Katie M. Palmer

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Ed Silverman |Katie M. Palmer

Amid ongoing battles over alternate supplies of blockbuster weight loss drugs, Eli Lilly filed new lawsuits against four telehealth firms and their affiliates, but is using a new line of attack — the drugmaker accused two of the companies of engaging in the corporate practice of medicine. To date, Lilly and its rival, Novo Nordisk, have filed dozens of suits against companies involved in compounding versions of semaglutide and tirzepatide, the obesity and diabetes drugs known as GLP-1s.

4 weeks ago | statnews.com | Katie M. Palmer

RadNet, which runs nearly 400 radiology imaging centers in the United States, wants to put artificial intelligence into breast imaging. Over the last five years, the company has moved aggressively to expand its AI capabilities, deploying the technology for breast cancer screenings at its radiology practices. There, patients can pay $40 out-of-pocket for an algorithm to screen their mammogram, with a double-check if the AI says something different than the human radiologist reading the same scan.

1 month ago | statnews.com | Katie M. Palmer

Editor’s note: This story contains a description of self-harm. Oncologist Mark Lewis has never had much of a poker face. When he walked into his cancer patient’s visit in 2022, he was wearing a big smile: The nodules in his patient’s lungs, he saw in the radiology report, were shrinking in response to treatment. His patient, though, was already upset. “Before I could even say a thing,” Lewis recalled, “he said, ‘Why are you smiling? This is terrible news.’”

1 month ago | statnews.com | Katie M. Palmer

The changes to medical records hit federal systems first. In February, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services removed sexual orientation and gender identity questions from enrollment forms for Medicare beneficiaries, and the U.S. DOGE Service said it had removed gender identity from the personal information pages of Veterans Health Administration patients. Now, the Trump administration’s efforts to strip these demographics from patient forms have reached the private sector.

1 month ago | statnews.com | Elaine Chen |Katie M. Palmer

For the last year, Eli Lilly has been rapidly expanding a new website that connects patients with telehealth providers specialized in certain conditions it also sells drugs for, such as diabetes, obesity, and migraines. It’s now adding on another, one that pushes the envelope of telemedicine: Alzheimer’s. Patients with conditions like obesity or migraines have the option of directly ordering medications on this platform, called LillyDirect, and getting them delivered to their home.