Today's Healthcare Pulse
Allogene Therapeutics CEO David Chang to step down
Allogene Therapeutics announced that chief executive David Chang will leave his role. The news was reported by STAT+ and echoed in a follow‑up piece covering broader pharma updates.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Boston Scientific invests $1.5B for 34% stake in MiRus
Maven Clinic and Color Health Partner to Expand Virtual Oncofertility Services
Maven Clinic and Color Health have launched a joint oncofertility program that integrates virtual cancer care with a family‑building platform. The partnership targets the roughly 80,000 U.S. young‑adult cancer diagnoses each year, where fewer than half of patients receive fertility‑preservation counseling before treatment. By automatically triaging high‑risk patients to Maven’s fast‑track pathway, the service enables egg or sperm freezing within days of diagnosis. Initial rollout will focus on employers and health plans, positioning the solution as a strategic benefit for employee well‑being.
Antimicrobial Resistance Causes: Why Social Factors Matter More than Drugs
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is now a global health emergency, with the WHO noting up to one‑in‑five infections in parts of Africa are drug‑resistant. While antibiotic misuse is visible, the deeper drivers are social: poverty, overcrowding, and limited clean water fuel...
Keragon AI Transforms Healthcare Operations with HIPAA-Compliant Conversational Interface
Keragon has launched an AI‑powered automation platform that links more than 300 healthcare applications through conversational, no‑code prompts while maintaining HIPAA compliance. The solution lets clinical and operations staff design and deploy workflows in minutes, eliminating the traditional reliance on...
Ambience Healthcare Launches “Chart Awareness” To Automate Coding and Clinical Summaries
Ambience Healthcare introduced “Chart Awareness,” an AI capability that reads a patient’s full longitudinal record—including labs, imaging and prior notes—to generate richer clinical summaries. The update adds chart‑aware patient summaries, auto‑extracted diagnostic trends, and coding assistance that can substantiate complex...
Resident Doctors in Scotland Accept Pay Deal, Averting Strikes
Resident doctors in Scotland have overwhelmingly approved a revised pay offer, with 97.1% voting in favour and a 62.4% turnout, averting planned strike action. The British Medical Association secured a deal that provides a 4.25% pay rise for 2025‑26 and...
What Do You Think About Physician Noncompete Agreements?
Physician non‑compete agreements are back in the spotlight as the FTC signals a targeted crackdown on contracts it deems unreasonable, rather than pursuing a sweeping federal ban. The debate pits practice protection against clinician mobility and continuity of care. Medical...
Private Insurance Is Seeping Into Every Public Health Program: Warning Signs From the Veterans Health Administration
The episode examines how private insurance is infiltrating the Veterans Health Administration via the Veterans Community Care Program (VCCP) and the proposed Community Care Network (CCN) Next Generation, a move that could channel up to $1 trillion of taxpayer money into...
Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease Series: Rheumatic Valve Disease
The TCTMD podcast released a new episode in its Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease series focusing on rheumatic valve disease. Hosts Ami Bhatt and Robert Levine explore the diagnostic hurdles that pediatric patients face, including overlapping symptoms with other cardiac...
FDA’s Prasad‑Era: Rules Shift, Rare‑Disease Drugs Stalled
This week's Biotech Scorecard newsletter: The old Vinay Prasad never left. He just changed jobs Submissions to the FDA are handled by teams of reviewers, of course. But when I look across all of these recent cases, I see a...
Epic in the Crosshairs
The episode recaps the ASTP Annual Meeting, highlighting its role as the premier gathering for health‑tech and interoperability stakeholders and noting the scarcity of concrete announcements. The most significant insight came from a surprise panel on Information Blocking featuring the...
Ubie and Mayo Clinic to Launch “Smart Support” AI Triage Platform
Ubie, a Google‑backed AI health platform, has teamed up with Mayo Clinic to co‑develop “Ubie Smart Support,” an AI‑driven triage system that merges chat and voice interfaces into a single digital front door. The solution will assess symptoms, route patients...
GE HealthCare Installs Allia Moveo at USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation
GE HealthCare’s Allia Moveo, a compact cable‑free C‑arm with a lateral wide‑bore for Cone Beam CT, has been installed at the University of South Florida’s Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS). This makes CAMLS the first Florida and...
