healthcare

Catch Change Healthcare Hackers: US Grants $10M in Assistance

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The State Department blamed the prolific ransomware group for targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, including healthcare services. Last month, an affiliate group of the ALPHV/BlackCat gang took credit for a cyberattack and weeks-long outage at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare, which processes around one-in-three U.S. patient medical records. The affiliate group went public after accusing the main ALPHV/BlackCat gang of swindling the contract hackers out of $22 million in ransom that Change Healthcare allegedly paid to prevent the mass leak of patient records. Change Healthcare has said since that it ejected the hackers from its network and restored much of its systems. U.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of Change Healthcare, has not yet confirmed if any patient data was stolen.

“Revolutionizing Clinics: Anima Healthcare Platform Secures $12M in Funding, Empowering with Salesforce-inspired Features”

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Thankfully, there’s a new wave of startups entering the arena: UK startup Anima is a “care enablement” platform that operates almost like a combination of Slack, Salesforce and Figma, but for healthcare clinics and hospitals. Anima, a graduate of Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch, launched in September 2022 and is now used in 150 NHS clinics in England. The startup’s software lets clinic staff process and file healthcare documents, but adds in a higher degree of automation compared to legacy systems. In the U.S., Memora Health has raised $80.5 million, and NexHealth, which is post-Series C, has raised $177.2 million to date. I trained as a doctor at Cambridge, and I’m a self-taught software engineer who wrote a lot of the code for Anima.

Simplifying Medical Image Exchange: PocketHealth Facilitates Smooth Doctor-Patient Interactions

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Have you ever needed a copy of your medical imaging to take to your doctor or another healthcare provider and received the images on a CD? Many radiologists still use this ancient format to transfer patients’ imaging files. A startup called PocketHealth has built an medical image exchange platform to digitize the process for every patient and healthcare provider, making it more intelligent and personalized, no CDs involved. PocketHealth isn’t the only company offering medical imaging sharing for patients in the MedTech space. Ambra Health, based in New York, offers solutions for medical image sharing, and EnvoyAI, based in Massachusetts, develops a medical imaging AI marketplace.

“Concerns Mount as Change Healthcare Outage Persists, Raising Potential for Patient Data Breach”

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If patient data has been stolen, the ramifications for the affected patients will likely be irreversible and life-lasting. Change Healthcare is one of the world’s largest facilitators of health and medical data and patient records, handling billions of healthcare transactions annually. The cybersecurity director expressed alarm at the prospect of the hackers potentially publishing the stolen sensitive patient data online. For those on the front-lines of healthcare cybersecurity, the worst-case scenario is that stolen patient records become public. Do you work at Change Healthcare, Optum or UnitedHealth and know more about the cyberattack?

“Bumble’s Texas Team Shrinks by 33% in Wake of Restrictive Abortion Legislation”

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Bumble has lost a third of its Texas workforce in the months since the state passed the controversial abortion SB 8 (Senate Bill 8), also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, over a year ago. We’ve supported employees who’ve chosen to move out of state,” Monteleone added. “We — since SB 8 — have seen a reduction in our Texas workforce by about a third. The dating app maker became the first business to join an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit against the Texas abortion law, Zurawski v. State of Texas, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights. The dating app maker posted a weak Q4, with a $32 million net loss and $273.6 million in revenue.

MDaaS secures $3M investment for enhancing healthcare access and expanding network in Nigeria

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MDaaS Global, a Nigerian health tech company that operates a network of tech-enabled diagnostic centers across the country, has secured $3 million in pre-Series A funding. The seven-year-old health tech also plans to expand its healthcare network to cover all Nigerian states through a combination of company-owned and affiliate clinics. Improving access to diagnostics and preventive care, a domain where MDaaS has garnered recognition, is essential in tackling this healthcare challenge. On the other hand, MDaaS’ care network involves collaboration with over 1,300 referring clinicians across more than 1,000 organizations, including hospitals, pharmacies, health tech startups, corporate partners and 34 HMOs. Since its inception, MDaaS has provided care to over 275,000 patients, leveraging its integrated care network and BeaconOS capabilities.

“UnitedHealth Definitively Identifies Ransomware Group Responsible for Change Healthcare Breach During Ongoing Disruptions in Pharmacy Services”

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American health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has confirmed a ransomware attack on its health tech subsidiary Change Healthcare, which continues to disrupt hospitals and pharmacies across the United States. “Based on our ongoing investigation, there’s no indication that except for the Change Healthcare systems, Optum, UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealth Group systems have been affected by this issue.”In a post on its dark web leak site on Wednesday, ALPHV/BlackCat took credit for the cyberattack at Change Healthcare. Change Healthcare merged with U.S. healthcare provider Optum in 2022 as part of a $7.8 billion deal under UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurance provider in the United States. Change Healthcare said it took much of its systems offline to expel the hackers from its systems. Do you work at Change Healthcare, Optum or UnitedHealth and know more about the cyberattack?

US Prescription Filling Hindered by Ransomware Attack on Change Healthcare System

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A spokesperson for Change Healthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Change Healthcare is an American healthcare tech giant and one of the country’s largest processors of prescription medications, handling prescriptions and billing for more than 67,000 pharmacies across the U.S. healthcare system. The healthcare tech giant handles 15 billion healthcare transactions annually — or about one-in-three U.S. patient records. Change Healthcare merged with healthcare provider Optum in 2022 as part of a $7.8 billion deal under UnitedHealth Group. The cyberattack at Change Healthcare began on February 21 early on the U.S. East Coast, causing widespread outages at pharmacies and healthcare facilities.

“Latest Updates: Google Debuts Fresh Open LLMs, Rivian Enacts Employee Cutbacks, and Signal Introduces Usernames”

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Google releases new open LLMs, Rivian lays off staff and Signal rolls out usernamesWelcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, Google launched two new open large language models, Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, in its continued bid for generative AI dominance. The company, which describes the LLMs as “inspired by Gemini,” its flagship family of GenAI models, made each available for commercial and research usage. Change Healthcare hit: Change Healthcare, one of the largest healthcare tech companies in the U.S., confirmed that a cyberattack on its systems occurred recently. YouTube triumphant: YouTube dominates TV streaming in the U.S., per Nielsen’s latest report.

“Nation-State Breach: UnitedHealth Discovers Hack on Change Healthcare, Continues to See Pharmacy Outages”

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UnitedHealth says Change Healthcare hacked by nation state, as pharmacy outages drag onU.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group said Thursday in a filing with government regulators that its subsidiary Change Healthcare was compromised likely by government-backed hackers. In a filing Thursday, UHG blamed the ongoing cybersecurity incident affecting Change Healthcare on suspected nation state hackers but said it had no timeframe for when its systems would be back online. UHG did not attribute the cyberattack to a specific nation or government, or cite what evidence it had to support its claim. Change Healthcare provides patient billing across the U.S. healthcare system. Change Healthcare has not yet disclosed the specific nature of its cyberattack.