GoKawiil
Tech News
A personal essay recounts the author's childhood anorexia diagnosis and treatment within a healthcare system the author says prioritized hospital bed-days over actual recovery. The piece frames this as an example of a broader 'churn problem' in healthcare, and argues that value-based care models could address it.
Biomedical engineering is reported to be experiencing rapid growth as an academic and research discipline. Despite this expansion, observers are raising questions about whether the growth is translating into tangible benefits for patients.
In an Entrepreneur contributor column, a founder with two decades in healthcare argues that conventional startup advice to target easy, fast-selling markets is flawed. The author contends that markets easy to enter are also easy for competitors to enter, leading to rapid commoditization, while complex markets protect companies willing to understand their structure.
Viatris announced its plan to acquire Pacira BioSciences for $1.65 billion, aiming to broaden its range of pain management medicines. The deal signifies a strategic move to enhance Viatris's portfolio in the healthcare sector.
Security researchers and government advisories document a shift in ransomware tactics, with groups like BlackMatter and Gunra deliberately locating and destroying backup data before encrypting primary systems. The 2024 ALPHV/BlackCat attack on Change Healthcare exemplified the pattern: inadequate backup isolation contributed to UnitedHealth paying $22 million without recovering its data, with total costs reaching an estimated $1.6 billion. CISA, the FBI, and the NSA have jointly documented these methods across multiple incidents.
Forescout Technologies analyzed roughly 2.5 million devices across more than 50 healthcare organizations and found widespread gaps in support for post-quantum cryptography. Only about half of IT devices supported SSH implementations capable of PQC, versus 16% of operational technology and just 6% of Internet of Medical Things devices such as patient monitors and insulin pumps. The firm also found over 5,500 Internet-reachable systems holding medical records and imaging data, only 31% of which used TLS 1.3, the protocol needed for current PQC standards.
A roundup gathers perspectives from 30 executives across industries on laws and proposed bills shaping their sectors, spanning AI accountability, healthcare policy, tariffs, clean energy and consumer protection. The leaders describe how they are responding to or advocating around legislative changes that affect their companies and customers.
New York health officials ran an unannounced exercise sending trained actors posing as H5 bird flu patients into regional healthcare facilities to test rapid identification and isolation protocols. Only 60 percent of facilities met basic benchmarks for masking and isolating the simulated patient, with many showing delays and inconsistent use of protective equipment, according to a report in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Epic, maker of the widely used MyChart patient records software, has paused most new product development for about six weeks to fix security vulnerabilities discovered during testing with Anthropic's Mythos cybersecurity model. CEO Judy Faulkner confirmed the pause to Modern Healthcare, and chief security officer Stirling Martin told the New York Times that some customer configurations could let outsiders access patient records without leaving any trace in system logs.
Critical care nurse Amber Retzloff reports that HCA Healthcare’s AI-powered scheduling system, Timpani, often assigns shifts that conflict with nurses' preferences and leads to understaffed, overworked teams. Since its implementation across most of HCA’s locations, nurses have expressed dissatisfaction, citing increased shift trading, burnout, and potential risks to patient care. The tool’s lack of oversight has raised alarms about staffing adequacy and safety.
Nurses at HCA Healthcare, the largest US hospital chain, say the AI scheduling system Timpani—co-developed with Palantir and deployed at roughly 130 of 190 locations since 2023—frequently overrides their shift preferences and creates uneven staffing levels. Florida nurse Amber Retzloff says the tool failed to honor more than half of her 50 requested shifts over four months, and several other nurses interviewed described similar frustrations with inconsistent, exhausting schedules.
Grindr is buying Freddie, a telehealth company that provides HIV-prevention medication and pharmacy services, for $250 million. The deal marks Grindr's first major acquisition and will see Freddie's services folded into a new Grindr Health offering.