The FDA’s chaotic week, Trump’s effect on science, and Musk’s big reveal
Can the Food and Drug Administration survive Trump? Are drug reviewers in the deep state?…
Category: medical technology
STAT Plus: Amazon debuts wrist wearable Halo, marking its entry into health tracking
Joining the ranks of other health tech giants, Amazon on Thursday debuted a wrist wearable…
Opinion: Using telehealth to revolutionize the speed of making rare disease diagnoses
For a person living with a rare disease, it can take five years or longer…
STAT Health Tech: Elon Musk’s secretive brain implants startup & Verily’s move into health insurance
A version of this digest first appeared in the weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. To…
STAT Plus: Telehealth company Amwell files to sell shares to public, Google
American Well Corp., a Boston telehealth company known as Amwell, said it plans to sell…
STAT Plus: As Elon Musk’s Neuralink prepares to draw back the curtain, ex-employees describe rushed timelines clashing with science’s slow pace
The hype from Elon Musk has been coming for weeks: This Friday, his secretive brain-implants…
STAT Plus: Otsuka approved to buy bankrupt smart-pill maker Proteus’ assets, overcoming effort by Novartis to block purchase
The Japanese drug maker Otsuka has been approved to purchase the assets of bankrupt smart…
STAT Health Tech: How Teladoc won and Lyft’s Medicaid transportation business
A version of this digest first appeared in the weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. To…
STAT Plus: How Teladoc won: The inside story of how well-timed bets propelled it ahead of the competition
The unquestioned leader in a virtual care sector that has surged in the Covid-19 era,…
Opinion: Telehealth and the new choreography of ‘anywhere care’
Covid-19 has transformed the traditional doctor’s office visit as we know it, moving it away…
STAT Plus: Teladoc rival MDLive is preparing to go public next year
On the heels of Teladoc’s landscape-shifting deal to buy Livongo, telemedicine rival MDLive is setting…
Opinion: With Covid-19 halting clinical trials, wearables could be key — but data ‘wild west’ gets in the way
The biotech and pharma industries are at a pivotal moment, facing a pandemic that’s caused…
STAT Plus: With Livongo’s arsenal of health devices, Teladoc is poised to move into remote monitoring
As part of its landmark $18.5 billion deal to buy Livongo, telehealth giant Teladoc Health…
As mindfulness app Headspace booms, its popularity outpaces its scientific evidence
This has, by all accounts, been a banner year for Headspace. Demand for the mindfulness…
STAT Plus: 10 burning questions about Teladoc’s $18.5 billion deal to buy Livongo
It’s hard to recall a deal that scrambled the dynamics of the health tech industry…
Teladoc Health and Livongo merge in an $18.5 billion deal
Telemedicine provider Teladoc Health and diabetes coaching company Livongo have agreed to merge in an…
STAT Plus: Earnings season highlights how health tech companies fared in the first full quarter of the pandemic
It’s earnings season for health tech companies — and that’s opening a window into how…
Telemedicine is booming — but many people still face huge barriers to virtual care
As Covid-19 drives many patients away from in-person care and toward virtual visits, experts warn…
STAT Plus: Haven was supposed to reimagine health care. An exodus of talent has gutted it
Haven, the audacious health venture founded by three of America’s most storied companies, was once…
Covid-19 apps and wearables are everywhere. Can they actually benefit patients?
With Covid-19 cases again climbing, health tech companies and researchers are renewing their pitch for…
Webinar: Inside the virtual care boom: What happens when the point of care becomes anywhere?
Virtual care and digital health tools are soaring in popularity amid the Covid-19 pandemic. A…
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Opinion: Telehealth makes me aspire to be a different kind of physician: the kind I used to be
In my nearly quarter-century as a primary care pediatrician, I have always aspired to be…
Opinion: Quality issues may be the stumbling block in the race for contact tracing apps
The world is in a rush to find ways to fight Covid-19. This urgency makes…
Opinion: We need to forecast epidemics like we forecast the weather
Disease-modeling communities around the world have been working tirelessly since January to predict how and…
STAT Plus: New research finds a wide gulf in engagement with digital mental health tools
A first-of-its-kind analysis, conducted in collaboration with researchers at Microsoft, paints a detailed picture of…
STAT Plus: As new users flock to health apps, experts raise questions about public understanding of data privacy
As digital health tools proliferate, health data experts are raising a new round of alarms…
STAT Plus: As Amazon builds new health ventures, Haven struggles to gain ground
Amazon’s sprawling, sometimes stilted approach to employee health care is growing more complicated — and…
Opinion: Will Covid-19 be the straw that breaks the stethoscope’s back?
