Morning Headlines 5/19/20

Holmusk Announces Closing of US$21.5 Million Series A Funding Round, Led by Optum Ventures & Health Catalyst Capital

Behavioral health and chronic disease-focused technology and analytics company Holmusk raises $21.5 million.

MTBC Reports Record First Quarter 2020 Revenue

The health IT company attributes record Q1 revenue of $22 million, a 45% increase over the year before, to its CareCloud acquisition in January.

Cerner joins the Fortune 500

Cerner breaks into the Fortune 500, a ranking of companies with collective revenue representing two-thirds of the country’s economy, at 498.

Amazon extends telemedicine pilot to warehouse employees in Seattle area

Amazon expands its Amazon Care telemedicine service initially offered to its Seattle office workers to nearby warehouse employees.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee to make telehealth coverage permanent after expansion amid COVID-19 crisis

Insurer BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee announces that it will continue to cover expanded telemedicine services after the pandemic ends.

Morning Headlines 5/18/20

Cerner, Hallmark, H&R Block: when Kansas City’s big employers plan to return to office

Cerner will begin moving employees back on campus Monday, starting with 10% of its workforce and aiming for no more than 50%.

UnitedHealth Group and Microsoft collaborate to launch ProtectWell™ protocol and app to support return-to-workplace planning and COVID-19 symptom screening

Microsoft and UnitedHealth Group offer their self-developed ProtectWell coronavirus symptom screening app, which they will use for their own employees, to all US companies at no charge.

Software problems thwart patient consultations with NHS specialists

The NHS and its remote consult vendor, Attend Anywhere, attempt to get the health service’s telemedicine software up and running reliably after several outages last week.

House and Senate Democrats Introduce Public Health Emergency Privacy Act

Lawmakers introduce the Public Health Emergency Privacy Act, which would require individuals to opt in and that data collected for pandemic efforts be deleted afterward, and would prohibit using the data for purposes outside of public health.

Morning Headlines 5/15/20

Donation to Akron Children’s establishes new chair that may be first in nation

Akron Children’s Hospital (OH) will use a $1 million donation to endow the country’s first chair in telehealth, to be held by CMIO and oncologist Sarah Rush, MD.

Utah has rejected the Apple-Google approach to tracing coronavirus, and is using an app made by a social media start-up instead

The state of Utah opts for contact-tracing app technology from Twenty, a social media startup that pivoted from developing a meet-up app to the Healthy Together app in just three weeks.

23andMe study to recruit sickest Covid-19 patients in bid to unravel role of genetics in disease

In an effort to find out if genetics plays a role in COVID-19 symptoms, 23andMe enlists hospitals to help it recruit severely ill patients for an expanded study.

Morning Headlines 5/14/20

Cerner moves its annual conference online, canceling one of KC’s largest gatherings

Cerner announces that its annual conference, originally scheduled for October 12-14, will become a virtual event.

Health Catalyst Reports First Quarter 2020 Results

Health Catalyst reports Q1 results: revenue up 28%; EPS -$0.06 vs. -$0.23, beating analyst expectations for both.

RxSense Announces Investment From Parthenon Capital

Parthenon Capital makes an undisclosed investment in prescription savings and analytics vendor RxSense.

HHS Awards $15 Million to Support Telehealth Providers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

HHS grants $15 million to 159 organizations for telemedicine training.

Dr. Atul Gawande Assumes New Leadership Role at Haven

Atul Gawande, MD confirms that he will transition from Haven Healthcare’s CEO to chairman of its Board of Directors.

Morning Headlines 5/13/20

App Shows Promise in Tracking New Coronavirus Cases, Study Finds

Researchers find that a symptom checking app being used by people in the US, UK, and Sweden can determine with 80% accuracy whether a user has COVID-19 based on just their age, sex, and presence or absence of four symptoms.

Stellar Health Secures $10 Million in Series A Funding Led by Point72 Ventures

Value-based primary care care improvement company Stellar Health raises $10 million in a Series A investment round.

CNBC’s Bertha Coombs Interviews Epic Founder and CEO Judy Faulkner from CNBC’s Health Returns Summit Today

Epic CEO Judy Faulkner says the company won’t pursue incorporating COVID-19 tracking and tracing into its software based on consumer privacy concerns.

Morning Headlines 5/12/20

Carbon Health Lands $26M, Triples Headcount

Primary and urgent care company Carbon Health adds $26 million to its Series B round with additional funding from investor DCVC.

New York City partners with Salesforce on coronavirus contact tracing program, mayor says

Mayor Bill de Blasio taps Salesforce to develop a customer relationship and case management system for the city’s contact tracing program, an arrangement similar to the one the company has entered into with the state of California.

