By JAY T. RIPTON

Not to sound too alarmist, but the radiopharmaceutical industry is on the verge of an explosion. But don’t worry; it’s not the type of explosion one often associates with nuclear materials… I love those movies too! It’s the beginning of a new wave of innovation for the diagnosis and treatment of certain cancers and other diseases.

This new radiopharmaceutical boom quite literally has the life sciences industry in a nuclear arms race of sorts, as companies like Y-mAbs, Novartis and others are pushing through clinical trials for the next blockbuster for the treatment and detection of hard-to-treat diseases like medulloblastoma and metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. But all this excitement has many wondering, “what are radiopharmaceuticals anyway?”   

Radiopharmaceuticals are simply a group of pharmaceutical drugs containing radioactive isotopes. They are being used primarily for the treatment and detection of certain types of cancers, but they are also … Read the rest

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By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Another virtual care company hits the New York Stock Exchange as UpHealth ($UPH) emerges from the combined merger of UpHealth Holdings and Cloudbreak Health with the GigCapital2 SPAC. We’ve got UpHealth’s CEO Ramesh Balakrishnan and President Jamey Edwards here on “Listing Day” to catch us up on the strategic developments and integrations that have occurred since UpHealth’s SPAC IPO was first announced at the end of 2020.

You might remember this deal as the one that brought together six different companies across four of the fastest growing areas of digital health: global telehealth, integrated care management, digital pharmacy, and behavioral health. The story there is still the same, but the value proposition around the combined offering has gelled. UpHealth views itself as a partner to local healthcare providers around the world who need a hand building the integrated digital care model needed to meet growing … Read the rest

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By KIM BELLARD

I missed the job announcement on the company website.  I missed it again when the company posted the job on Linkedin.  I missed it when Eric Ralph tweeted that the posting was “probably the coolest job posting I’ve read in years.”  Fortunately, though, I follow Isaac Kohne (MD, PhD), and I did see his tweet:

Yes, I’m talking about SpaceX.  Yes, the job is for a “Starship Medical Engineer.”  Yes, it’s to help SpaceX’s mission to Mars, whenever that might be.  Who knows, the job might even entail going to Mars, although that’s not spelled out. 

I am not, of course, remotely qualified for such a job.  In fact, I don’t even know anyone who might be.  But I agree with Mr. Ralph that it’s probably the coolest job posting I’ve seen in years, maybe ever.  And I even more agree with Dr. Kohne: it could be … Read the rest

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By HANS DUVEFELT

The Art of Medicine is such a common phrase because, for many centuries, medicine has not been a cookie cutter activity. It has been a personalized craft, based on the science of the day, practiced by individual clinicians for diverse patients, one at a time.

Unlike industrial mass production, where everything from raw materials to tools to manufacturing processes are standardized and even automated or performed by robots, physicians work with raw materials of different age, shape and quality in what is more like restoration of damaged paintings or antique automobiles.

The Art of Medicine involves knowing how and with which tools to take something damaged or malfunctioning and make it better. There are general principles, but each case is different to at least some degree. In many cases there are different ways to improve something that is malfunctioning, but patients may prefer fixing certain aspects of … Read the rest

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Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet!–Matthew Holt

In this week’s health care tidbits, I can’t quite leave the $3.5bn Babylon Health SPAC investor document alone. Yes, it’s crazy but not as crazy as you might think. Essentially it’s saying that it’s going to be a better tech enabled version of Oak Street or Agilon. Babylon has put less effort into the medical group management side of the puzzle than Oak Street or Agilon but it hasn’t done nothing. It’s been running GP clinics in the UK for years and now has two Medicare Advantage networks in California w 52k lives. It only did $79m in rev in 2020 but that … Read the rest

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By MIKE MAGEE

The truth hurts.

Eighteen months into a disaster that has claimed 3.5 million lives around the globe, the truth is seeping out. Human error likely caused the Covid pandemic, and America’s Medical-Industrial Complex was right in the middle of it.

Signs of a “great awakening” have emerged from various corners in the month of May.

On May 14, UNC’s top virologist, Ralph Baric, who worked closely with Wuhan chief virologist and batwoman extraordinare, Shi Zhengli, signed on with 17 other scientists to a Science editorial that demanded a reexamination of Covid’s causality writing “theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable.”

On May 26, Francis Collins, head of the NIH, which funded in part Zhengli’s risky bat virus research (more on that in a moment), admitted to Congressional investigators that “we cannot exclude the possibility of some kind of a lab accident.”… Read the rest

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By HANS DUVEFELT

My nurse regularly gets at least 50 voicemails every day, many saying “please call me back”.

I have one patient who frequently tests the patience of our clinic staff by calling multiple times for the same thing. He is the most dramatic example of what seems to be a widely held belief that physicians, nurses and medical assistants sit at their desks and answer phone calls all or most of their time. But when we do, we are often hampered by busy signals, phone tag or “voice mail not set up”. Electronic messaging isn’t a panacea, because patients don’t necessarily know what we need to know in order to answer their questions correctly and efficiently at first contact.

Pharmacies, too, create duplicate requests that bog down our workdays. In my EMR, if an electronic refill request doesn’t get a response the day it comes in, the “system” … Read the rest

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How structural racism and implicit bias impact America’s babies, even prior to birth

By ELLIE STANG

Becoming a new mother in America is more dangerous for some mothers than it should be. Each year, 700 women die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related causes in the United States, the highest number of any developed nation. 

Health inequities in America mean that overwhelmingly, Black women and their infants are the ones impacted: Black mothers are 243% more likely to die from pregnancy than white ones. These discrepancies are wide ranging: American Indian and Alaska Native women are also 2x more likely to experience an adverse outcome as compared to  their white counterparts. Too many of our mothers are dying of preventable causes. The CDC estimates that 70% of maternal deaths are avoidable – which helps underscore the urgent need to create tangible change. 

Recent forces have helped shine a long overdue spotlight … Read the rest

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