Real-world evidence (RWE) and clinical trial data might seem to bear little resemblance to each other, but Naomi Aronson, executive director for clinical evaluation at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, said there are problems common to both. The most significant of these is an absence of validated outcomes measures for many conditions, measures Aronson said are “desperately” needed in order to make an appropriate coverage determination.
With the economy and public health on the line, U.S. President Donald Trump thumped his Made in America pulpit again Thursday on a campaign swing through Ohio, in which he vowed to bring the pharmaceutical supply chain home over the next four years.
Developers of tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus have gained a tremendous amount of experience in a very small amount of time, and of all the media for sampling, saliva offers the easiest route for test administration. The U.S. FDA’s Tim Stenzel said on the Aug. 5 testing town hall, however, that the FDA and developers have discovered that this is an extremely difficult medium to work with.
Saykara Inc.’s artificial intelligence (AI) assistant enabled the Midwest Institute for Minimally Invasive Therapies (MIMIT Health) to boost practice productivity five-fold. The voice-enabled iOS-based app, named Kara, drafts visit summaries, updates the electronic health record, produces prescriptions, and more with limited involvement from clinicians.
Citing the limited supplies and the pricing of the COVID-19 therapy, nearly three dozen U.S. states and territories are clamoring for the federal government to march in on Gilead Sciences Inc.’s patents for remdesivir. And if the feds won’t, then states should be given that authority, according to a letter sent Tuesday to the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH and the FDA.
Orthopedic companies felt pressure from COVID-19 in their most recent quarters. For example, Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc. reported second-quarter net sales of $1.226 billion, a decrease of 38.3% from the prior-year period. Still, those revenues did come ahead of expectations, as Wells Fargo analyst Larry Biegelsen noted – $432 million ahead of his group's estimate and $305 million ahead of consensus.
The Trump administration has issued an executive order designed to improve access to telehealth for Medicare beneficiaries in rural America, making permanent numerous changes that had been temporarily added for the COVID-19 pandemic. The news arrives as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) posted the draft Medicare physician fee schedule (MPFS) complete with expanded use of telehealth for a number of services.
A number of entities have sounded off on the FDA’s discussion paper for artificial intelligence (AI), including several medical societies that would like to see autonomously operating algorithms subjected to more stringent review than supervised algorithms. Vibhor Rastogi, general partner at Symphony AI of Los Altos, Calif., told BioWorld that the company is on board with many of these concerns, adding that the FDA discussion paper does a “good job of balancing innovation and patient safety.”
A bioelectronic platform that stimulates the vagus nerve to reduce inflammatory activity and restore balance in the immune system is the ultimate aim of Setpoint Medical Inc. The Valencia, Calif.-based startup is preparing to start a U.S. pivotal trial for its most advanced program in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) later this year or early next.
The issue of the U.S. federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was revisited yet again in a hearing in the House of Representatives. While partisanship was on full display, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the prospects for a vaccine and that the development of candidates has not compromised scientific principles.
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