What Real-World Data Reveals About Women's Health Across the Lifespan Presented by Veradgim

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Featured Story   Is the Atrium-WakeMed Merger Already Hitting a Wall? The skinny Two North Carolina-based health systems, Atrium Health and WakeMed Health, announced plans to merge last week. As part of the proposed deal, Atrium plans to invest $2 billion into WakeMed and create 3,300 new jobs in Wake Country, North Carolina. The deal already appears to be off to a rough start, though. The Wake County Board of Commissioners was set to vote to advance the transaction on Monday, but it postponed, citing concerns about transparency and the pace of the deal. State leaders sound off North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Briner declared that the deal “will increase already high healthcare costs with no meaningful investment in Wake County,” in a post on X. He sent a letter to the Wake County Board of Commissioners arguing that consolidating two large health systems would reduce competition in the region, therefore giving the combined entity more leverage to negotiate higher prices with payers. Briner urged the board to either reject the transaction or require a substantial financial endowment — “well over $1.5 billion” — from Atrium to help offset future price hikes. North Carolina State Auditor Dave Boliek sent a letter to the board over the weekend as well. He said the deal appears to lack sufficient clarity and public accountability given its size and potential long-term impact on healthcare costs. It’s also highly unlikely the average Wake County resident “is even aware of the pending takeover,” he added. The board’s decision In a statement issued on Monday, the Wake County Board of Commissioners said it’s delaying its vote to allow for more input from the public. “The board made this decision to provide time for the hospitals to engage with the community, so they — along with the County Commission — can hear residents' comments and concerns about the combination,” the statement read. — By Katie Adams Sponsored   What Real-World Data Reveals About Women's Health Across the Lifespan Presented by Veradgim May is National Women's Health Month. Women's health has historically been underfunded and understudied. The Veradigm 2026 RWE Insights Report changes that — with real-world evidence spanning three pivotal phases of female health. Sign up today to see the key findings! Top Stories   Belgium’s Biggest Pharma Firm Expands to One of the Hottest Areas of Immunology R&D The deal UCB is acquiring Candid Therapeutics for $2 billion up front. Another $200 million is tied to the achievement of milestones. With the acquisition agreement, Candid terminated a business combination with Rallybio, a reverse merger that would have taken Candid public. Per terms of that deal, Candid’s acceptance of another offer triggers a $50 million termination fee payable to Rallybio. The drugs Candid’s drugs are T cell engagers (TCE), bispecific antibodies designed to deplete pathogenic cells B cells. By getting rid of these B cells, It’s hoped that the replacement cells do not attack a patient’s healthy tissue, “resetting” the immune system. Lead Candid drug candidate cizutamig is on track for Phase 2 testing in myasthenia gravis and interstitial lung disease. Why this matters Immunology and neurology are the two main therapeutic areas for Belgium-based UCB. Its top overall product is Bimzelx, an antibody drug with approvals in plaque psoriasis and four other autoimmune disorders. Like other antibodies for immunology and inflammation, Bimzelx is a chronically dosed therapy. A drug that resets the immune system offers the potential to bring patients a long-lasting, perhaps even one-time treatment. Other companies that have struck deals for bispecific antibodies with potential applications in autoimmune conditions include Gilead Sciences, GSK, and Merck. Soundbite “We consider cizutamig as a potential transformative asset, that complements our existing programs, and is poised to redefine treatment expectations for severe, underserved immune-mediated diseases, offering the potential to deliver meaningful improvements in patient outcomes and quality of life,” said UCB CEO Jean-Christophe Tellier. —By Frank Vinluan Sleep Is the Missing Vital Sign, and Health AI Is Scaling the Consequences Sleep matters Sleep keeps showing up as one of the clearest predictors of chronic disease, cognitive decline, and burnout. Still, in everyday medicine, it gets measured unevenly, defined in fuzzy terms, and too often left out of real care planning. At the same time, healthcare is sprinting toward a setup built on constant streams of information, prediction, and AI-supported choices. Remote monitoring, digital twins and therapeutics, virtual care