The Senate and the House of Representatives return to Washington, DC for Committee business and floor voting tomorrow.
On Thursday, April 20, OPM will hold the postponed second day of the OPM AHIP FEHB Carrier Conference. Of course, the FEHBlog will be in attendance.
Federal News Network tells us
- “Just 19 of the 74 agencies in the 2022 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings either held steady or improved their employee engagement score.
- “But among many declining trends in the Partnership for Public Service’s results, some agencies still managed to shine.
- “When we look at these averages, I think it’s so much more powerful when we pull apart and look at the variation across government and within agencies,” said Max Stier, the Partnership’s president and CEO, at a Best Places to Work ceremony Wednesday.”
From the regulatory front, the Department of Health and Human Services announced its plan to continue PREP Act liability protections related to Covid testing, preventive services and treatments well beyond May 11.
From the U.S. healthcare business front
- Beckers Payer Issues lists 100 things to know about the Blue Cross Blue Shield system.
- The Wall Street Journal reports “Merck & Co. said it agreed to acquire Prometheus Biosciences Inc. for $10.8 billion, a push into the lucrative market for immune-disease treatments.”
- Healthcare Dive discusses the financial condition of non-profit hospitals.
From the medical research front, The Wall Street Journal informs us
- “Moderna Inc. and Merck & Co.’s cancer vaccine helped prevent relapse for melanoma patients, results from a midstage trial showed, demonstrating progress in the pursuit of shots to ward off cancer by jump-starting the immune system.
- “About 79% of high-risk melanoma patients who got the personalized vaccine and Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda were alive and cancer-free at 18 months, compared with about 62% of patients who received immunotherapy alone, researchers said Sunday. The 157-person trial offers some of the strongest evidence yet that such vaccines could benefit cancer patients.
- “I am fairly encouraged that this will open up a whole new set of trials,” said Jeffrey Weber, the senior investigator on the trial and deputy director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health.”
From the artificial intelligence front, NPR discusses efforts to use AI to improve a volunteer driven app for the visually impaired called Be My Eyes.
- “Hans Jørgen Wiberg, a Danish furniture craftsman, created the app after he got tired of calling his friends and family to ask for help identifying things. (Wiberg is visually impaired.) He spent a couple years developing it, and the app launched in 2015.
- “But eight years later, there’s a twist. As artificial intelligence, or AI, becomes more accessible, app creators are experimenting with an AI version using tech as well as human volunteers. Be My Eyes CEO Mike Buckley says the argument for AI is that it can do things people cannot.
- “What if the AI ingested every service manual of every consumer product ever?,” says Buckley. “And so you could tap into the AI and say, ‘How do I hook up my Sony stereo?'” Furthermore, Buckley says, “we took a picture of our refrigerator and it not only told us what all the ingredients were but it told us what we could make for dinner.”
Nifty.
Fortune Well identifies “The five best supplements for healthy aging, according to a longevity expert.” The article notes “If you’ve ever walked down the supplement aisle in a pharmacy, you’ve seen the overwhelming abundance of options available for your medicine cabinet. According to the 2022 Council on Responsible Nutrition Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements, 75% of Americans use dietary supplements, most on a regular basis.” By the way, the five best are
- Calcium for bone strength
- Vitamin D for immunity and bone strength
- Probiotics for gut health
- Magnesium for mood, and
- Multivitamins to cover the bases.