Hacking third-party health apps & Amazon’s lobbying strategy

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Amazon’s health strategy in DC

As Amazon sets its sights on growing its digital pharmacy and health care businesses, the tech giant is making hires to influence health care policy, reports STAT Washington correspondent Rachel Cohrs. Already a lobbying powerhouse, the company disclosed earlier this year that it has 11 lobbyists working on health care issues. And it has more positions open for advocates focusing on federal health care policy, health devices and services, and state-level health policy. Leading the charge is Claire Winiarek, who recently joined Amazon as director of health policy after serving as a top policy official for the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.

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“Someone like Amazon, when they set out to hire four more health care lobbyists, that’s an indication of their priorities,” said Ivan Adler, a D.C.-based headhunter specializing in lobbying. “There’s no doubt that health care is a growth area for them.” Rachel has the full story.

Hack the aggregator

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Cyberattacks don’t have to target individual hospitals to jeopardize the security of patient records. In a new report, hacker and cybersecurity analyst Alissa Knight was able to access more than 4 million patient and clinician records by exploiting vulnerabilities in third-party apps and APIs that tap into the country’s biggest EHR vendors. She found basic security flaws in the apps and APIs from data aggregators, which standardize medical codes and generally clean up records so they’re more usable. It’s a double whammy of data vulnerability: By putting records from multiple EHRs in one data lake with lackluster security, these systems also become a prime target. “Why go after the individual health care providers when I can just hack the aggregator and steal the data from them?” said Knight. Read more in Katie’s story.

How FDA can illuminate AI’s black box

The FDA should publicly disclose more data on the testing of AI products, require diversity in training and validation datasets, and carefully monitor products after they are put into use. Those were a few of the suggestions that arose during a daylong workshop hosted by the agency on the transparency of AI tools used in health care. While most participants agreed on the need to ensure devices that rely on AI are fair and demonstrably improve outcomes in the real world, there was considerable debate over how to achieve those goals. Casey has the full story.

HLTH kicks off in Boston

• Former Merck CEO Ken Frazier took the stage in his newly minted role as head of “health assurance initiatives” at the VC firm General Catalyst.  “The reality of the world is I don’t know anybody who wants their health disrupted,” Frazier said. “People want to know that if, in fact, they’re going to be cared for by someone or through something, that they can trust it.” Read the full story from Mario and our colleague Matt Herper.
• Doctor on Demand…