Walmart is slowing its ambitious push into healthcare, employees and leaked documents reveal: The company is not now sure of the direction or pace of its actions in healthcare.
About Covid-19
White House announces $4 billion in funding for Covax, the global vaccine effort that Trump spurned: “At a Group of Seven meeting of leaders of the world’s largest economies Friday, President Biden will announce an initial $2 billion in funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to be used by the Covax Facility, senior administration officials said in a briefing.
The United States will release an additional $2 billion over two years once other donors have made good on their pledges and will use this week’s G-7 summit to rally other countries to do more.”
Why grandparents can’t find vaccines: Scarcity of niche biotech ingredients: “Acuitas Therapeutics, a tiny biotechnology firm in Vancouver, B.C., has just 30 employees and leases its labs from the University of British Columbia. The company doesn’t even have a sign on its building. Until last year, it outsourced production of only small volumes of lipid nanoparticles, fat droplets used to deliver RNA into cells, for research and a single approved treatment for a rare disease.
But now, one of Acuitas’s discoveries has become a precious commodity. A proprietary molecule called an ionizable cationic lipid is a crucial piece of the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and it is in urgent demand for production of billions of vaccine doses worldwide.”
Pfizer wants to store vaccine at higher temperatures, making distribution easier: “The companies have submitted new temperature data to the FDA to support an update to the current label that would allow vials to be stored at -25 to -15 degrees Celsius (-13°F to 5°F) for a total of two weeks.
The current label requires the vaccine to be stored at temperatures between -80ºC and -60ºC (-112ºF to -76ºF), meaning it has to be shipped in specially designed containers.”
US will not send vaccines to developing countries until supply improves: “The US will not donate any coronavirus vaccine doses to developing countries until there is a plentiful supply of jabs in the US, Biden administration officials said on Thursday in a firm rejection of a proposal made by Emmanuel Macron, president of France.”
EU Unveils Vaccine Incubator to Combat COVID-19 Variants: “A new initiative under the EU’s Health Emergency Response Authority (HERA), the HERA Incubator will adopt the same approach as is used for the annual flu vaccine, the European Commission said.
The incubator will bring together researchers, biotech companies, manufacturers, regulators and public authorities to ‘monitor variants, exchange data and cooperate on adapting vaccines,’ the commission said.”
AI-based voiceprint screener for COVID-19 nets European approval: “Using artificial intelligence software to analyze a multitude of voice recordings, Vocalis has secured a CE mark for the use of its digital COVID-19 screening programs in Europe.
Run off a smartphone, the user records themselves counting up from 50 to 70 while the program analyzes the quality of their voice and searches it for signs associated with the disease. Though not a diagnostic itself, Vocalis believes it could be a useful tool to screen large populations of people and point those at the highest risk of infection toward the clinic.”
Novavax, coronavirus shot data in hand, strikes an eye-popping supply deal with global vaccine consortium: “Novavax on Thursday unveiled a memorandum of understanding with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to provide 1.1 billion doses of its coronavirus vaccine candidate to COVAX, a global effort to ensure equitable vaccine distribution. The Serum Institute of India will help produce doses under a prior deal between that company and Gavi.
The deal will support work by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the World Health Organization to distribute doses in every country worldwide.”
About healthcare IT
A retrospective look at the predictions and recommendations from the 2009 AMIA policy meeting: did we see EHR-related clinician burnout coming?: “At the 2020 annual meeting of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI), ACMI fellows participated in a modified Delphi process to assess the accuracy of the 2009 predictions and the response to the recommendations. Among the findings, the fellows concluded that the degree of clinician burnout and its contributing factors, such as increased documentation requirements, were significantly underestimated. Conversely, problems related to identify theft and fraud were overestimated. Only 3 of the 15 recommendations were adjudged more than half-addressed.”
IBM Explores Sale of IBM Watson Health: “IBM is studying alternatives for the unit that could include a sale to a private-equity firm or industry player or a merger with a blank-check company, the people said. The unit, which employs artificial intelligence to help hospitals, insurers and drugmakers manage their data, has roughly $1 billion in annual revenue and isn’t currently profitable, the people said.
