A Sept. 16 Senate hearing revisited the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the CDC took the opportunity to post a vaccine distribution plan. CDC director Robert Redfield advised the committee, however, that sufficient quantities of vaccine to cover everyone in the U.S. might not be available until the third quarter of 2021, adding that now is the time to stand up a distribution network for a vaccine that will require cold-chain storage.
LONDON – After years of progressing at snail’s pace, COVID-19 has forced through a rapid adoption of digital tools across the spectrum of health in the U.K., from general practitioner appointments, to hospital referrals, elderly care homes and community nursing. “At game changing speed” the health and care system, “has gone from one extreme to another,” said Harpreet Sood, a general practitioner in inner city London and board member of Digitalhealth London.
TORONTO – “With COVID-19 it’s not been an easy time to raise capital.” In virtually the same breath Joshua Liu, CEO of Toronto-based health-tech startup SeamlessMD Inc. credited the pandemic with nudging investors to spend CA$4 million (US$3 million) to grow his company’s cloud-based patient engagement app, boosting a library of digital plans for surgery, cancer and chronic care and adding machine learning-based risk prediction to remote patient monitoring.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Axim Biotechnologies, Baxter International, BioIQ, Biomérieux, Care G.B., Corza Health, General Biologicals, Invotek, Labcorp, Mediwound, Medtronic, Myomo, Nanox, Opgen, Pacgen, Pathogenx, PhysIQ, Premier, Solutions in Critical Care, Takeda, Tempus, Todos, Varian, Vibrent Health, Vitalconnect, Vivera.
Siemens Healthineers AG snagged a key role in the mystery playing out across the world's pandemic stage – what do antibody test results mean in terms of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and how do different tests assessing different proteins compare? The U.S. CDC and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission tapped the Erlanger, Germany-based company to take the lead in developing a process to standardize antibody assays.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Cerapedics, Controlrad, Eurobio Scientific, Fibralign, GE Healthcare, Genmark Diagnostics.
What’s the plan? The U.S. CDC is being asked that question a lot these days – not just about COVID-19, but also about preparing for what could be a tough influenza season as flu bugs circulate with the coronavirus.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Applied Spectral Imaging, Astrazeneca, Avita Therapeutics, Bio-Techne, Guided Therapeutics, Kantaro Biosciences, Luminultra, Meridian, Mimedx, Mount Sinai Health, Natera, Nevro, Shandong Yaohua Medical Instrument, Staar Surgical, Telo Genomics, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Transenterix.
Don May, Advamed’s executive vice president for payment and health care policy, said on a Sept. 11 press briefing that any device that misses its first year of new technology add-on payment (NTAP) eligibility may not be able to recover that year unless CMS makes an exception for the pandemic, seemingly leaving the Boston Scientific Eluvia device with only two years of eligibility for its NTAP application.
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