Monday Morning Update 2/20/23

Monday Morning Update 2/20/23

Top News

The VA postpones its planned July 2023 Oracle Cerner go-live at its Ann Arbor, MI facilities until later this year or early in 2024.
The service region is concerned about “how well EHRM would interact with VA Ann Arbor’s vital medical research mission.”

Reader Comments From AT: “Re: pet peeves with service industry words and phrases. ‘I appreciate you,’ following my thanking you and leaving you a tip, which suggests that we are like-minded, decent people even though you have no way of knowing that. Second is thanking someone with ‘of course,” implying that I’m either too stupid to know…

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Apellis Drug Becomes First Approved Therapy for Vision-Loss Disorder Geographic Atrophy

Apellis Drug Becomes First Approved Therapy for Vision-Loss Disorder Geographic Atrophy

Geographic atrophy, an eye disorder that starts as a loss of central vision and progressively worsens to total blindness, now has its first treatment. The FDA on Friday approved an Apellis Pharmaceuticals drug that slows the progression of this disease, which affects more than 1 million people in the U.S.
Approval of the Apellis drug, pegcetacoplan, covers all patients with geographic atrophy, a broad label that reflects the representative patient population tested in pivotal studies, Chief Medical Officer Caroline Baumal said during a Friday evening conference call. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company plans to launch the drug in March, marketing the product under…

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What the metaverse and virtual reality can contribute to healthcare

What the metaverse and virtual reality can contribute to healthcare

The so-called metaverse and virtual reality are up-and-coming technologies that could offer healthcare quite a bit.Medical practitioners can test out the effectiveness of new surgical methods in the metaverse before attempting on real patients. And as an extension of telehealth, medical professionals can use virtual reality to access patients and examine them virtually.
What exactly is the metaverse? How does virtual reality work? What can they contribute to healthcare? And where will these technologies offer innovations in the years to come?
To get answers to these questions, we sat down with Pari Natarajan, CEO of Zinnov, a global management and consulting firm focusing…

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VinBrain harnesses Stanford data to improve radiology AI

VinBrain harnesses Stanford data to improve radiology AI

Vietnamese healthcare AI developer VinBrain has started a new partnership with Stanford University to enhance AI medical imaging.Based on their latest data use agreement, Stanford will initially provide VinBrain access to about 240,000 anonymised medical images and reports to train and test the AI on its DrAid clinical decision support platform while also helping improve the accuracy of an information extracting method for structuring radiology reports called RadGraph.
WHY IT MATTERS
According to VinBrain, its latest partnership with Stanford aims to enhance efficiency in radiology reports while “tackling complexity, ambiguity, and limitations in medical image interpretation.”
Through Stanford’s support, the company will be able…

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Roundup: First insomnia DTx in South Korea gets regulatory nod and more briefs

Roundup: First insomnia DTx in South Korea gets regulatory nod and more briefs

South Korea clears first local insomnia DTx The South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has given its first market approval for a digital therapeutic device for treating insomnia, according to a news report.
The mobile-based medical device-as-a-software called Somzz by Aimmed delivers a CBT programme that helps increase sleep duration.
India OKs health monitoring smartwatch CardiacSense
Xplore Health, a medical tech company in India, has received approval from the Indian Regulatory Authority for a wearable health monitoring device it carries.
The company is the distributor of the medical smartwatch product of Israeli medical device developer CardiacSense.
Based on a news report, the smartwatch enables continuous monitoring of vital…

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Morning Headlines 2/17/23

Morning Headlines 2/17/23

February 16, 2023 Headlines No Comments Avaya Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy After Cloud Subscription Accounting Woes
Unified communications and collaboration services vendor Avaya, whose healthcare offerings include solutions for virtual care, collaboration, and patient access technology, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in six years.
Elation Health Acquires Medical Billing Company Lightning MD to Accelerate Market’s First Primary Care All-in-One Solution
Primary care EHR vendor Elation Health acquires practice-focused medical billing company Lightning MD.
Spacelabs Healthcare Expands Clinical Informatics Capabilities with Acquisition of Predictive Analytics Company PeraHealth
Spacelabs Healthcare acquires PeraHealth and its Rothman Index patient deterioration software for undisclosed…

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Retail disruptors face big strategy questions in 2023, says AHA

Retail disruptors face big strategy questions in 2023, says AHA

A new report from the American Hospital Association Center for Health Innovation explores how retail companies and tech giants like Apple and Google will drive transformational change in healthcare delivery in 2023 and beyond.WHY IT MATTERS
With billions of dollars invested this past year, such as CVS Health’s purchase of Signify Health, the AHA report highlights retail healthcare companies having grabbed significant market share in primary care, concierge medicine, virtual care and in-home medical services. 
They’ve also broadened their reach into pharmacy benefits management, behavioral health and other areas, said AHA researchers in the report.
One example is Amazon. While the company is in the process of buying…

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Elation Health Acquires Lightning MD to Build Primary Care All-in-One Solution

Elation Health Acquires Lightning MD to Build Primary Care All-in-One Solution

What You Should Know:– Primary care EHR Elation Health acquires cloud-based medical billing and payer connectivity provider Lightning MD, a platform that was created by nurses. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.The acquisition is part of Elation Health’s bid to be a one-stop shop for all primary care — something that co-founder and CEO Kyna Fong, Ph.D., has been driving despite all the odds.As part of the acquisition, Elation will continue to support practices integrated with over 20 practice management and billing solutions connected via the Elation application programming interface (API).Lightning MDFounded in 2017 by registered nurses Kelly Schoenfeld and…

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Medication risk analysis company MDI Health raises $20M

Medication risk analysis company MDI Health raises $20M

Healthcare analytics company MDI Health scored $20 million in Series A funding, bringing the company’s total funding to $26 million.Intel Capital led the round, with participation from Maverick Ventures Israel, alongside existing investors Fresh.Fund, Arc Impact, Hanaco Ventures, Jumpspeed Ventures, former Optum senior vice president Richard Montwill, Welltech Ventures and Basad Ventures.
Yoni Greifman, Intel Capital’s investment director, will join MDI’s board of directors.
WHAT IT DOES
Israel-based MDI offers an AI-enabled tool that provides medication risk analysis based on a patient’s medical records with the aim of preventing adverse drug reactions.
The funds will help the company scale its U.S. and Israeli research and…

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