News roundup: VA extends Oracle Cerner for 11 months; Amwell founders swap jobs; Alphabet’s Verily pivots to Lightpath with GLP-1, retiring Onduo; UnitedHealth hasn’t notified on Change breach

June 20, 2024 | by

To no one’s surprise, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) extended its contract with Oracle Cerner for another 11 months. This is per the new contract relationship that started last year, resetting from the original five-year contract that started in 2018 to five one-year terms, with mandatory annual reviews and renewals [TTA 18 May 2023]. Technically, the contract expired in May but VA extended it for one month as discussions continued over the next one-year term. This second option period expiring May 2025, according to the VA release, is focused on the following for the EHR modernization (EHRM):

  • Supporting the existing six facilities with the Oracle Cerner EHR
  • Achieving the goals of the reset and driving towards future deployments
  • Increased accountability across a variety of key areas, including minimizing outages and incidents, resolving clinician requests, improving interoperability with other health care systems, and increasing interoperability with other applications to ensure an integrated health care experience
  • Supporting value-added services, such as system improvements and optimizations
  • Achieving better predictability in hosting, deployment, and sustainment
  • Fiscal responsibility 

The plan is to resume site deployments in FY 2025, likely in year 2025, after reset goals are met. Seema Verma, Oracle Health’s new executive vice president and general manager, said that “VA’s intent to resume deployments in the next fiscal year is a significant milestone that reflects the hard work our collective teams have done to improve the system today, as well as confidence in our shared ability to continually evolve the EHR over time to meet the needs of both practitioners and patients.” NextGov/FCW, FierceHealthcare, Healthcare Dive, Oracle release

Is there much choice for the VA in the matter? Not really. VistA can be updated but remains non-interoperable with the Military Health System’s (MHS) Cerner-Leidos EHR. But can Oracle Cerner be fixed up and debugged to work for VA’s vastly different needs and smoothly deployed within the contract duration? That jury is still out in the view of the VA and Congress.

The Brothers Schoenberg swap positions at Amwell. Roy Schoenberg, MD, MPH, will transition immediately from his role as president and co-CEO to move to executive vice chairman of Amwell’s board of directors. Ido Schoenberg, MD, will become the sole CEO. The brothers co-founded the company in 2006. Ido’s quote closing the release is interesting in demonstrating the shift from investment without profits to getting on the path to profitability:  “This transition represents a natural evolution for our company as we shift from a period of intense R&D investment to an operational focus aimed at achieving greater efficiencies, optimizing cash flow and delivering profitable growth while maintaining our dedication to enabling our clients’ aspirations.” Roy is credited with developing Converge which is their next-generation integrated platform. If Teladoc is finding it difficult to transition from the stand-alone, transactional, urgent care service they and Amwell pioneered, into an evolved market that has incorporated virtual capabilities into multiple types of care models, whither Amwell’s future? More thoughts in TTA 2 May, 9 April

Alphabet (Google)’s once-visionary Verily now jumps on the GLP-1 bandwagon with Lightpath. Verily’s latest pivot to the highly trendy weight loss area is termed as a metabolic solution as part of a “personalized chronic care solution for health plans and members”.  Lightpath will start as Lightpath Metabolic, a four-part program that includes Metabolic Intensive (diabetes management), Weight Loss Intensive, Metabolic Improvement, and Metabolic Achievement. The Verily platform integrates data from health records, connected devices, and other care points to deliver “personalized pathways, suggestions, and nudges to health plan members” virtually along with health coaches and an advanced licensed clinical team. The current virtual chronic care management platform, Onduo, will be retired by 2025.

Once upon a time (2021, sigh), Verily was Google’s skunk works for advanced health tech with Google Health being the marketing and merchandising arm for clinical and consumer products. Google Health was broken up in August 2021 and Verily faded into the Alphabet background with the occasional joint venture and clinical pilots, with Onduo being their most marketable product. Google seems to have little direction for Verily other than to keep it alive. And given the competition plus a greater understanding of the long term effects of the GLP-1 drugs in the weight loss area, the GLP bandwagon is up for a shaky ride in the next year. Release, FierceHealthcare

And very strangely, UnitedHealth Group hasn’t notified Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights (HHS-OCR) about the ransomware data breach at Change Healthcare, nor the individuals affected. The notification to OCR is required under HIPAA to be within 60 days of the date of the incident. UHG is over the deadline by two months, calculating from 21 February. CEO Andrew Witty wilted before double-barreled Senate and House hearings in May and UHG lost a fight to put the notifications for the breach onto providers [TTA 5 June]. Senators Margaret Wood Hassan (D-NH) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) sent a joint letter on 7 June to Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, urging him to send a breach notification letter that notifies OCR, state regulators, Congress, the media, and health care providers that it intends to complete all breach notifications on behalf of all HIPAA-covered entities, individuals and businesses affected, by 21 June. That’s Friday. UHG continues to maintain that they still do not know the extent of the breach. The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) also sent a letter to Mr. Witty on 12 June.  Don’t hold your breath for UHG sending millions of letters. Becker’s, HealthExec

Can digital health RPM achieve meaningful change with type 2 diabetics? New metastudy expresses doubt.

