- Apple may have a medical product in the works, per a Tim Cook interview which suggests that Apple jettisoned some of the sensors originally planned for the Apple Watch for fear that FDA approvals would gum up its release. “We don’t want to put the watch through the FDA process,” said Cook, adding that he “wouldn’t mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it,” “maybe an app, maybe something else.”
- How sensitive are smartphone accelerometers? MIT is working on an app that would “reliably measure your heart and breathing rates” via your smartphone, even if it’s in a pocket or a bag.
- Pfizer’s mobile mantra: Be useful, be human and be committed.
- …And Walgreens’ telehealth mantra: Make it simple, make it rewarding and make it effective. The retail pharmacy giant just expanded its telemedicine offering with MDLive to 20 more states.
- WebMD is launching a Medscape-branded social networking app for physicians. The app, dubbed Medscape Consult, will compete with Sermo and Doximity. The app contains some interesting privacy features, including use of facial recognition technology to blur patients’ faces and the ability to erase identifiable marks, suggesting that WebMD also has its eye on Figure1.
- Pamela Anderson Instagrammed the (somewhat-NSFW) news that she is hepatitis C-free, along with a nude photo of herself and the hashtag #nomorehepc. The post calls to mind Kim Kardashian’s recent use of Instagram to plug anti-morning sickness drug Diclegis, though Anderson didn’t mention a brand. The Baywatch star, who has waged a very public battle with the virus for 16 years, told People Magazine that she was starting an “FDA-approved drug regimen” back in August.
- Here’s how hospitals are using IBM’s Watson. Among other things, MSK is using the program for melanoma screening and has found that Watson achieves 94% accuracy – versus 75% accuracy for human doctors.
- More data, more problems – smartphones and connected sensors plus ResearchKit means a flood of data for researchers and providers, but validation and standardization challenges make it “an exciting mess.”
- Hillary Clinton took another whack at the pharma industry in Saturday’s Democratic debate, saying “We're going to have to redo the way the prescription drug industry does business” – for example, letting Medicare negotiate directly with manufacturers on prices (her plan also includes a cap on out of pocket expenses). Clinton followed up with a call for the FDA and FTC to investigate Turing Pharmaceuticals, whose colorful young CEO is now livestreaming his life, apparently, because transparency. In other pricing scandal news, PBMs are cutting ties with specialty pharmacies in the wake of allegations that Valeant used one such pharmacy, Philidor, as a catspaw to push pricey treatments.
- Here’s why this is a winning issue for politicians: the average amount that employees contribute to healthcare costs has risen 134% over the last decade, according to an Aon Hewitt analysis, and high deductibles are rendering insurance unusable for many.
- Journalist-physician-health policy wonk Atul Gawande says the most overlooked story in health and medicine “is what it’s like to actually try to get health care.”
- In another indication of how the locus of control in healthcare decisions is shifting away from providers and towards patients, Kaiser Health News reports that physicians working on tough pediatric cases are increasingly presenting parents with difficult decisions – instead of just making a call.
- Are you feeling pretty good about your accomplishments in life? Read about the 34-year-old genius who invented optogenetics and is now leading the charge on the emerging science around gene editing.
- Here’s a harrowing/fascinating longread about medtech and risk as experienced by a husband-and-wife team of Harvard physicians who uncovered – and lived – a medical nightmare.
- It’s easy to forget from the well-wired cities of the Northeast, but broadband access continues to be poor-to-nonexistent across wide swaths of America such as the Mississippi Delta.