A Guide to the Best Disaster Recovery Solutions for Health Care Organizations
Healthcare providers face heightened risk from cyber attacks and natural disasters, making robust disaster recovery essential. Vendors such as Dataprise, Veeam, Acronis, Zerto, and Carbonite offer cloud, hybrid, and on‑premises solutions that promise rapid recovery, HIPAA compliance, and proactive monitoring....
Andor Health Scores Three Premier Contracts to Automate Virtual Care
Andor Health, a leader in agentic AI, has secured three national contracts with Premier Inc. The agreements span Virtual Care (effective Dec 1, 2025), Clinical Communications & Collaboration (Feb 1, 2026), and Remote Patient Monitoring (Mar 1, 2026). They grant Premier members access to ThinkAndor®, an...
Terray’s AI Model Accelerates Drug Potency Prediction, Pose Not Needed
Terray Therapeutics unveiled TerraBind, an AI model that predicts small‑molecule potency without generating a binding pose. The model delivers roughly 20% higher accuracy and a 26‑fold efficiency boost versus the open‑source Boltz‑2 benchmark. By eliminating the computationally intensive pose step,...
RxERP Integrates Embedded Microtransponder Technology for Improved Pharmaceutical Traceability
RxERP has signed a licensing agreement with p‑Chip Corporation to embed light‑activated microtransponder tags into its pharmaceutical ERP serialization workflows. The embedded tags provide a permanent, tamper‑resistant digital ID that links directly to RxERP’s receiving, inventory, verification and reporting records,...
Blinded by Science: The Importance of RWD and Post-Market Surveillance
The explosive uptake of GLP‑1 drugs—now used by roughly 12% of U.S. adults—has spotlighted both their therapeutic benefits and emerging safety concerns. Post‑market surveillance, leveraging real‑world data (RWD), is uncovering rare vision‑related adverse events that clinical trials missed. AI‑driven analytics...
Immigrant Caregiver Burden: The Hidden Cost of the Five-Year Medicaid Wait
Immigrant families like the Sureshes are caring for elderly relatives while awaiting Medicaid eligibility, which requires a five‑year waiting period for lawful non‑citizen permanent residents. The father, a remote‑work tech professional, provides full‑time care for his 95‑year‑old mother, incurring high...
Pepsi Slashes Junk‑food Prices After SNAP Lobbying Backlash
PepsiCo reportedly spent $2.8 million last year lobbying to keep junk food eligible for food stamps. Then 18 states moved to restrict SNAP purchases of soda, candy, and ultra-processed snacks. Within a week, PepsiCo cut prices on Doritos, Lay's, and Tostitos by...
Sanofi's Board Ousts Hudson, New CEO Faces Dupixent Gap
So Sanofi's board strikes again. Paul Hudson gets the old Paris boot 6 years after taking on the task of remaking the pipeline. It hasn't gone well. Next: Belen Garijo. She has a few years to get ready for the...
STAT+: BridgeBio Drug for Genetic Cause of Dwarfism Succeeds in Key Study
BridgeBio Pharma's oral drug infigratinib met its primary endpoint in a pivotal trial of more than 100 children with achondroplasia, delivering an average growth increase of 2.1 cm per year versus placebo. Adjusted analysis showed a 1.74 cm per year advantage, both...
Molecular Mimicry Links J&J Vaccine to Rare Clotting
Cracking the case: how did adenoviral vector vaccine such as the J&J's Covid induce very rare and potentially fatal clotting, bleeding? An elegant proof of molecular mimicry—genetic background + rogue antibodies https://t.co/yp6TNE8ZQC https://t.co/NhhYDvntmT @rkhamsi @TheAtlantic https://t.co/xY7f6MVkx9 @kakape @GretchenVogel1 @ScienceMagazine
Sanofi Appoints Ex-Merck KGaA Chief Garijo as CEO
Sanofi, looking for more ‘rigor,’ swaps CEO Hudson for ex-Merck KGaA chief Garijo https://t.co/SDLUYOzPuD by Kristin Jensen $SNY - 4% $MKKGY
EP500: This Is Episode 500, and It's All About You, Tribe
In episode 500 of the Relentless Health Value podcast, host Stacey Richter celebrates the community of healthcare entrepreneurs, executives, and change‑makers she calls the "tribe," highlighting how the show has moved listeners from theory to real‑world transformation. Listener clips illustrate...