Mount Sinai deploys Google Nest cameras for COVID-19 patient monitoring and communication

Mount Sinai Hospital (NY) pilots Google Nest cameras in 100 rooms to remotely monitor COVID-19 patients as the company prepares to donate 10,000 cameras and software to hospitals across the country.

AMA issues new principles to restore trust in data privacy

The American Medical Association develops new privacy principles to help guide consumers on how they can control, access, and delete personal health data collected about them by third parties.

Morning Headlines 5/11/20

Gawande in Talks About Leaving Helm of Health-Care Venture Haven

Insiders report that Atul Gawande, MD, MPH will resign as CEO of Haven Healthcare and move to a less-operational role as chairman.

Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (MDRX) CEO Paul Black on Q1 2020 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

During its Q1 earnings call, Allscripts representatives say recent layoffs helped to eliminate $75 million in annualized costs, and they are reviewing product lines to see if any non-core businesses should be sold.

Livongo Health EPS beats by $0.07, beats on revenue

Livongo reports Q1 results: revenue up 115%, EPS -$0.06 vs. -$0.79, beating Wall Street expectations for both.

Morning Headlines 5/8/20

Allscripts announces first quarter 2020 results

Allscripts announces Q1 results: revenue down 3%, adjusted EPS $0.09 vs. $0.16, missing Wall Street expectations for both.

HHS OIG Toolkits for Calculating Opioid Levels and Identifying Patients At Risk of Misuse or Overdose

HHS OIG creates freely available statistical tools for analyzing prescription claims data to identify patients who are at risk of opioid misuse or overdose.

Braid Health Raises $9 Million in Seed and Series A Funding Led by Lux Capital

AI-powered digital imaging company Braid Health will use a $9 million funding round to further develop its software and create a virtual network of specialists.

Ballad Health vendor to locate center in region, add 500 jobs

Ensemble Health Partners will build an office to accommodate 500 new employees and 1,100 Ballad Health staffers who will transition to the RCM vendor once the hospital goes live on Epic in June.

Morning Headlines 5/7/20

CVS Health first-quarter revenue rose 8% as customers rushed into stores to buy essentials; shares up

CVS Health sees a 600% jump in telemedicine visits through its chain of Minute Clinics, part of an overall spike in its digital services that helped the essential business realize Q1 sales of $67 billion.

TimeDoc Health Secures $5.7 Million Series A Financing Round

Chronic care management technology and services startup TimeDoc Health raises $5.7 million in Series A round of funding led by Vocap Investment Partners.

Cerner Earns Top Client Satisfaction Ratings for Inpatient EHR Vendor in Large Health Systems and Medical Centers, 2020 Black Book Survey

A Black Book survey names Cerner as the top-rated EHR vendor in large hospitals, and in outsourced tech support for hospital networks.

Morning Headlines 5/6/20

Nashville health care company sells one business, reclaims another in $268 million of deals

Change Healthcare acquires ERx Network for $213 million, and sells its Connected Analytics business to Kaufman Hall for $55 million.

PointClickCare Acquires Co-Pilot Analytics Solution

Long-term and post-acute care health IT vendor PointClickCare acquires Consonus Healthcare’s Co-Pilot analytics software.

Britain’s Billion-Dollar Babylon Health App Set To Launch For ‘Millions’ Of New Yorkers

Mount Sinai Health Partners implements Babylon Health’s app, which includes telemedicine and new COVID-19 Care Assistant capabilities.

Morning Headlines 5/5/20

CareCentrix Acquires Turn-Key Health

Home and post-acute care technology company CareCentrix acquires Turn-Key Health, which offers AI and analytics for palliative care management.

Google and Apple ban location tracking in their contact tracing apps

Apple and Google give developers rules for using their jointly developed contact tracing technology that include bans on the use of location tracking and using the data for targeted advertising or policing.

Cerner’s share of hospital market drops, while rival gains

Cerner loses market share for the first time in 10 years, a decline attributed in part to its loss of nine acute care customers and Epic’s gain of 55 new facilities.

Morning Headlines 5/4/20

Data Interoperability and Exchange to Support COVID-19 Containment

In a new Duke University report, experts recommend that health officials should define a minimum data set for COVID-19 containment as part of participating in clinical data exchanges, among other short-term actions that can be taken to improve interoperability and data exchange for containing the virus.

Spok Reports First-Quarter 2020 Operating Results; Wireless Trends Continue to Improve and Year-Over-Year Improvements in Software Revenue Bookings

Spok reports Q1 results: revenue down 11%, EPS –$0.24 vs. $.04.

Dascena Announces Closing of $50 Million Series B Financing to Support Advancement of Diagnostic Algorithm Development Engine to Inform Patient Care and Improve Outcomes

AI-powered sepsis prediction company Dascena raises $50 million in a funding round led by Frazier Healthcare Partners.