Its brands include Merge Healthcare, which analyzes mammograms and MRIs; Phytel, which assists with patient communications; and Truven Health Analytics, which analyzes complex healthcare data.”
About the public’s health
U.S. will pay WHO more than $200 million in membership fees withheld by Trump: The headline speaks for itself.
Five chronic conditions cost employers over $2.5 billion over two years: “Companies spent $2.5 billion to treat employees' asthma, diabetes, hypertension, mental health and substance abuse and back disorders over the course of two years, according to a new study. UnitedHealthcare reviewed all claims issued by the Health Action Council's 57 nationwide employer members—which are responsible for coverage of 281,000 individuals—to find that more than 60% of workers struggle with at least one of these chronic conditions, making them the top cost drivers in employer healthcare.”
See, also: Health and Economic Costs of Chronic Diseases from the CDC. That site adds: “Nothing kills more Americans than heart disease and stroke. More than 868,000 Americans die of heart disease or stroke every year—that’s one-third of all deaths. These diseases take an economic toll, as well, costing our health care system $214 billion per year and causing $138 billion in lost productivity on the job.” Note the magnitude differences.
South Carolina passes abortion ban, Planned Parenthood sues: “As one of the most restrictive abortion bans, the so-called ‘fetal heartbeat’ law bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, often at six weeks and before a woman realizes she is pregnant.”
About pharma
Federal judge dismisses hospital groups' lawsuit against HHS over 340B drug feud: “ A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by several hospital groups seeking to get the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to clamp down on drugmakers restricting access to products.
Federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued a ruling Wednesday that hospitals had to use a new dispute resolution process to settle the feud with the drugmakers, which the hospitals cannot sue individually under federal law for 340B violations.”
Trump Drug Rebate Policy Delayed Until 2023 After Court Ruling: See the HHS announcement for more details.
AbbVie, Eli Lilly lead Big Pharma’s 2020 market cap growth as Merck, Gilead lag: “Among the top 10 companies with the largest market cap as of the end of 2020, AbbVie enjoyed the biggest year-over-year growth—a whopping 44.4% to $189.2 billion, according to numbers compiled by GlobalData. The Illinois pharma doesn’t have any prominent COVID products.
In contrast, COVID-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and AstraZeneca both failed to beat their pre-COVID market valuation. It’s worth noting that Gilead Sciences, which sells the only fully FDA-approved COVID drug, Veklury, also saw its market cap drop—by 11.2% in its case—though it’s not a member of the top 10 class.”
Pharma's reputation rehab: A whopping two-thirds of Americans now offer a thumbs-up, Harris Poll finds: “Almost two-thirds of Americans now give the pharma industry a thumbs up. It’s a stunning reversal from just one year ago when only about one-third (32%) rated the industry positively, according to The Harris Poll surveys.
In its most recent February poll, 62% rated the pharma industry as a 5, 6 or 7 on a 7-point scale, with 1 equating to ‘very bad’ and 7 to ‘very good.’That’s an increase of 30 percentage points since January 2020, before the pandemic hit U.S. shores.”
About hospitals and health systems
CommonSpirit's net income triples to $1.9B in Q2: “CommonSpirit, a 140-hospital system based in Chicago, saw revenues rise in the second quarter of fiscal year 2021 and ended the period with a net gain, which was fueled by strong investment income growth.
CommonSpirit, formed in 2019 through the merger of San Francisco-based Dignity Health and Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, reported revenues of $8.3 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2021, up from $7.5 billion a year earlier.”
It will be interesting to see if other systems report positive results based on increases in the market value of their investments.
Medicare Cuts Payment to 774 Hospitals Over Patient Complications: “The federal government has penalized 774 hospitals for having the highest rates of patient infections or other potentially avoidable medical complications. Those hospitals, which include some of the nation’s marquee medical centers, will lose 1% of their Medicare payments over 12 months.
The penalties, based on patients who stayed in the hospitals anytime between mid-2017 and 2019, before the pandemic, are not related to covid-19.”