platforms, all of it runs on the assumption that more data will translate into better outcomes. The problem is that a lot of these tools are expanding fast without a dependable grasp of one of the most basic drivers of health: sleep. A missing vital sign If sleep is going to operate as an actual vital sign, the field has to rethink measurement, validation, and how sleep information is used in care. First, measurement has to shift away from convenience alone and toward consistency and clinical usefulness. Second, sleep has to be read over time. A single night, or even a short run of nights, doesn’t say much. Third, interpretation has to stay tied to context. Sleep isn’t a standalone phenomenon. It shifts with physical health, mental health, environment, and behavior. If you treat sleep data as an isolated number instead of connecting it to what’s happening in a person’s life and body, you miss the point. More than an afterthought Finally, the healthcare environment needs to get serious about which signals are so fundamental they deserve deeper investment, and which ones can be approximated without much harm. Sleep is looking more and more like it belongs in the first group. Calling sleep a “missing vital sign” isn’t new, but the urgency has changed because AI is accelerating how data gets pulled into care. That speed is also exposing just how fragile some of the underlying inputs are. Sleep sits right in the middle of the tension: everyone agrees it matters, but it’s still measured unevenly and folded into care poorly. — By MedCity Influencer Colin Lawlor  Beyond Support Teams: The Strategic Role of Centers of Excellence in Healthcare Growing importance COEs enable strategic advantage and operational efficiency, which is why they are growing in importance across industries. But the fragmentation and resource constraints that plague healthcare move COEs from important to critical. Without centralized governance and expertise, decision-making can become fragmented. Inconsistent, incompatible workflows, duplicated effort, escalating costs, and burnout are the result, as the healthcare industry knows only too well. Technology investments often fail to perform as hoped, not because the tools are inadequate, but because adoption and utilization are managed inconsistently across the organization. A well-designed COE addresses this. Guardrails, not roadblocks COEs define standards that ensure safety, compliance, and interoperability but still allow for flexibility wherever adaptation is necessary. There is innovation, but within defined parameters so healthcare organizations can support unique clinical needs without introducing complexity and unnecessary variation. For clinicians, a COE with the right balance between standardization and flexibility means workflows that are both consistent and responsive to change. For IT teams, it reduces duplicative work and support burden. For leadership, it delivers predictability without sacrificing agility. More than a passing trend In today’s cash- and staffing-strapped, high-stakes healthcare environment, COEs are an operational necessity. The most successful organizations treat COEs as long-term strategic investments, or engines for scalable, sustainable transformation. When designed and executed well, they help healthcare organizations turn technology complexity into simplified workflows and measurable performance and cost outcomes. — By MedCity Influencer Jake Morrison Video   Video: AI Extremes to Avoid When providers are looking at AI tools, they should avoid these two extremes, according to Jennifer Geetter, partner at McDermott Will & Schulte.

In Other News

Why EHRs Are Critical to Effective Revenue Cycle Management EHRs not only document care but can also act as a financial engine to bridge the gap between patient care and prompt reimbursement. Here’s how to bring the two sides together to alleviate tedious administrative burdens. The Behavioral Health Workforce Crisis: Administrative Burden Is Breaking Your Nursing Team Automation can reduce manual labor, standardize documentation quality, strengthen payer accountability, and give leaders the data visibility to make confident decisions under tight time constraints. The Power of Real World Data to Study Women’s Health at Scale [Sponsored] A new report from Veradigm examines key clinical trends, comorbidity profiles, and treatment trends across adolescence, reproductive years, and peri-/post-menopause. Download it today!

Podcast   MedCity FemFwd: Inside Partum Health’s Partnership with UChicago Medicine In this episode, we’re joined by Meghan Doyle, CEO of Partum Health. We discuss the company’s new partnership that offers 24/7 access to doula support at University of Chicago Medicine Family Birth Center – Hyde Park. View Now

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