What You Should Know: - Curebase, a company committed to democratizing access to clinical trials, announced the release of its integrated software and services package for digital therapeutics (DTx) trials that accelerates enrollment and allows sponsors to launch their studies faster. - Available now, the new Curebase offering includes the first one-stop-shop decentralized clinical trial (DCT) platform bundled with site and trial execution services for the DTx market. Making
Read More
Fitbit Enters Substance Abuse Recovery with Pretaa Partnership
What You Should Know: - Fitbit announced that they are partnering with behavioral analytics company Pretaa to improve outcomes for the millions of Americans affected by substance abuse. Pretaa analyzes information from wearable devices worn by those recovering from substance abuse and (with patient consent) notifies their care providers, friends and family members when they might need additional support. - Research indicates that the onset of the pandemic was associated with an
Read More
Biden-Harris Admin Awards $1.5B to Address Overdose Epidemic
What You Should Know: - The U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), awarded nearly $1.5 billion to support states, tribal lands, and territories’ efforts to address the opioid crisis and support individuals in recovery. - The grants are part of SAMHSA’s State Opioid Response and Tribal Opioid Response grant programs. The grant programs provide funding to states and territories to increase access to
Read More
Bicycle Health, Tele911 Partner to Bring OUD Care to Emergency Patients
What You Should Know: - Bicycle Health, a provider of virtual opioid addiction treatment, and Tele911, a telemedicine company specializing in reducing medically unnecessary ambulance transports of stable 911 patients to hospital ERs, today announced a partnership to increase access to opioid use disorder care for patients in emergency situations. - The partnership between the two organizations will ensure that patients experiencing health crises stemming from or in addition to opioid use
Read More
Cybercriminals Use Bots to Steal Active Pharmacy Accounts and Resell Prescriptions
What You Should Know: - Cybercriminals are leveraging illegal bots to steal pharmacy accounts and resell prescriptions on a secondary market for in-demand substances, like Oxycodone, according to recent research from Kasada’s threat intelligence team. has recently shared research by its threat intelligence team about a new, illegal use of bots -. - Researchers have also identified an acceleration in this activity: over the past 60 days, the number of stolen pharmacy accounts available
Read More
Analysis: Seeking Balance in the Hyperactive Mental Health Tech Market
The prevalence of mental and behavioral health conditions has been on the rise in recent decades, further aggravated by the pandemic in the last two years. Social isolation, grief from the loss of loved ones, fear of contracting the virus, and financial worries were all major stress factors that increasingly affected the mental wellbeing of the population, and the resulting statistics are startling: the average share of adults with symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders jumped from 1
Read More
Why a Focus on Behavioral Health is Key to Improving Quality Measures
Since the passage of the Medicare Improvements for Patients & Providers Act in 2008, the U.S. healthcare system has been moving towards value-based care (VBC) which encourages health providers to improve care quality by reimbursing them based on successful outcomes rather than individual medical services. The overarching goal of VBC is to improve the patient experience, improve population health, and reduce per capita health costs. As part of this VBC model, hospitals and health systems
Read More
XRHealth Secures $10M to Expand Virtual Reality Treatment in the Metaverse
What You Should Know: - XRHealth, the gateway to the healthcare metaverse, announced today that they raised $10M in funding to expand virtual healthcare treatment in the Metaverse. The funding was backed by HTC, Bridges Israel impact investment fund, AARP, and crowdfunding on StartEngine.com and existing investors. - XRHealth’s platform is FDA and CE registered and provides an immersive experience for users, transporting them to a virtual world for comprehensive
Read More
How NLP Can Uncover Social Determinants of Heart Disease
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Cardiovascular disease-related deaths—which occur every 36 seconds—cost our country about $219 billion each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People with poor cardiovascular health are also at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19, so the time to act is now. There’s no time like the present to look at major risk factors—from obesity and
Read More
Evaluating COVID-19’s Behavioral Health Impact on the Economy
We’re now in a new year and new presidential administration. At least three companies are producing effective COVID-19 vaccines, which are being administered to healthcare workers, teachers, and the elderly. By summer, hopefully a large majority of the population in most countries will be vaccinated. From where the world now stands, we can see an end to prolonged isolation, trauma, fear, grief, and economic torpor. But out of the woods, we are not. The virus mutates, perhaps
Read More