Healthcare News and Headlines
Healthcare News and Headlines
Healthcare Pulse
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Every morning
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University of Houston researchers warn that implanted nerve electrode cuffs can be unintentionally activated during MRI scans. Simulations show fast‑switching gradient fields and RF‑induced heating lower activation thresholds, sometimes below peripheral nerve stimulation limits. The findings suggest existing MRI‑conditional guidelines may not adequately protect patients with these devices. The team calls for more comprehensive safety assessments, including varied body models and implantation pathways.
The FDA has granted approval for Dupixent (dupilumab) to treat allergic fungal rhinosinusitis (AFRS) in adults and children six years and older, marking the first indication for this rare sinus disease. The approval follows a 52‑week trial that demonstrated significant...
New data presented at CROI 2026 show that people living with HIV who have maintained viral suppression for 25‑30 years on antiretroviral therapy regain robust HIV‑specific CD8⁺ T‑cell function. Using flow cytometry and single‑cell RNA sequencing, researchers found these cells display...
The FDA has granted traditional approvals to ten oncology drugs that originally received accelerated approval after post‑marketing studies verified clinical benefit. The list includes agents such as Braftovi, Epkinly, and Padcev, with conversion dates ranging from 2022 to 2026. These...
Addus Homecare reported a 33.3% year‑over‑year rise in adjusted EBITDA to $50.3 million in Q4 2025, driven by a 25.6% jump in total service revenue to $373.1 million. Hospice services generated roughly $70 million, representing 18.8% of quarterly revenue, with daily census climbing...
University of Waterloo researchers have engineered the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium sporogenes to eat solid tumors from the inside out. By inserting an oxygen‑tolerant gene and coupling it to a quorum‑sensing circuit, the bacteria survive at the tumor periphery only after...
A University‑run telepsychiatry program in North Carolina screened 44,000 rural children, diagnosing 1,000 with anxiety or depression and connecting 300 to child psychiatrists. The initiative slashed typical six‑month referral waits to under a month by embedding master‑level clinicians in primary‑care...
The FDA Circulatory System Devices Panel rejected the V‑Wave interatrial shunt, citing a neutral primary endpoint in the RELIEVE‑HF trial despite promising subgroup results in HFrEF patients. The trial showed no overall reduction in mortality, hospitalizations, or quality‑of‑life measures, and...
CMS has issued a Request for Information to explore AI solutions that could transform Medicare’s digital and voice interactions. The agency aims to use predictive analytics, chatbots, virtual assistants, and AI‑driven call‑center tools to deliver personalized plan recommendations and 24/7...
Northwell Health, a long‑time participant in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, has generated shared savings while treating about 90,000 attributed beneficiaries and is gearing up for downside risk in 2027. The system focused on care coordination, especially mental‑health screening and...
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary argues that any drug deemed safe, non‑addictive and not prone to misuse should be sold over the counter. He cites anti‑nausea medicines, hormonal contraception and common analgesics as candidates, while urging regulators to abandon a paternalistic...
Exa Capital has acquired StaffReady, a SaaS platform that manages clinical workforces across hospitals, labs, and pharmaceutical testing firms. The platform streamlines staff scheduling, compliance, and inspection readiness, helping health‑care organizations reduce operational bottlenecks. StaffReady will remain independent with its...
At HIMSS26, eClinicalWorks will launch the AI API Workbench, a platform that lets developers create custom autonomous AI agents for electronic health records. The company is positioning AI as an active participant in daily operations, with tools like healow Genie...
Altais Health Solutions and Autonomize AI announced a clinician‑led partnership that leverages AI to automate prior‑authorization workflows. The deployment cut case‑review time by 45% and reduced manual errors by 54%, while half of routine requests now process automatically. Clinicians still...
QuantalX Neuroscience’s Delphi‑MD, a hybrid TMS‑EEG platform powered by AI, received FDA de novo classification in November 2025 and entered commercial launch in February 2026. The device delivers real‑time, age‑adjusted brain‑function assessments by comparing patient data to a cleared normative database. CEO Dr....
The FDA’s Generic Drugs Program reported 217 approvals for FY‑2026, including 23 first‑time generics and 45 first‑cycle approvals. Tentative approvals reached 89, while complete responses rose to 402, reflecting a busy review pipeline. Prior Approval Supplements (PAS) saw 532 approvals,...
