Morning Headlines 5/7/14
David Einhorn Shorts Athenahealth; ‘Caught Up In a Bubble’
Greenlight Capital hedge fund manager David Einhorn predicts that athenahealth shares will fall 80 percent or more from its recent highs, saying that the company’s 5-year 275 percent growth is symptomatic of what he calls an emerging tech bubble. Athena shares fell nearly 14 percent after his comments.
Massachusetts Starts Over on Health Website After Troubles
Massachusetts follows Oregon’s lead in scrapping its existing CGI-developed health insurance exchange. Despite being unable to bring its original site live after more than a year of work, Massachusetts has decided to try it all again, this time contracting with hCentive and setting an even more aggressive seven-month timeline in hopes that it will have the new site live in time for the November 2014 enrollment period. As a backup, Massachusetts will also enroll in the federal Healthcare.gov site. This dual-track solution will cost the state an additional $100 million.
The Watson Mobile Developer Challenge
IBM announces 25 finalists in its Watson Mobile Developer Challenge, of which eight are healthcare or fitness related. The contest sought innovative new ideas that would leverage Watson’s computing power to bring big data solutions to the mobile platform.
County pledges $500K to Lincoln software switch
Durham (NC) county commissioners authorize just $500,000 of the $1 million that Lincoln Community Health Center requested to implement Epic as an extension of Duke Health’s system. The total cost of the implementation is estimated at $2 million, and Duke had already agreed to pay $1 million of that, which now leaves Lincoln Community with a $500,000 difference to cover. The county commissioners suggested that Lincoln should convince Duke to pay the difference.
Giving a patient medications in the ER, having them pop positive on a test, and then withholding further medications because…