How much health tech executives make

CEO pay illustration - 2022

Mike Reddy for STAT

This morning, my colleagues published a huge report on how much executives across the world of health care pulled in last year according to filings. As a newer sector, fewer health technology companies must report how much their executives make to investors, but there's some interesting bits.

Notably, GoodRx's Doug Hirsch and Trevor Bezdek, who recently stepped away from their roles as the leaders of the company, each pulled in over $12 million when taking into account the actual value of their stock compensation. Teladoc's Jason Gorevic, meanwhile, took home $6.5 million.

In the world of medical devices, the 10 highest-earning CEOs earned almost $344 million last year. Kevin Lobo of Stryker tops the list at about $45 million in compensation.

Read STAT's full analysis here.

Government

HHS reveals list of the AI tools it uses

The Department of Health and Human Services this week released its latest inventory of non-sensitive and non-classified artificial intelligence tools. HHS's AI program lead Sanja Basaric said on LinkedIn that this year's list contains more than triple the use cases from last year.

Of 162, a few caught my eye, including:

Application of statistical modeling and natural language processing for adverse event analysis
Label comparison tool to support identification of safety-related changes in drug labeling
Nowcasting suicide trends

Let me know if any are interesting to you.

Clinical Trials

ActiGraph leaders dish on the company's new device

ActiGraph creates wearable devices and software explicitly designed for clinical trials by focusing on features that matter to sponsors, like 30-day battery life. CEO Jeremy Wyatt and chief scientific officer Christine Guo told me about their new wearable, called Leap, which adds a PPG sensor that can measure heart rate and other new functionality.

Unlike consumer manufacturers, ActiGraph's focus is on creating a super-reliable device that can produce data suitable for use in a primary endpoint in a trial. Actually helping get a drug approved will be an important milestone for the company — when and if it happens. While continuous data potentially offers better insight into how patients are responding to treatment, it's purely a "nice-to-have" if the data isn't useful for regulatory submissions, Guo said.

Read my interview here.

Medical devices

Philips recalls yet another set of breathing machines

There has been at least one death and two injuries associated with Philips' Trilogy Evo ventilators, the FDA reported this week. In March, Philips recalled more than 73,000 of the ventilators, as they received hundreds of reports saying the machines — primarily used in hospital settings to support breathing — absorbed dust and dirt into breathing tubes. A buildup of dirt in the device's air path could block oxygen, leading to serious injury or death. Philips respiratory machines have been plagued with a number of serious issues, the most widespread of which was the breakdown of soundproofing foam in CPAP machines, which led to the recall of millions of CPAP machines. There have been more than 350 reports of deaths associated with that recall.

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What we're reading

Digital health company Babylon files for bankruptcy in U.S., will liquidate, Forbes
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How Amazon's in-house first aid clinics push injured employees to keep working, Wired