Oracle Health AI Empowers NHS Doctors to Tackle Challenges
Bringing the innovative capabilities of @OracleHealth Clinical AI Agent to the NHS and throughout the UK underscores our commitment to empowering doctors to deliver exceptional care. By embedding advanced AI-powered capabilities into clinician workflows, we can tackle some of the region's biggest healthcare...
Terray's Non‑diffusion AI Beats Boltz
NEW: Terray has taken a contrarian AI approach, building a non-diffusion-based model for binding affinity predictions They shared some H2H results against Boltz-2, a popular open-source model, showing 20% more accuracy + 26x faster to run: https://t.co/BFZU8y6qI8
7 Million Cancers A Year Are Preventable, Says New Report
A new WHO‑backed study in Nature Medicine estimates that 7 million cancer cases each year—about 37 % of the global burden—are preventable. Tobacco, infections and alcohol together account for roughly 25 % of all cancers, with tobacco alone responsible for 3.3 million cases. The...
AI Models May Cheat on Molecular Binding Predictions
The Utah-based startup Leash Bio is warning of the potential for AI models to be cheating on tasks like predicting binding affinities of molecules I talked with @allmeasures about how its "Name that Chemist" quiz relates to the goal of generalization:...
FDA Defends Skipping Review of Moderna's mRNA Flu Shot
FDA defends its decision not to review Moderna's mRNA flu shot. My comments with @NBCNews @BerkeleyJr https://t.co/h8PlaEUC3v
Rethinking Employer Coverage for High-Cost Medications
Employers face a projected 9% rise in health‑benefit costs for 2026, driven largely by soaring prescription drug expenses. GLP‑1 receptor agonists, originally diabetes treatments now popular for weight loss, have become the fastest‑growing cost component, with 79% of employers reporting...
ASCO GU26 Highlights Litespark, Keynote B15, Flare
Key late-breakers at Asco #GU26 include Litespark-011 & 022, Keynote-B15... and who's heard of Flare Therapeutics? Via @ApexOnco -> https://t.co/bXcANMQu5m $MRK $PFE $ALMPF $CGON $VIR
Chronic Rhinitis Solution NEUROMARK Secures €62.5 Million as Irish Startup Neurent Medical Closes Series C
Neurent Medical announced an oversubscribed €62.5 million Series C round, led by MVM Partners and Sofinnova Partners, to accelerate the commercial rollout of its NEUROMARK system for chronic rhinitis. The funding will expand European market presence, deepen clinical evidence, and support a...
New Method Can Find Hidden Eggs to Aid in Fertility Treatment
Researchers at AutoIVF introduced OvaReady, a microfluidic device that scans discarded follicular fluid and retrieves eggs missed by traditional microscopy. In a study of 582 patients across four U.S. clinics, the system found additional viable eggs in 316 cases, yielding...
Louisville Found PFAS in Drinking Water. The Trump Administration Wouldn’t Require Any Action.
Louisville Water discovered a sharp increase in the GenX PFAS variant in December 2024, with concentrations 15 times higher than the previous month, reaching 52 parts per trillion. The spike was traced upstream to Chemours' plant in West Virginia, but...
🔬Beyond AlphaFold: How Boltz Is Open-Sourcing the Future of Drug Discovery
In this episode, Gabriele Corso and Jeremy Wohlwend discuss how structural biology has moved beyond AlphaFold's single‑chain predictions toward modeling complex interactions and generative protein design with their open‑source Boltz suite (Boltz‑1, Boltz‑2, and BoltzGen). They explain that evolutionary co‑variation...
CBO: Medicaid Spending Increases Will Slow Due To OBBBA But Expected To Continue
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the 2025 reconciliation bill’s Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBBBA) will trim roughly $1.2 trillion from Medicaid spending over the next decade. Despite this sizable reduction, overall Medicaid outlays are expected to keep rising because...
E&C Health Panel Determined To Rein In Remaining PBM Business Tactics
On February 11, the House Energy & Commerce health subcommittee signaled it will keep pressuring pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) after a recent FTC settlement involving Cigna’s Express Scripts. Chair Rep. Buddy Carter asked the new head of the traditional PBM...
