Was Babylon Health all a fraud, and where would it place on the Theranos scale? There is an excellent article in MedCityNews that if true, exposes Babylon’s technology as, at minimum, far less than ever claimed. From the perspectives presented, their crash was inevitable. MedCityNews returns to the original debunker, best known to our UK Readers as @DrMurphy11. In February 2020, while Babylon rode a tide of UK hype (not yet in the US), Dr. David Watkins, a consultant oncologist, revealed himself publicly via BBC’s Newsnight [TTA 27 Feb 2020]. He had been documenting Babylon’s chatbot diagnosis problems in GP... Continue Reading
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Theranos restitution status: Holmes’ defense claims $250/month repayment *after* release is unfair
...after his release. The District Court also fined him $25,000 for reasons not disclosed in news sources. Holmes has not been fined. One wonders how the lenders will be repaid–proportional checks for pennies? Monthly or quarterly? This Editor is sure that the Murdoch family interests will be waiting eagerly for the payment, while the investments for Murdoch and most others were written off years ago. The small investors whose investment advisors bought shares on the secondary (resale) market get not even that penny. Much has been made of her net worth circa 2015 when her Theranos stock was valued on... Continue Reading
Mid-week roundup: Holmes turns herself in, ChatGPT as good ER explainer, VA Spokane to cut staff to pay for Oracle Cerner EHR problems?, former Cerner campus conversion
...the BBC article today, half of that will go to her victims, said Randy Zelin, a professor at Cornell Law School. The Feds will continue to scrutinize for hidden assets. Mercury News Our Theranos Saga that started in October 2015 now endeth here, except for news on appeals or changes in circumstances. On a somewhat lighter note, this non-paywalled Insider article charts the up and downsides of using ChatGPT as an explainer to patients in the ER/ED. Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, MD, has been an ER doctor for almost 14 years as well as a VP of innovati on for two healthcare... Continue Reading
Breaking & updated–Time’s Up! Ninth Circuit Court to Elizabeth Holmes: proceed to Federal prison. District Court: surrender 30 May, pay $452M in restitution with Sunny.
...Tuesday, Judge Davila set the full amount of restitution to those defrauded by Theranos as $452 million. Both she and Sunny Balwani will be jointly liable for the restitution amount. It is higher than the $381 million the judge used for sentencing purposes [TTA 9 March] but this Editor notes that the AP stated that it is joint. There is an additional $25 million in promissory notes signed by Holmes which are part of a civil action [TTA 25 March]. How this restitution breaks out will require an examination of that restitution decision. One wonders if Liz or Elizabeth (pictured... Continue Reading
Theranos’ Sunny Balwani reports to Federal prison
...mobsters Al Capone, Mickey Cohen, and ‘Goodfella’ Henry Hill; Watergate’s G. Gordon Liddy, LSD advocate Timothy Leary, murderer Charles Manson, and car executive John Z. DeLorean. During World War II, it was used to hold court-martialed Navy prisoners. It is relatively small as Federal prisons go and holds about 1,000 inmates. The coverage from CNN to local media tends to be light on details and heavy on a rerun of Theranos and Balwani’s involvement with Holmes. Holmes is due to surrender next week on 27 April, unless the Circuit Court of Appeals stays the start of sentence. KRON4, CNN, KTVU2... Continue Reading
Theranos’ Holmes files appeal seeking to overturn ‘unjust’ conviction, ‘excessive’ sentence (updated)
...fraudulent financial projections. The appeal claims that the jury heard testimony from a supposed layman who was actually an expert witness, a federal regulator’s report on Theranos that was ‘unfairly prejudicial’ (CMS closing the lab in July 2016?), and that Theranos voided test results from its labs [see TTA 19 May 2016], confusing the jury in that it was an admission that the Theranos Edison labs didn’t work. Excluding Balwani’s testimony on the Theranos financials and projections given to investors was labeled abuse of judicial discretion. “These errors—together with the exclusion of prior testimony from Holmes’ co-defendant taking sole responsibility... Continue Reading
Mid-week roundup: Pear Therapeutics’ Chapter 11; Workit Health pinkslips 100; Outcome Health principals convicted of $1B fraud
...debate Outcome Health–the other late 2010’s scandal after Theranos–had its denouement in a Federal court in Chicago yesterday (11 April). Convicted of $1 billion in fraud were: Rishi Shah, 37, the co-founder and former CEO of Outcome Health: five counts of mail fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, two counts of bank fraud, and two counts of money laundering Shradha Agarwal, 37, the former president of Outcome: five counts of mail fraud, eight counts of wire fraud, and two counts of bank fraud Brad Purdy, 33, former chief operating officer and chief financial officer: five counts of mail fraud, five... Continue Reading
The Theranos Two lose their fight for freedom on appeal as Federal prison surrender dates near
It was not a happy Easter weekend for either Elizabeth Holmes or Sunny Balwani. Late on Monday, Judge Edward Davila of the Federal Court, Northern District of California, ruled that Elizabeth Holmes would not be able to remain free on bail while appealing her trial and sentence. In his 11-page ruling, he dismissed the defense claims that evidence around Theranos’ technology was not presented to the jury and affirmed that the key charges were related to financial fraud, the company’s financial status, and the false claim that the technology was validated by pharmaceutical companies. “Whether the jury heard more or... Continue Reading
Digital health’s funding time machine dialed back to 2019–before the SVB implosion: Rock Health
...better bets. VCs sense the bottom hasn’t yet been found in digital health valuations. Payers like UHG and CVS are making big deals but not in digital health. If they are, they are small ‘pocket lint’ pickups. Private equity? Largely kicking tires. Family offices and high net worth individuals are generally staying out of the healthcare picture unless there are other compelling (usually personal) reasons to invest. (Theranos still hangs heavy over these last two funders.) Back to Rock Health, total Q1 funding was $3.4 billion across 132 deals. Yet only six mega deals (over $100 million) accounted for 40%... Continue Reading
Week-end update: Breaking–Theranos lab director suing Hulu, Disney for defamation; ‘green shoots’ for SonderMind, Cognito, Vital, MedArrive; 3 in Asia; Telstra Australia’s new CTO
Key Theranos prosecution witness suing Disney and Hulu for misrepresentation and defamation. It’s not only the FTC but also Adam Rosendorff, MD, the former lab director for Theranos who quit in late 2014, who is fighting against misrepresentation, in this case a fictionalized portrayal of the lab director character. l’affaire Theranos was lightly fictionalized in the docudrama ‘The Dropout” that ran on Hulu in 2022. Dr. Rosendorff is suing both Hulu, its corporate parent, Disney, plus other listed producers, in a New York State Supreme Court lawsuit (link and PDF) for defamation. The summons was filed in New York County... Continue Reading
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