Chiesi Wins FDA Approval for First Drug to Treat Ultra-Rare Enzyme Deficiency

Chiesi Wins FDA Approval for First Drug to Treat Ultra-Rare Enzyme Deficiency

A Chiesi Farmaceutici drug for a rare enzyme deficiency is now approved by the FDA, making it the first U.S. treatment for a disorder that leads to a range of cognitive and muscle problems.
The regulatory decision announced late Thursday covers the treatment of children and adults who have alpha-mannosidosis (AM), a disease caused by a genetic mutation that leads to defective or inactive forms of an enzyme called alpha-D-mannosidase. Chiesi’s drug, velmanase alfa, is an engineered version of that enzyme. The privately held Italian company will market its new FDA-approved drug as Lamzede, the same name for the product in Europe,…

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The Federal Trade Commission Accuses GoodRx Of Multiple Data Sharing Fails, Demands It Pay $1.5 Million Fine and Make Reforms

The Federal Trade Commission Accuses GoodRx Of Multiple Data Sharing Fails, Demands It Pay $1.5 Million Fine and Make Reforms

The Federal Trade Commission has cited telehealth and prescription drug discount provider GoodRx for sharing sensitive consumer health data with several advertising platforms, in violation of its own privacy promises to consumers.
The agency has filed a proposed order demanding that GoodRx pay $1.5 million in civil penalties for failing to let consumers know about unauthorized disclosures of its data to a list of advertiser platforms. including Facebook and Google.
The company, which is based in California, operates a digital health platform offering prescription drug discounts, telehealth visits and other health services. It captures a wide range of data from consumers who use…

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Why NLP can only succeed in healthcare if it caters to caregivers

Why NLP can only succeed in healthcare if it caters to caregivers

Natural language processing, or NLP, is a branch of artificial intelligence that enables machine understanding of human language. In recent years, NLP has become part of consumer products and performs with a sometimes surprising degree of accuracy.Virtual assistants use NLP to understand spoken questions like, “What’s the weather like today?” They can contextualize the meaning of the question, and then use data from online sources to reply with a meaningful response.
Medical NLP has long been a topic of research and development, since it contains significant potential for uncovering meaningful insights from unstructured medical text. This presents huge opportunities for healthcare providers, clinical…

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Virtual care enables BrightView Health to increase outpatient access

Virtual care enables BrightView Health to increase outpatient access

BrightView Health, a behavioral health facility that specializes in addiction treatment and substance abuse, already was using telehealth when the COVID-19 pandemic and associated response happened. The organization mostly was using telehealth between its various locations.THE PROBLEM
However, BrightView did not have a secure communications platform to engage with patients either synchronously or asynchronously.
“So, the pandemic and the lockdowns created some potential gaps in access to care that we needed to predict and fill,” said Navdeep S. Kang, chief clinical officer at BrightView Health and a fellow with the Obama Foundation. “We looked at several platforms to implement secure communications.
“We were specifically interested…

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