Maverick's Update

Life is complicated — even strange. The news is full of violent, sad, and frustrating truths, and yet this month is also filled with celebratory graduation ceremonies for young people who are hopeful and excited about the future. So it is only fitting that this is when Netflix released its 4th season of Stranger Things, a sci-fi horror series about a group of likeable kids who face down monsters that escape the “Upside Down” — an alternate universe located in a national laboratory in Indiana (which has no correlation to the good work the Argonne National Lab is doing with supercomputers on COVID and cancer research). In the One Thoughtful Paragraph below, we explore the release of a stranger thing happening in digital health.

Other news that isn’t as strange this week:

• NCQA launched a Digital Quality Solutions pilot, with participants including 1UpHealth, Aetna, Change Healthcare, and Health Care Service Corporation, who will give feedback on the usefulness, feasibility and value of NCQA software and quality measure prototypes.

• HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) published a blog post summarizing HITAC’s March report on e-prior authorization recommendations, and a separate post about a new legislative proposal to allow HHS the authority to issue binding advisory opinions about information blocking.

• CBInsights reported that female health start-ups, or “femtech” received a record-breaking $2.7 billion in funding in 2021, but funding for the mental health tech sector plummeted 60%. The report also cited digital therapeutics as a growing industry.

One Thoughtful Paragraph