March 27, 2024 | by

A metastudy from the Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI) has reservations about the efficacy of digital diabetes management tools. Over $50 billion has been invested in the sector between development, investments, mergers, and acquisitions. Generally, the claim around digital management tools for diabetes to aid self-management and prevent poor outcomes, particularly for those at high risk, has been that they can 1) deliver meaningful and lasting clinical benefits in reduction of HbA1c (glycemic control) and 2) reduce long-term costs of poor control, benefiting patients. In the US, diabetes affects 11% of the population and is an expensive chronic condition. It also disproportionately affects people of color and those with lower income, especially as they age.

The systematic literature review of 1,100-plus studies was augmented by interviews with physicians, patients, digital health experts, along with companies. They included 120 clinical references from DarioHealth, Omada, and Virta. The PHTI grouped digital tools into three types of solutions for Type 2 diabetes in adults. All used standard glucometers, not continuous glucose monitors/CGM as well as apps to provide real time feedback to a virtual or actual coach or care team:

  1. Remote patient monitoring (glucometer plus feedback): Glooko
  2. Behavior/Lifestyle modification (glycemic feedback plus coaching features): DarioHealth, Omada Health, Perry Health, Teladoc (Livongo), Verily (Onduo), and Vida
  3. Nutritional ketosis (dietary guidance that restricts carbohydrates and monitors the patient’s glycemic and ketone levels): Virta Health

The findings did not meet their expectations in demonstrating “clear, substantial, and durable progress toward glycemic control in people with type 2 diabetes, resulting in a lower prevalence of uncontrolled type 2 diabetes across the population.”

  • They did not deliver clinically meaningful benefits compared to ‘usual care’. Only three out of 10 comparative HbA1C studies achieved a meaningful difference of 0.5 percentage points (Minimal Clinically Important Difference or MCID) in patients. Their range was 0.23 to 0.60 percentage points compared to usual care.  The nutritional ketosis program had greater benefits as long as patients maintained the rigorous requirements of the therapeutic regimen.
  • The average price impact of the solution exceeds the savings achieved from the clinical benefits. The PHTI analysis looked at commercial insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid over three years. Provider reimbursement and pricing exceed cost savings from avoided care.

So where is the worth? The PHTI study recommended that:

  • Payers use these solutions for the highest risk and diverse/underserved populations
  • Regularly analyzing outcomes and tie contracts to clinical performance
  • Focus on patients with higher starting HbA1c newly starting insulin
  • Payers could also recommend nutritional ketosis as the Virta program had greater benefits.
  • Solutions could also evolve to include GLP-1 drugs, CGMs, and nutritional ketosis.

PHTI study (free download of full report, four sections, and appendices). PHTI press release.

PHTI is also offering a free webinar on Thursday 28 March at 2pm US Eastern Time on assessing digital diabetes management tools–registration here.

Diabetes management: the Next Big Health Tech Thing?

September 14, 2016 | by

Big Data? Passé. Health IT security and hacking? At a peak. So what’s the Next Big Thing? If you’re tracking where the money’s going, it’s diabetes management. This week saw the joint venture Onduo formed by the controversial [TTA 6 Apr] life sciences-focused Verily (Google Alphabet) and Big Pharma Sanofi with a nest egg of $500 million. Onduo will be combining devices with services to help Type II diabetics. Based upon CEO Joshua Riff’s statements to MedCityNews, their platforms are yet to be developed, but “will be a digital platform that will involve software, hardware, and very importantly service” to change patient behaviors. Partnerships with Sutter Health in Northern California and Allegheny Health Network of western Pennsylvania will test their approaches in a clinical setting. Xconomy, Reuters

Verily’s other diabetes project include the £540 million bioelectronics partnership announced in August with UK-based GSK in Galvani Electronics [TTA 3 Aug] with a focus on inflammatory, metabolic and endocrine disorders, including Type II diabetes. With Dexcom, Verily is also building an inexpensive, smaller next-gen continuous glucose monitoring sensor; Mr Riff was coy about whether this sensor would be used but allowed that sensors might be used in Onduo’s approaches. Verily is also developing the well-known glucose-reading contact lens with Novartis [TTA 1 Sep 15].

Also this week, Glooko and Sweden’s Diasend announced their merger (more…)