Included Health taps Carrum Health

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Included Health Taps Carrum Health for Value-Based Specialty Care

The news
Included Health has teamed up with Carrum Health to embed specialty care into Included Health’s alternative health plan, the companies announced on Tuesday.

The partnership
Included Health provides virtual and in-person care, navigation and care coordination and 24/7 support for clinical and administrative needs. Its alternative health plan launched in February and is centered around primary care and provides costs upfront.

Through the new partnership, Carrum’s Centers of Excellence network will be integrated into Included Health’s alternative health plan. Included Health will identify when members require specialty care — including surgeries, cancer care and substance use disorder treatment — via primary care visits, communication through the app and claims data, and then refer them to Carrum for care. After treatment, Carrum will transition the member back to Included Health.

Soundbite
The partnership comes as employers battle rising healthcare costs, with specialty care driving almost 50% of spending.

“What we see is that oftentimes, individuals, when they are touching the healthcare system, they just don't know what to do,” said Matthew Eurey, chief commercial officer at Carrum Health. “Included has built a really great solution to help them to navigate all the pitfalls and the things that can go wrong, but employers see that a lot of their spend is coming from specialty care. … In order to help employers to bend the cost curve, we wanted to work with [Included] where we could take their great offerings, their great navigation capabilities, and be that outlet of support when life is happening in its trickiest moment.”

— By Marissa Plescia

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Phase 3 Results Mark Turnaround for a Once Beaten Down Biotech

The readout
Amylyx Pharmaceuticals reported its drug, avexitide, met the goals of a Phase 3 test in post-bariatric hypoglycemia (PBH), a steep drop in blood sugar that causes problems such as dizziness, cognitive dysfunction, and loss of consciousness. This condition does not develop in every bariatric surgery patient, but when it presents, it becomes a chronic condition with symptoms showing after every meal. With successful Phase 3 data in hand, Amylyx now plans an FDA submission by the end of this year for what could become the first FDA-approved PBH drug. These results mark a turnaround for Amylyx, which withdrew its amyotrophic lateral sclerosis drug from the market and laid off 70% of its staff in a corporate restructuring two years ago.

The drug
PBH develops as the changed anatomy of the gut from bariatric surgery leads to metabolic changes that include excessively high levels of GLP-1 hormone, which in turn leads to greater secretion of blood sugar-lowering insulin. Avexitide is a once-daily injected peptide drug designed to block GLP-1 receptors. Preliminary Phase 3 results show a 55% reduction in hypoglycemia events over the course of the 16-week study.

Why this matters
An estimated 160,000 people in the U.S. have PBH. The condition is debilitating, preventing patients from routine activities, such as working or caring for children. While companies like Recordati and Vogenx have clinical-stage programs testing other approaches to PBH, Amylyx executives say avexitide’s trial results validate GLP-1 antagonism as a way to treat this disorder. Leerink Partners projects this drug, if approved, could reach up to $1.5 billion in peak sales.

Soundbite
“It’s life altering, not only for the patient but also for their families,” Dr. Marilyn Tan, a clinical professor at the Stanford School of Medicine and principal investigator of the Phase 3 study, said of avexitide’s impact on patient quality of life.

—By Frank Vinluan

Healthcare Is Deploying AI Tools — It's Not Ready for AI Colleagues

Digital workers
Every new AI agent becomes another participant requesting information, initiating workflows, making decisions within defined parameters, and interacting with enterprise applications. That places new demands on governance, security, identity, auditability, and the infrastructure responsible for moving trusted data across the organization. Healthcare leaders often ask how many AI tools they can deploy. A more important question is: How many digital workers can your organization realistically govern?

Governance questions
Healthcare has mature processes for governing human users. Employees receive credentials. They have defined permissions. They undergo training. Their activity can be monitored and audited.

Agentic systems raise a different set of questions:

Which agents should have access to what information?
Who is accountable for actions taken by an agent?
How are permissions granted, modified, and revoked?
How is agent activity monitored at scale?
How do organizations ensure thousands of digital workers don’t overwhelm existing systems and workflows?

Leadership questions
Healthcare already has mature models for managing human users. What it doesn’t yet have are mature operating models for managing non-human participants that can access information, trigger workflows, and take action at machine speed.

The sooner organizations recognize that gap, the sooner they can begin designing the policies, accountability frameworks, and operational practices needed to manage AI colleagues responsibly. These matters will only become more pressing as organizations move from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide deployment.

— By MedCity Influencer Sagnik Bhattacharya

Rural US Healthcare Has A Cybersecurity Problem — CMS Funding Can Help Fix the Part No One Sees

The money
With the Rural Health Transformation Program, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is sending $50 billion to states over five years, with $10 billion available each year from fiscal year 2026 through 2030. All 50 states received first-year awards this year, averaging about $200 million and ranging from $147 million to $281 million. CMS also made technology part of the program’s design, including funding for data security, cybersecurity, remote care, interoperability, and other digital health tools.For rural providers, that matters because the cybersecurity gap is rarely about awareness. Most rural hospitals know they are exposed.

How it can help
With the CMS funding, states can take cybersecurity off the “we should really get to that” list and into a rural health investment plan. The best use of the money will be practical, such as shared cybersecurity services, risk-reduction readiness assessments, workforce support, response playbooks, and basic controls that are implemented well enough to hold up under pressure. Those may not sound like dramatic changes, but they are the work rural hospitals need most.

The private sector has an important role in building that capacity. Rural hospitals often cannot hire a full cybersecurity team or build specialized cyber programs from scratch. Outside partners can help fill those gaps by providing managed detection, endpoint protection, readiness assessments, training, playbook development, and implementation support. The measure of success should be: does the hospital come out of the work with stronger basic cyber hygiene and a clearer path to improve?

The goal
Rural hospitals need trained people, tested backups, downtime procedures, clinical continuity planning, and staff who know what to do when an alert fires. A framework won’t substitute for that work, but it helps organize it and makes progress measurable. CMS funding gives states a chance to help rural hospitals build that muscle. A one-time assessment won’t get you there, but rather the goal is security practices a hospital can sustain over time.

— By MedCity Influencer Bimel Sheth

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Rural US Healthcare Has A Cybersecurity Problem — CMS Funding Can Help Fix the Part No One Sees

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Included Health taps Carrum Health