The FDA has published an updated list of 189 pediatric exclusivity determinations made under Section 505A of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act since September 2007. Each entry includes the drug name, sponsor, determination date, and links to the original Written...
Geisinger announced Jeremy Gaskill, a veteran Humana executive, as the new president of Geisinger Health Plan and executive vice president of insurance operations, effective Feb. 23. Gaskill succeeds Karen Murphy, who stabilized the plan and cut operating losses since March 2025. He...
Greater Pittsburgh Orthopaedic Associates disclosed a data breach that began around August 10, 2025, affecting tens of thousands of patients. The group reported 35,000 records to HHS in August 2025, but a February 2026 filing to the Maine Attorney General raised the figure...
Altera Digital Health announced that 14 hospital systems have extended multi‑year contracts for its Sunrise electronic health record platform. The renewals follow the launch of Sunrise 25.1, which introduced roughly 700 system enhancements and a focus on streamlined navigation. Altera...
Engineers at the University of Utah unveiled a 5.5‑pound portable hip exoskeleton that reduces the metabolic cost of walking for stroke survivors with hemiparesis by roughly 18%. The device delivers side‑specific motor assistance synchronized in real time, allowing users to...
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is outperforming the broader market, climbing roughly 14% in the last 30 days and trading near its all‑time high of $245. The health‑care giant boasts a 64‑year streak of dividend growth, a low beta of 0.35,...
The article outlines five practical steps for clinicians and IT teams to improve collaboration with healthcare vendors, from early stakeholder involvement to shared success metrics, clear roadmaps, dedicated onboarding managers, and comprehensive training. It stresses the growing role of IT...
The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) released its February 2026 Guidance Agenda, outlining the draft and revised guidances it plans to develop this calendar year. The agenda features the first issuance of a Level 1 draft guidance alongside updates to...
Healthcare leaders and clinicians are evaluating top‑rated gel packs for physical therapy, focusing on durability, temperature retention, and supply‑chain reliability. Leading providers include Pelton Shepherd, Chattanooga ColPac, Elasto‑Gel, Core Products, and Cardinal Health, each offering reusable hot and cold packs...
In May 2025 the National Academy of Medicine released an Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct for Health and Medicine, outlining ten principles to guide trustworthy, human‑centered AI across health care. The framework is especially relevant for behavioral health, where AI...
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin demonstrated a non‑contact method for measuring blood pressure by reflecting near‑field radio waves off the wrist. They built a wearable prototype using a patch antenna, circulator and a custom 2.4 GHz integrated circuit...
ShopRite has introduced Wellness Your Way Starter Kits aimed at customers who are filling a GLP‑1 prescription for the first time. The free kits bundle a dietitian‑crafted wellness guide, sample products and coupons for protein‑rich and low‑calorie groceries. The rollout...
General Catalyst’s Dr. Stephen Klasko will headline HIMSS26’s Smart Health Transformation Forum, delivering a keynote that imagines a personalized‑care landscape by 2035. Drawing inspiration from Taylor Swift’s storytelling, he will link today’s AI, genomics, and data‑exchange advances to future patient‑centric models....
A Gallup poll shows 16 % of U.S. adults now rely on consumer AI chatbots for medical advice, highlighting a shift in patient behavior. These tools can simplify medical language and help patients prepare for visits, but they lack HIPAA compliance...
CMS has unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the Medicare Advantage Star Ratings, targeting the 2028 and 2029 rating cycles. The agency will drop 12 administrative and two clinical measures, eliminate the Health Equity Index incentive, and introduce a depression‑screening metric....
AI‑enabled ultrasound is emerging as a tool to improve prenatal detection of congenital heart defects (CHDs), which affect about 1 % of U.S. births and are frequently missed. FDA‑cleared AI platforms can analyze cardiac images in real time, flagging abnormal views...
The FDA has appointed Dr. Jeffrey Abramson, a veteran radiologist with extensive AI and health‑policy experience, to a senior role within its Digital Health Center of Excellence. The move comes as the agency shifts toward a more hands‑off regulatory stance...
The FDA issued a warning letter to MedisourceRx after an inspection found the facility’s compounded sterile drugs failed to meet 503B outsourcing‑facility requirements. Specific violations include marketing unapproved new drugs, misbranding due to inadequate labeling, and inadequate adverse‑event reporting. The...
