Mid-week roundup: Cotiviti’s $10.5B stake to KKR; Cigna buys back $3.2B shares; VA Oracle Cerner faulty med records; LockBit ransomware websites cold-busted at every level, principals indicted; Trualta partners with PointClickCare

February 22, 2024 | by

Investor KKR announced their buy of a $10.5 billion stake in healthcare analytics Cotiviti. The stake comes from Veritas Capital, creating an equal share of ownership. The recapitalization will be used for commercial expansion, new product development, and technology-related opportunities. It is expected to close subject to regulatory approvals in Q2 this year. According to Axios and Bloomberg, it is financed by a $5 billion leveraged loan sale launched last week, with a $4.4 billion floating rate term loan led by JPM and a $600 million fixed rate term loan led by Goldman Sachs. This is Veritas’ second attempt to exit. While money is leaking back into private equity deals, the new trend is to finance them with more cash than debt. Cotiviti release

Cigna, having sold off its Medicare Advantage plans for $3.7 million to HCSC, is repurchasing $3.2 billion in stock (7.6 million shares) through agreements with Deutsche Bank and Bank of America. Cigna’s plan remains to repurchase $5 billion of common stock over H1 2024 after ending merger talks with Humana. FierceHealthcare, Cigna release

VA warned about faulty medication records in the Oracle Cerner Millenium EHR. The culprit is in the Health Data Repository, according to a government watchdog. David Case, deputy inspector general for the VA, reported at a House Veterans Affairs Committee Technology Modernization Subcommittee meeting last week, that while VA had no reports of harmful drug interactions, Case had at least one instance of a veteran not given a critical medication for adrenal insufficiency, leading to a near-disastrous outcome. The VA has also not informed the 250,000 veterans with prescription records in the Oracle Cerner system that the records may have errors.. In the VA facilities that have Oracle Cerner, providers, pharmacists, and frontline staff must perform complex manual medication safety checks to replace automated checks.

The Oracle Cerner rollout has been put on hold till summer this year–maybe [TTA 1 Nov 23]. At this hearing, Mike Sicilia of Oracle did show up and attributed the problems in the HDR to multiple systems being involved from VistA and other EHRs, into Oracle Cerner. However, after 10 separate fixes, the most recent software update had a similar data issue during final testing and was quickly pulled. Military.com

A victory versus ransomware. Updated. The LockBit ransomware group has been cold-busted “at every level” by the UK, US, and international law enforcement. According to the Department of Justice release and other sources, the UK’s National Crime Agency’s (NCA) Cyber Division led Operation Cronos, working in cooperation with the Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other law enforcement agencies worldwide. They seized numerous public-facing websites and domains used by LockBit to connect to the organization’s infrastructure along with servers used by LockBit administrators. Russian nationals Artur Sungatov and Ivan Kondratyev, also known as Bassterlord, were indicted in the US District Court of New Jersey in Newark, charged with deploying LockBit against numerous victims throughout the United States. Sungatov was also indicted in the Northern District of California. According to Europol, “Two LockBit actors have been arrested in Poland and Ukraine at the request of the French judicial authorities. The French and US judicial authorities have also issued three international arrest warrants and five indictments.” LockBit’s ‘heart’ is of course in Russia, where nearly all cybercrime is located–they are free to operate there as long as they don’t target anything in RU. Cybernews

Trualta partners with PointClickCare for family caregiver education and support. PointClickCare is a leading EHR for long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) providers. Trualta provides educational resources to support family caregivers when a patient is discharged through logging in to the resource site, with the ability to access articles, videos, and modules that cover a variety of care topics including preparing for discharge, transitioning from hospital to home, and life after discharge.  Trualta’s information will be offered through PointClickCare’s Marketplace. A recent study by Trualta of caregivers using their materials found that 30 days of Trualta use can decrease annual unexpected hospital visits among care recipients by 20%. Trualta release

Pepper pays a first-ever robot visit to Commons on the future of AI and robotics on education, older adult care (UK)

October 25, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/103886629_mediaitem103886628.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Pepper paid a visit to a House of Commons select committee on education and became the very first robot to meet with MPs. Accompanied by students from Middlesex University, where Pepper is part of an initiative on teaching primary school-level children, he made a short presentation about the future of artificial intelligence in education and older adult care.

Certainly his introduction has some historic value. Pepper bowed and then said in his rather high-pitched and somewhat Japanese-inflected voice: “Good morning, chair [Robert Halfon]. Thank you for inviting me to give evidence today. My name is Pepper and I am a resident robot at Middlesex University.”

Pepper used voice, gesture, and his embedded front tablet to explain about the role robots like him will play in education and healthcare. At Middlesex, final year students in robotics, education, psychology, and biomedicine like Joana Miranda, one of his two escorts, work with Pepper on projects such as developing numeracy skills in primary school students. According to BBC News, Tory MP Lucy Allan dryly noted that Pepper was “better than some of the ministers we have had before us”.

In healthcare for older adults, the Pepper robot developed by Softbank is part of a major research project funded by the EU, the Japanese Government and UK’s Horizon 2020. The objective of the three-year CARESSES program is to develop a culturally aware robot to provide care suited to a wide variety of individuals and reduce loneliness. Another desired outcome is to relieve pressure in hospitals and care homes by promoting independent living at home with a care robot.

The education committee is examining the “fourth industrial revolution” which impacts STEM education, school curriculum, and workforce skills (and reskilling). Videos on BBC News and Gevul News (YouTube) A tart take on Pepper versus PM Theresa May from The Guardian. (And no fainting, as Pepper did at CES earlier this year.) Hat tip to The King’s Fund weekly newsletter.