“It must be confessed that there is something even ludicrous in the picture of a…
STAT Plus: Seeking EU approval on acquisition, Google pledges not to use Fitbit health data to target ads
With the clock ticking on a European Commission probe into Google’s $2.1 billion bid for…
STAT Plus: As European Commission decision looms, Google faces continued scrutiny over Fitbit deal
Google is again facing questions from regulators about its $2.1 billion bid for Fitbit. The…
Tech giants are well-positioned to help close racial gaps in health. They have little to show for it
As the nation confronts a reckoning over racial inequality, tech giants — with their vast…
Listen: Remdesivir’s controversial cost, early vaccine promise, and AI at the end of life
What’s a fair price for remdesivir? How do we know whether vaccines work? And does…
Opinion: Unless it’s done carefully, the rise of telehealth could widen health disparities
The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed telehealth — the remote provision of health care resources, tools,…
Opinion: This is supposed to be telemedicine’s time to shine. Why are doctors abandoning it?
Telemedicine — the delivery of care by a clinician in one location to a patient…
An app for football fans became a digital contact tracing tool — and could be a litmus test for Covid-19 technology
Software engineer Tim Brookins didn’t build his Bison Tracker app with the coronavirus pandemic in…
STAT Plus: Can a prescription video game actually make money? Akili is about to find out
Akili Interactive Labs proved last week that it could convince the Food and Drug Administration…
In a landmark decision, FDA greenlights a video game for kids with ADHD
The Food and Drug Administration on Monday for the first time gave a green light…
STAT Plus: Telehealth is a ‘silver lining’ of the pandemic, but implementing it permanently won’t be easy
The coronavirus pandemic has stretched hospital resources beyond their capacity, disrupted the delivery of care,…
Can location data capture how well the Covid-19 response is working? A joint effort aims to find out
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, tech giants have chipped in on a panoply of…
Your boss wants you to take a Covid-19 test and track your symptoms. There’s software for that
As more employers reopen their offices, stores, and warehouses, a growing number of health tech…
STAT Plus: Despite economic downturn, big names in health tech are drawing in significant funding
It was expected to be a last-minute salvo: As much of the world braced for…
AI systems are worse at diagnosing disease when training data is skewed by sex
The artificial intelligence model showed great promise in predicting which patients treated in U.S. Veterans…
Federal legislation to protect health data has made little progress. Will that change in the Covid-19 era?
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, health data privacy wasn’t exactly a hot topic on Capitol Hill….
STAT Plus: Will employers still shell out for health tech benefits in an unemployment crisis? The industry is about to find out
It’s the oldest, most reliable strategy for building a business in health tech: Sell to…
Mind-controlled prosthetic arm enables patients to feel the objects they grip
When electrician Rickard Normark lost his left arm after being electrocuted at work in 2011,…
In fading steel towns, chronically ill patients hope video visits stay after the pandemic goes
Ordinarily Trueman Mills makes the trek to his cardiologist by car. He lives in rolling…
STAT Plus: A gulf emerges in health tech: While some companies surge, others lay off their workers
You might expect them to be pandemic-proof: They’re the companies offering glimpses of the future…
‘It’s noisy’: Competing Covid-19 efforts could hamper progress, experts warn
As many of the most forward-thinking tech and biopharma behemoths — from Apple and Google…
Awaiting an FDA decision, Akili rolls out its video game for kids with ADHD under relaxed rules
A long-awaited video game meant to be prescribed to kids with ADHD is finally being…
5 burning questions about tech efforts to track Covid-19 cases
The pitch from technology companies goes something like this: We can tap phone data to…