The U.S. FDA approved Allurion Technologies Inc.’s premarket application for its swallowable gastric balloon system, which features its Smart Capsule, for weight loss. The clearance is boon for the company as GLP-1 agonists gets increasingly adopted to treat obesity. The approval also brings to the market a new non-invasive option to patients looking for alternative ways to lose weight.

Driven by prescription drug prices and oft-repeated claims that nearly every drug developed in the U.S. owes its origins to taxpayer-funded research, watchdog groups and some lawmakers have led demands over the years for price to be considered a “reasonableness” factor in determining whether the government can march in on patents under the Bayh-Dole Act.

The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended the use of Abbott Laboratories’ Cardiomems HF system, giving people living with heart failure an option to monitor their condition daily from home. The implantable wireless sensor could transform care for individuals with the chronic condition as it will enable them to catch early warning signs before they escalate to medical emergencies.

A new draft guidance for organ procurement organizations doing business in the U.S. would seem to tackle some pressing issues with organ donation, such as the conditions in which a problem qualifies as an adverse event. Perhaps of greater interest to companies in the organ container business is that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is intent on increasing the availability of organ donations to deal with an insatiable demand for donated organs.

En Carta Diagnostics SA's EC Pocket Lyme received FDA breakthrough device designation for its rapid, molecular diagnostic test for the early detection of Borrelia bacteria, which causes Lyme disease. The designation marks a pivotal step for the French startup as it will enable closer interaction with the agency, accelerating its route to market, and getting it to patients sooner.

A Jan. 28 report on Medicare spending on lab tests indicated that spending on many types of tests flattened between 2022 and 2024, but spending on genetic tests rose 20% between 2023 and 2024 to $3.6 billion. While the report does not specifically call out fraud as a driver of spending, the U.S. Department of Justice posted a Jan. 26 press release identifying a case of Medicare gene testing fraud that amounted to $52 million, just one of several recent examples of this kind of fraud.

Third-party litigation funding in Europe has created enough of a stir that several trade associations issued a joint statement making the case that the unregulated nature of these funding agreements is increasing the cost of doing business in a region that is already quite expensive.