AppliedVR makes a dent in payment

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(Courtesy AppliedVR)

Virtual reality startup AppliedVR, which targets chronic pain, has secured a Medicare payment code to get covered as durable medical equipment — a significant step for an emerging technology that has struggled to make headway in traditional medicine, Lizzy writes.

AppliedVR scored FDA authorization to use the technology to treat back pain treatment in 2021. But the absence of established payment models for virtual reality has made adoption difficult.

That could start to change now that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has granted AppliedVR a unique payment code for its flagship product RelieVRx, which consists both of a headset and software guiding patients through pain management exercises. The decision will take effect in April.

Momentum may be building in Congress and at CMS for alternative pain treatments to opioids, Miranda Franco, a senior policy advisor at Holland & Knight, told Lizzy. "I think there is a desire to move this along, as long as it's proven to be safe and effective," Franco said.

Read more — including perspectives from VR experts Brennan Spiegel and Susan Persky — in Lizzy's story.

Artificial intelligence

GPT-4 bleeds into medical scribe software

Microsoft's Nuance Communications is integrating GPT-4 into its popular AI-driven medical scribe service that is widely used by hospitals, Brittany and Casey write. Dragon Ambient Intelligence is designed to ease clinicians' documentation workload by listening to provider-patient conversations and turning it into medical notes. This summer, providers using DAX or Dragon Medical One — services provided by Nuance — will be able to apply for an early adopter version of DAX Express, which will incorporate the large language model.

But DAX Express bypasses the human reviewer that the current product relies on for quality control, Brittany and Casey write — a step toward offloading transcription entirely to AI. "We're getting much more aggressive," Peter Durlach, Nuance's chief strategy officer, told STAT. Less than 100 doctors are pilot testing DAX Express right now; the company plans to move into beta phase by the summer and enroll about 400. Read more about the questions DAX Express's accelerated release poses here.

startups

The latest on women's health and tech

Virtual women's and family health clinic Maven is acquiring London-based Naytal, which paves the startup's path into the United Kingdom and Europe. Maven is backed by General Catalyst, CVS Health Ventures, Lux Capital and other heavyweight health care investors, having raised its latest $90 million round in November.

Naytal's founder and CEO Laila Thabet will become Maven's regional vice president for global growth and partnerships, and some of the company's U.K.-based providers will join Maven's network.

The news coincides with the release of troubling maternal health data earlier this month indicating that mortality spiked in 2021 — up about 40% from the previous year — and hit Black mothers especially hard.

In a piece in Health Affairs, Maven consultant Alex Peahl and chief medical officer Neel Shah argue that digital care could allay some of the nation's preventable deaths, but also point to a familiar challenge: lack of clear payment models for digitally-enabled health care.

artificial intelligence

Also on women's health...

A team of researchers is using machine learning to predict which pregnant patients are at highest risk of getting emergency C-sections long before they actually give birth — giving them the option of planning their C-sections instead, Ida Emilie Steinmark writes for STAT. About a third of deliveries in the U.S. happen via C-section, 10% of births are emergency C-sections, which incur compounded risk for patients.

The model, trained on a birth dataset from 2011 to 2013 published by the CDC, predicted almost 80% of emergency C-sections across more than 10 million births between 2014 and 2017, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found. Read more on why clinicians think the prediction could be valuable here.

patient voices

Survey: People want their test results immediately

An investigation in JAMA Network Open finds that 96% of patients prefer getting their test results immediately through online portals, even if their provider hasn't reviewed the result. But a small subset said they did worry more than they would if they'd received the results later, especially if test results were abnormal. The survey, which spanned four large academic medical centers across the country, polled more than 8,000 patients.

The study offers some data supporting the argument from patients and advocates that making health records easier to access is largely beneficial — despite pushback from some clinicians arguing that people aren't equipped to decipher their own records without guidance.

Out of patients who got abnormal test results, more than 95% said they'd still prefer to access their records immediately, suggesting "there may be benefits to receiving abnormal results online, such as allowing patients to choose where and with whom to view such results," authors wrote.

Industry news

Other jobs and deals

MedArrive, the home health care company co-founded by ex-Uber and Lyft exec Dan Trigub, is working with telehealth company Ouma Health to treat maternal Medicaid patients.
Johnson & Johnson's chair of MedTech Ashley McEvoy was elected chair of AdvaMed's board of directors for a two-year term.

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What we're reading

Pear Therapeutics is looking for a financial lifeline, Digital Health Business & Technology
Hospitals are not crumbling, Medicare experts tell Congress, STAT
The CDC wants health apps for its employers, Nextgov
How AI is impacting jobs, The Washington Post

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.