Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Popular Fitness Trackers Seem To Lose Their Luster Quickly
Deepak Jayasimha's fitness tracker is now with his father-in-law in India, where it sits unused. Annabel Kelly foisted hers off on the kids. Virginia Atkinson took hers off to charge the battery and hasn't picked it up since February. Although sales of Fitbit and other fitness trackers are strong, many of their owners lose enthusiasm for them once the novelty of knowing how many steps they've taken wears off. One research firm, Endeavour Partners, estimates that about a third of these trackers get abandoned after six months. A health care investment fund, Rock Health, says Fitbit's regulatory filings suggest that only half of Fitbit's nearly 20 million registered users were still active as of the first quarter of 2015. (Jesdanun, 7/8)
A little-known healthcare start-up is slowly setting the stage to transform blood tests. Theranos, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that offers about 153 tests for under $10, scored three major coups in the past week. First, they won FDA approval for their patented technology that performs complex medical tests using just a few drops, rather than a few vials, of blood. Its first application, named in the FDA announcement, extends to the company’s herpes simplex 1 test. (Almendrala, 7/8)
There’s a new warning for those of us who go online to figure out why we have a stomach ache or a nagging cough or occasional chest pain. Symptom checkers — those tools that let you enter information and then produce a diagnosis — are accurate about half of the time, according to a study out of Harvard Medical School. Looking at 23 websites, the Harvard study found that a third listed the correct diagnosis as the first option for patients. Half the sites had the right diagnosis among their top three results, and 58 percent listed it in their top 20 suggestions. (Bebinger, 7/9)
Meanwhile, some device makers vow to compensate hospitals if their products fail to perform as advertised -
Medical device makers, facing sluggish sales and increasing pressure to prove the value of their products, are beefing up guarantees to compensate U.S. hospitals if a device does not perform as expected. Medtronic Plc, Johnson & Johnson and St Jude Medical Inc are among the first to provide the newer guarantees, some of which offer to share in the cost of follow-up treatment tied to their heart devices, company executives told Reuters. Orthopedic implant makers are exploring such agreements for hip and knee devices. (Kelley, 7/8)