The FDA has opened public comment on a citizen petition that would shift oversight of adaptive radiology AI tools from repeated pre‑market reviews to continuous post‑market monitoring. As AI algorithms are updated to improve performance or expand indications, the traditional...
Camunda introduced a Skyflow connector that tokenizes and de‑identifies PII/PHI within BPMN workflows. The connector forwards selected fields to Skyflow’s vault, replaces them with tokens, and permits controlled re‑identification only at approved steps. This approach shrinks the cleartext data footprint...
Pfizer’s post‑COVID strategy pivots from vaccine and antiviral sales to rebuilding growth through oncology and metabolic assets. The 2026 guidance excludes COVID revenue, projects modest 4% operational growth, and anticipates a $1.5 billion patent‑cliff hit. To offset these pressures, Pfizer completed...
Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) NHS Foundation Trust completed a pilot of ambient voice technology (AVT) across inpatient and outpatient settings, testing four vendors – Accurx Scribe, Tortus, Heidi and Lyrebird. Almost 90% of clinicians reported reduced documentation time, with 88%...
New Zealand health‑tech firm MediMap was forced offline after an unauthorized intrusion altered patient records, including changing names to “Charlie Kirk” and marking individuals as deceased. The breach affected dozens of providers in aged‑care, disability, hospice and community settings, prompting the...
Canary Speech has partnered with JubileeTV to embed its AI‑driven vocal‑biomarker technology into consumer video calls, marking the first deployment outside clinical settings. The system analyzes 40 seconds of natural conversation, extracting thousands of acoustic features to generate nondiagnostic scores...
TigerConnect unveiled a cloud‑native operator console aimed at replacing decades‑old hospital switchboards. The platform unifies call routing, code activations, and alarm management into a single dashboard while integrating with EHRs, telephony and scheduling tools. AI‑driven automation and intelligent search streamline...
Kyndryl and the University of Liverpool’s Civic Health Innovation Labs have launched a partnership to apply Kyndryl’s Agentic AI Framework to co‑develop blueprints for next‑generation healthcare technologies. The first phase will generate conceptual AI projects, emphasizing conversational agents that help...
Sciwind Biosciences granted Pfizer China exclusive rights to commercialize ecnoglutide injection in Mainland China. Sciwind will keep the marketing authorization and handle R&D, registration, manufacturing, and supply, receiving up to $495 million in milestone payments. Ecnoglutide, a cAMP‑biased GLP‑1 receptor agonist,...
Congress missed its Jan. 30 deadline to extend ACA subsidies, leaving roughly four million Americans without financial assistance and prompting a surge in uninsured individuals. The lapse underscores a broader health‑care cost crisis that has become a flashpoint ahead of the...
The Guardian profiles Ukraine’s first psychological trauma centre, Forest Glade, where soldiers like 25‑year‑old Kyrylo Chuvak undergo intensive three‑week rehabilitation after years of Russian captivity. The programme blends conventional therapy with unconventional activities such as tango, archery and guided breathing to...
A Harvard study published in Nature Communications reports that U.S. residents living closer to operational nuclear power plants face higher cancer mortality rates. The analysis covered mortality data from every county between 2000 and 2018 and adjusted for smoking, BMI,...
North Korean state‑backed Lazarus group has been linked to recent Medusa ransomware attacks targeting U.S. healthcare providers. Symantec’s report identifies a Lazarus sub‑unit, possibly Andariel/Stonefly, using the Medusa RaaS platform, which has affected more than 380 organizations since its 2021...
Beren Therapeutics announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has accepted its New Drug Application for adrabetadex, an investigational therapy aimed at treating infantile‑onset Niemann‑Pick disease type C (NPC). The agency set a target action date of 17 August 2026 under the...
A new combination‑therapy approach for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) aims to boost remission rates beyond the current 30 % success benchmark. By pairing agents that target distinct immune pathways, early trials show remission climbing to roughly 55 % and faster mucosal healing....
A forthcoming Pediatric Research review by Vimalesvaran and Dhawan examines the current state of Metabolic Dysfunction‑associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD) screening in children, highlighting advances in imaging and biomarker research while exposing persistent gaps in sensitivity and guideline standardization. The...