![Business Literacy Empowers Physicians to Lead Sustainable Health Systems [PODCAST]](https://hixhlmpcokxhartfkpyi.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/images/articles/4f44f3669b3c12e1a928e85742e2cb1b.webp)
Business Literacy Empowers Physicians to Lead Sustainable Health Systems [PODCAST]
In a recent KevinMD podcast, family physician Kelly Bain discusses how business literacy is essential for physicians navigating today’s increasingly employed and value‑based health‑care environment. Drawing from her three‑phase career—from rural solo practice to a large multi‑specialty group and finally...
The 2026 PM360 Pharma Choice Awards – Variety BRONZE Winner
The 2026 PM360 Pharma Choice Awards named Fingerpaint Multicultural and Novo Nordisk’s "Maneja Tu Peso" campaign a Variety Bronze winner. The initiative is an online hub aimed at US Hispanic adults living with obesity, delivering culturally tailored education and a...
Proposed CMS Rule Upholds Exclusion of Nursing Home Custodial Care From Essential Benefits
CMS issued a Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2027 proposing to keep long‑term nursing‑home custodial care outside the list of essential health benefits required for ACA marketplace plans. The rule maintains that custodial stays are not mandatory coverage,...
Coast-to-Coast Hospice Growth as Facilities Proliferate
Hospice providers are expanding coast‑to‑coast, with Augusta Inpatient Hospice Home opening in Georgia, Julia Hospice & Palliative Care planning a nine‑room Julia House in Pennsylvania, and Tri‑Cities Chaplaincy completing a $3.5 million renovation in Washington. In Florida, Gulfside Healthcare Services broadened...
Maine Hospital Association President Michaud to Retire; Jeffrey Austin Named Successor
The Maine Hospital Association announced that long‑time President Steven Michaud will retire after a 27‑year tenure, having led the organization since 1999. Jeffrey Austin, currently vice president of government affairs and communications, will take over as president on March 1, 2026....
Senate Aging Committee Holds Hearing on Physician Burnout
The Senate Special Committee on Aging convened a hearing on Feb. 11 to address the growing physician burnout crisis. The American Hospital Association (AHA) urged Congress to act on three bills: the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act to simplify...
House Subcommittee Hearing Discusses Impacts of Drug Pricing on Health Care Costs
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held a hearing on Feb. 11 to examine how prescription‑drug pricing affects overall health‑care costs. The American Hospital Association (AHA) testified, warning that proposals to replace the 340B drug‑pricing program with a rebate...
OPTION: IV Tenecteplase Boosts Outcomes Late After Non-LVO Stroke
The randomized OPTION trial showed that intravenous tenecteplase given 4.5 to 24 hours after symptom onset improves functional outcomes in patients with acute non‑large‑vessel‑occlusion (non‑LVO) strokes. At 90 days, 43.6% of tenecteplase recipients achieved a modified Rankin Scale score of...
Sober-Curious? Here’s A Timeline Of What Happens When You Quit Alcohol
The sober‑curious movement is reshaping how Americans view alcohol, with celebrity disclosures and a Gallup poll showing drinking prevalence falling to 54 % of adults. Scientific research now outlines a clear health‑recovery timeline: blood pressure drops in the first week, insulin...
Landers Exits As Alliance CEO, Sheets Takes Helm
Dr. Steve Landers stepped down as CEO of the National Alliance for Care at Home, ending his 17‑month tenure that began in September 2024. He will remain on the board to aid the transition, which takes effect on Feb. 9. Jennifer...
90% Want Free AI Mammograms, Yet None Receive It
Over 90% of responders believe it's time for mammography to incorporate AI for every readout, whereas close to 0% who get screened are getting that interpretation now, and at no out-of-pocket charge https://t.co/hITOBNd7pg https://t.co/x1I6Ffxfio
FDA OKs Risky, Pioneering OSK Rejuvenation Trial with Sinclair’s ER-100
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared an investigational new drug application for Life Biosciences' ER‑100, a viral gene‑therapy that delivers inducible Oct‑4, Sox‑2 and Klf‑4 (OSK) to the eye. The first‑in‑human trial will enroll a small cohort of...
Anti-Epileptic Drug May Prevent Early Plaque Formation in Alzheimer’s Disease
Scientists at Northwestern University identified that the toxic amyloid‑beta 42 peptide accumulates inside neuronal synaptic vesicles and that the FDA‑approved anti‑epileptic drug levetiracetam can halt this process. By binding to the SV2A protein, levetiracetam alters APP trafficking, keeping the precursor...