Canada to invest $240M in online health care amid coronavirus, Trudeau says

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces funding for expanding digital healthcare capabilities and developing new telehealth services for primary and mental healthcare.

Morning Headlines 5/1/20

Arcadia Enhances Value-based Care & Interoperability Expertise with Acquisition of Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative Assets

Health data and software company Arcadia acquires assets of the Massachusetts EHealth Collaborative, including technology and customer accounts.

Twilio to Power Epic’s New Telehealth Video Offering

Epic will embed telehealth into its EHR using Twilio Programmable Video, which is also used by Kaiser Permanente,  MDLive, Doctor On Demand, and several health systems.

Tampa General, AdventHealth and other Florida hospitals come together to share coronavirus data

Fifty-one hospitals along Florida’s west coast partner with analytics vendor SME Solutions Group to form a collaborative to share COVID-19 patient data through a regional data exchange.

HHS Awards $20 Million to Combat COVID-19 Pandemic through Telehealth

HHS awards $20 million to six organizations to help them expand telemedicine access.

Cleveland Clinic, Epic develop home monitoring tool for COVID-19 patients

Cleveland Clinic works with Epic to customize its MyChart Care Companion remote monitoring technology for chronically ill patients to include COVID-19 care pathways.

Morning Headlines 4/30/20

Apple and Google have begun testing their COVID-19 exposure notification API

Apple and Google deliver an initial version of their exposure notification API to several developers who are working with public health agencies, and promise a broader release in several weeks.

Regions Hospital tests new ventilator tech from Medtronic

Regions Hospital (MN) works with Medtronic to develop software that allows providers to remotely monitor and adjust ventilators.

Current Health partners with the Mayo Clinic for remote coronavirus patient monitoring

Mayo Clinic (MN) will invest in Current Health and work with it to develop COVID-19 predictive and remote-monitoring technologies.

Morning Headlines 4/29/20

IG: Veterans Affairs slow to heed lessons from DoD’s electronic health record rollout

A VA OIG evaluation of the now-postponed first Cerner go-live at at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center finds the VA had not adequately prepared for staffing and patient access issues, or for dealing with missing EHR capabilities that may have compromised patient safety.

Irvine-based company among first to offer COVID-19 antibody testing to employees

EHR vendor Kareo becomes one of the first companies in Southern California to offer free COVID-19 antibody tests to its employees and their families.

Cerner Reports First Quarter 2020 Results

Cerner reports Q1 results: revenue up 2%, adjusted diluted EPS $0.71 vs. $0.61, beating analyst expectations on earnings and missing on revenue.

Particle Health Raises $12M Series A led by Menlo Ventures

Medical record API startup Particle Health raises $12 million in a funding round led by Menlo Ventures.

Morning Headlines 4/28/20

Allscripts trims workforce by 5%, cuts pay for highest earners

Allscripts announces layoffs, which HIStalk readers reported earlier this month, plus pay reductions for high earners and executives like CEO Paul Black, who will see a 40% decrease for an anticipated six months.

Parkview Medical Center confirms cyber attack

Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo, CO works to restore its IT systems after an April 21 data breach.

Apple, Google pledge extra privacy protections

Apple and Google will update APIs for their jointly developed COVID-19 exposure tracking software to include randomly generated encryption keys, encryption of Bluetooth metadata, and an exposure time limit of 30 minutes.

Leading Telehealth Platform, Medici, Sees Immense Growth as Virtual Healthcare Continues to Rise

Telemedicine company Medici raises $24 million in a Series B round.

UnitedHealth’s Optum is in advanced talks to acquire remote mental health provider AbleTo for about $470 million

Optum considers acquiring mental telehealth company AbleTo for $470 million.

Morning Headlines 4/27/20

Cerner Provides Access to De-Identified Patient Data for COVID-19 Research and Vaccine Development

Cerner offers health systems and researchers free access to the de-identified data of COVID-19 patients for developing epidemiological studies, clinical trials, and medical treatments.

Mark Zuckerberg: How data can aid the fight against covid-19

Facebook is offering users a coronavirus symptom survey that was created by Carnegie Mellon University, with results from 1 million users per week being sent directly to CMU for predicting disease spread and county-by-county impact.

Bankruptcies, tech-savvy doctors, and data for the greater good: The CEO of health-tech giant Epic shares her predictions for how US healthcare will change after the coronavirus

Epic CEO Judy Faulkner says customers have reported revenue declines of up to 55%; and that post-pandemic mergers, acquisitions, and layoffs are likely, especially as small providers are purchased by large health systems with greater financial reserves.

Private sector races to build virus apps to track employees

Several companies are developing potentially mandatory apps that will monitor the spread of COVID-19 in offices and workplaces.