Included Health to acquire Firefly Health

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Included Health to Acquire Firefly Health to Expand Alternative Health Plan Offering for Employers

The news
Included Health, a navigation and virtual care company, announced Tuesday that it plans to acquire Firefly Health, a primary care and health plan provider.

The deal
San Francisco-based Included Health provides virtual and in-person care, navigation and care coordination and 24/7 support for clinical and administrative needs. Firefly Health, based in Watertown, Massachusetts, offers a clinically-integrated health plan that combines primary care, chronic condition management, mental healthcare and specialty care with provider navigation. It has an ecosystem of more than 2,300 in-person, in-home and specialty partners.

The acquisition will accelerate Included Health’s alternative plan strategy for employers, according to Owen Tripp, CEO of Included Health. In February, Included Health launched a new alternative plan design that is centered around primary care and provides costs upfront. Patients also receive 24/7 support through Included Health’s AI assistant named Dot, which can provide answers to questions and hand off patients to human support if needed.

Soundbite
“Over time, the goal is to bring together Firefly’s clinically integrated health plan with Included Health’s AI-native navigation, clinical platform, and scale to create a single, connected benefits experience for employers and members nationwide,” Tripp told MedCity News. “That combination is designed to integrate plan design and administration, comprehensive care, and full system support to reduce friction, improve employee health, and lower costs.”

— By Marissa Plescia

AI Readiness Starts with Solving Healthcare’s Data Fragmentation Problem

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This Weekly GLP-1 Drug Helped People Drink Less

The data
Altimmune drug pemvidutide achieved a statistically significant reduction in heavy drinking days (five or more drinks per day for men, four or more for women) in a Phase 2 clinical trial in alcohol use disorder, meeting the study’s main goal. Results also showed more than 42% of patients who received the study drug achieved zero heavy drinking days, which is an important endpoint in a registrational clinical trial for this indication. Altimmune plans to meet with the FDA to discuss the path forward for this drug in alcohol use disorder.

The drug
Pemvidutide is a peptide designed to activate the GLP-1 and glucagon receptors. The company says activating glucagon receptors leads to reduction in liver fat, inflammation, and fibrosis. Also, while activating GLP-1 is well established as a way to suppress appetite and promote weight loss, the company says targeting it in alcohol use disorder may play a role in pathways related to craving and reward.

Why this matters
Altimmune focuses on developing drugs for the liver, and pemvidutide’s most advanced program is actually in the fatty liver disease MASH. But alcohol use disorder is also a large indication with unmet need. While cross-trial comparisons are tricky, analysts point out that the pemvadutide’s results in alcohol use disorder look better than Novo Nordisk’s results for semaglutide. But Eli Lilly is ahead with brenipatide, a GLP-1 and GIP agonist currently in Phase 3 testing in this indication.

Soundbite
“Given the known detrimental effects of alcohol on the liver, the liver-directed impact of glucagon in pemvidutide may provide further benefit in the treatment of AUD over GLP-1 alone, underscoring pemvidutide’s promising potential differentiation,” said Altimmune Chief Medical Officer Christophe Arbet-Engels.

—By Frank Vinluan

Smart Toilet Sensor Startup Is Flush with $10M Funding

The moolah
Throne Science — an Austin-based startup selling an AI-powered toilet camera — snagged $10 million, bringing its fundraising total to nearly $18 million. The round was led by Will Ventures, with participation from Emerson Collective, Moxxie, Felix Capital, Cosmic Venture Partners and Offscript.

Filling a market gap
The startup exists in a category that has gone largely untouched by the wearables boom. This is despite how common the underlying issues are, given the majority of Americans experience gastrointestinal symptoms regularly, noted Throne CEO Scott Hickle. He added Americans face a roughly 10% lifetime risk of developing cancer of the lower gastrointestinal or urinary tract. Colorectal cancer in particular, once considered a disease of old age, is now the leading cause of cancer death among U.S. adults under age 50.

“Ultimately, our mission and vision is to build what we call the smoke detector for colon cancer,” he declared.

How it works
Throne’s device, which launched to consumers in March, clips onto the underside of the toilet seat, with sensors that face only downward into the bowl. It uses Bluetooth to identify who is using the toilet within about three seconds — distinguishing between household members while staying dormant for guests — so users can go about their normal bathroom routine and then receive what Hickle calls "a fresh report card with every flush."

The company’s platform delivers daily, personalized insights, similar to how Whoop or Oura deliver coaching, Hickle explained. Its gut health coach asks users about their lifestyle after a bad gut health episode — what they ate, whether they were stressed, slept poorly or traveled. Hickle noted this allows it to gradually learn which personal factors correlate with good and bad days.

The device costs $399, and the subscription needed for it to work is $5.99 per month or $69.99 annually.

— By Katie Adams

Why Automation Has Become a Strategic Imperative

The issue
Prior authorization has become one of healthcare’s most expensive administrative bottlenecks, affecting far more than physician practices. Across hospitals and health systems, it slows patient access, adds labor-intensive work, increases denial risk, and puts pressure on reimbursement and cash flow. For organizations focused on growth, margin, and operational resilience, prior authorization is no longer just an administrative issue. It is a front-end revenue cycle challenge with enterprise-wide consequences.

The risk starts upstream
The challenge is that prior authorization is not confined to one part of the revenue cycle. It begins before care is delivered and influences everything that follows, from scheduling and registration to reimbursement and denial prevention. The process remains difficult because payer requirements are not standardized, documentation rules change frequently, and teams must manage multiple variables at once.

Traditional approaches were built for a less complex environment and depend too heavily on individual knowledge, manual follow-up, and staff persistence. That creates variation, makes performance harder to predict, and leaves organizations exposed when experienced employees leave. Simply adding labor does not fix the underlying problem. The bigger opportunity is to reduce avoidable work at the front end and prevent authorization issues before they create downstream disruption.

The future is automated
Automation helps organizations remove repetitive, rules-based work from staff workflows and apply authorization processes more consistently at scale. AI can strengthen that model by helping teams identify priority cases, surface likely risks earlier and focus human attention where it matters most. The value is not automation for its own sake. It is better control over labor, faster turnaround, fewer preventable denials, and stronger financial performance. Human oversight remains essential.

Provider organizations need a different approach from payer-side automation. Rather than using AI to narrow what qualifies as medically necessary, providers can use it to support workflow governance, standardize decision-making, and improve readiness before a request ever reaches the payer.

— By MedCity Influencer Terry Russell

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Included Health to acquire Firefly Health