Life after Alphabet layoffs

Tech titans like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet have slammed tens of thousands of employees with layoffs over the past few months, including some who were working on health-related products like Amazon Pharmacy and RxPass or Google's software for health systems. While the layoffs didn't hit health teams head-on, the sheer scope of them means some of big tech's health workers are now looking at the health tech job market.

My colleague Brittany Trang spoke with former Google employees who worked on everything from drug discovery to streamlining siloed medical data. Some said their expertise could prove useful for health systems trying to get up to speed on tech. "Most of health care is about 15 to 20 years behind us in terms of infrastructure modernization," said Esteban López, a physician and healthcare and life sciences market lead at Google, who was laid off this month. Read more from former employees.

Venture Capital

Andy Slavitt on funding more equitable health tech

I sat down with the former Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services official during the J.P. Morgan Health Care conference earlier this month to talk about the nuts and bolts of investing in companies that say they want to reach the country's most vulnerable patients. What metrics do he and his fellow investors look at? How does he know a team's really equipped to tackle the web of social, clinical, and behavioral challenges underserved groups face?

It turns out Town Hall Ventures — the fund he established in 2018 — is rethinking how it approaches investment metrics. To some extent, he told me, backers have to trust that founders know which metrics best reflect progress in specific areas. Still, there are certain internal metrics — like diversity at all levels within the company — that Slavitt says he insists portfolio companies disclose and progress on.

"There's usually other investors at the table, and I'm pretty sure they're going to ask the question about 'how's your sales acquisition doing?' But my first questions will always be what I think is important. You have to hire diversity, particularly in the early stages, and then their networks will come in. But you have to force it." Read our full conversation here.

Washington

Former Oracle exec is FDA's new digital health lead

The Food and Drug Administration has named former Oracle senior vice president Troy Tazbaz its new head of digital health, my new colleague Lizzy Lawrence writes in her first dispatch for STAT. Tazbaz will lead FDA's Digital Health Center of Excellence, taking over for acting director Brendan O'Leary. Bakul Patel, who previously held that role, left government for a digital health strategy position at Google. The relatively new office aims to update the regulatory process for digital health products including medical devices that rely on algorithms and software. More here.

Public health emergency declaration to end in May

Also in Washington, President Biden plans to end the national emergency and public health emergency declarations on May 11 that have allowed many states to rapidly expand virtual care due to more expansive Medicare and Medicaid telehealth coverage. Experts and telehealth advocates have urged lawmakers to avoid "coverage cliffs" that could lead patients to suddenly and abruptly lose access to potentially life-saving virtual care; it's not yet clear how the White House and Congress will ease that transition.

For a primer on how the end of the emergency is going to create a huge headache for the whole health care system, read this.

Telehealth

Study: A mixed bag for opioid use and virtual care

As researchers frenetically comb through mountains of virtual care data created during the pandemic, they're getting a much more nuanced picture of telehealth's impact on factors like cost and patients' overall health. As I've reported, the takeaways are sometimes messy.

A study out in JAMA Network Open this week examining telehealth and opioid use disorder patients found no signals that the care was unsafe or overused — nor was it linked to increased access or better care. And while that means virtual care could be a viable alternative to in-person opioid use disorder care, it's "not one that will substantially change care quality or access in the short term," authors wrote.

The findings could put a damper on telehealth advocates' assertions that the technology could dramatically increase care quality and access across the board. If you've found evidence to the contrary, however, I'd love to hear from you.

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What we're reading

New clinical trial tech company Paradigm has launched with $203 million, Digital Health Business & Technology
How a new bill could create a website collecting data on pregnancies, Abortion Everyday
Missing ethnic and racial pandemic data will cause future disparities, STAT

Thanks for reading! More on Thursday - Mohana

Mohana Ravindranath is a Bay Area correspondent covering health tech at STAT and has made it her mission to separate out hype from reality in health care.