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Hospitals rush to check algorithms before deadline
Over the last four years, health systems across the United States have phased out the use of several clinical tools that use race to predict patient outcomes, replacing them with race-free versions that carry less risk of perpetuating inequitable care.
But as STAT’s Katie Palmer reports, there’s a wide world of other calculators and algorithms used to make decisions about patients every day — many of which use race, sex, and other traits protected by federal anti-discrimination laws. As a deadline for federally funded health systems to vet those tools for discrimination approaches in May, it’s still unclear how they’ll tackle the challenge.
Truveta’s big deal with Regeneron
Selling de-identified data is all the rage these days. Hospitals are sitting on a trove of patient data they can sell to third-party companies who in turn sell the data to researchers and companies who are looking to train AI or conduct studies. This is such a lucrative proposition that non-profit health system Providence, with several other health systems, spun out for-profit health data company Truveta in 2020 to do just that.
STAT’s Brittany Trang reports that yesterday, Truveta announced it is adding genomic data to its mix, in conjunction with drugmaker Regeneron and with support from Illumina and Microsoft. In the new Truveta Genome Project announcement, the company said it will collect the exome sequences of volunteers and connect the genetic sequences to de-identified medical records, which it will sell alongside its other de-identified electronic medical record data.
Read more from STAT’s Brittany Trang about the $119 million investment from Regeneron and Truveta’s aggressive goals for the project, which will be larger than the UK Biobank and the NIH All of Us project if it succeeds. Got thoughts about all this? Email Brittany: [email protected]
- When we last checked in with CPAP giant ResMed this fall, company CEO Mick Farrell told me that he saw a huge opportunity in two important trends in sleep apnea treatment. First, the rise of consumer tech brands like Apple and Samsung baking sleep apnea detection directly into their devices; and second, the growing popularity of GLP-1 medications among people who may benefit from sleep apnea treatment. Of the former, Farrell told investors at JPM that the company would this year roll out a digital marketing strategy designed to sell devices to people notified by their smartwatches that they might have the condition. Details to come. Of the latter, Eli Lilly’s Tirzepatide is now approved to treat severe obstructive sleep apnea, but as before, Farrell is not concerned that big pharma will drink his milkshake. He claims the drug can only “half treat” sleep apnea, and he sees huge a marketing push from Lilly ultimately benefitting ResMed sales by creating awareness of the condition.
- Casey Ross and Brittany Trang tell us: Nvidia flogged a handful of new partnerships focused on the use of AI and advanced computing in health and science. IQVIA will work with the chip maker to build AI foundation models with its 64 petabytes of clinical research and consumer data; a partnership with Illumina will focus on the use of Nvidia’s computing and AI resources to analyze genomic data and other subtypes of “omics” data to support drug discovery; and a deal with Mayo Clinic will seek to “massively accelerate” the creation of pathology foundation models using the health system’s library of 20 million whole-slide images. The thrust of the news is that Nvidia has found many ways in the health and life sciences to drive demand for its chips and computing services. The question is whether these projects will meaningfully advance our understanding of diseases and speed up drug discovery.
- Katie Palmer writes: In 2025, Dexcom will continue to lean into the market for type 2 diabetes, pushing for coverage of its continuous glucose monitors and enrolling for a randomized trial of the devices in type 2 patients, including those who don’t use insulin and those on GLP-1s. Enrollment will finish this year, with readouts from the first six months projected for the end of the year or 2026, said CEO Kevin Sayer. Dexcom will also start selling its over-the-counter CGM Stelo, which launched in August, direct on Amazon.
- Brittany writes: AI-driven drug discovery company Recursion Pharmaceuticals gave updates on its pipeline and discussed how it’s increasingly focused on developing a virtual model of a cell. Echoing CASP founder John Moult, Recursion CEO Chris Gibson said that protein folding models are an important step toward getting to that cell model. He said that Recursion has a new partner it thinks is “on the very forefront of protein folding.” Gibson wouldn’t say who it was but promised that the company would share more in coming months.
- Waystar, the provider financial software company that recently went public, announced a suite of new generative AI tools, including AltitudeCreate, a product that drafts appeals of claims denials. Relevant read: Casey’s recent story about the emerging arms race between insurer AI tech that denies claims and provider and third-party AI products that appeal the denials.
- Interesting health AI fundraises so far: Innovacer ($275 million — good TechCrunch profile), Hippocratic AI ($141 million), Qventus ($105 million), Qualified Health ($30 million), Collate ($30 million)
- Health Catalyst, which makes data solutions for hospitals, announced it will acquire patient engagement platform Upfront Healthcare Services for $86 million, with a potential $33 million earn-out, depending on performance metrics, according to the SEC filing.
- Teladoc Health‘s new CEO Chuck Divita presented his priorities for the company late Monday afternoon. My story on this will be out in the morning — check statnews.com!
What we’re reading
- Defiant, Pfizer CEO talks about Trump, obesity drugs, and the ‘Pfizer machine’, STAT
- Hospitals balk at Biden cybersecurity upgrade, Axios
- American Psychological Association sounds alarm over certain AI chatbots, Mashable
- Former Trump White House, HHS aide Abe Sutton likely to lead Medicare, Medicaid innovation center, STAT