critical research forward. Learn more. | Study: Hospital ransomware attacks on the rise The annual number of ransomware attacks on hospitals more than doubled between 2016 and 2021, researchers found in a worrying original investigation covering 374 attacks published recently in JAMA Health Forum. About half of those incidents disrupted patient care by felling electronic health record systems, canceling scheduled appointments, and diverting ambulances, researchers found. They also estimated that more than 42 million patients’ data were exposed over those five years. | What we’re reading - People of color are dying at higher rates than COVID data suggests, USA Today
- What 90 health tech nerds predict will happen in 2023, Health Tech Nerds
- How digital health startups claiming to be tech companies may lose their sheen, Business Insider
| | | Thanks for reading! More on Thursday,  | |
No comments