Digital Health

UC San Francisco will house the COVID Tracking Project, a 15-month-long crowdsourced digital archive of daily COVID-19 data compiled by The Atlantic, within the university's permanent library collection, the organizations said July 28. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has created many new challenges within healthcare. Some of these challenges include shortages in critical care beds, daily strain across nursing and physician groups, delays to elective surgeries, and heightened patient-access restrictions to care facilities.

Health data company Datavant and health information management company Ciox Health finalized their $7 billion merger agreement, the companies announced July 28. 

"You can't assume that you actually know the struggles that your members face," Healthfirst CEO Pat Wang shared with Becker's July 26. "I think intellectually, we were aware of the food insecurity and other social determinants of health challenges that…

The parent company of Catalyst Health Network, a 1,000-physician network based in Plano, Texas, acquired digital health company MediBookr, according to a July 27 news release.

Payers should be focusing on creating a healthcare "ecosystem" that supports members with convenience and preventive care, said Jaime Murillo, MD, senior vice president and chief cardiometabolic health officer of UnitedHealth Group.

Nine recent partnerships between healthcare organizations and big tech companies including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. 

Telehealth visits skyrocketed during the pandemic. Telehealth has enormous advantages, but to improve care at scale, several challenges must be addressed. 

Adventist Health inked a digital patient experience partnership with GetWellNetwork, the Roseville, Calif.-based health system said July 26.

Highmark, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, has launched its new "Because Life" campaign.