PRx Blog

Lap Bands, Genzyme and Watson--A busy week in Healthcare

Here is a recap of some of the top health stories of the week:

Lap Band Surgery for the Not-So Obese

The FDA approved this week the wider use of Allergan’s Lap-Band stomach-restricting device for moderately obese people who fail to lose weight by alternate methods such as diet, exercise or drugs. As reported in the New York Times, more than 26 million Americans will likely now be eligible for the surgery, compared to the 15 to 18 million eligible under the previous standard. Experts believe that this expanded approval will drive more moderately obese people to consider surgery, especially since a number of diet pills have been failing to get FDA approval of late and the drug Meridia was withdrawn from the market. With these new guidelines, people with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 with an associated health condition are now eligible for surgery. Until now, people had to have a BMI of 35 if they had obesity-related health problems.

Genzyme Purchased by Sanofi-Aventis for $20 Billion

The world’s fourth-largest drug maker, Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis purchased Genzyme for $20.1 billion this week. The announcement comes after months of back and forth between the companies after the deal was originally met with reluctance by the Cambridge-based company to a takeover. As discussed in the Boston Globe, this deal underscores the new pharmaceutical landscape as companies that are plagued by patent expirations are seeking ways to replace these drugs with new revenue streams. In fact, medications worth more than $30 billion in annual sales will begin competing with low-cost generic drugs for the treatment of common diseases such as arthritis, diabetes and asthma. Genzyme’s drugs fall largely into the orphan drug class, meaning they are developed specifically to treat rare medical conditions and are given extra patent protection. Sanofi says that it is committed to Genzyme’s development of complex drugs to treat rare diseases and as a reflection of this commitment, the president traveled to Cambridge to meet with the head of Genzyme instead of simply making the announcement from its headquarters in Paris. This deal underscores the expanding life sciences industry in Massachusetts. With the nation’s top universities like Harvard and MIT and research hospitals in Boston developing new breakthrough therapies, Massachusetts is cementing itself as the hub for scientific research and talent, and large pharma is taking notice!

Watson Asks: What is Healthcare?

It’s hard to miss any stories about Watson – IBM’s advanced computing system that went against Jeopardy! pros this week – and now the analytical technology will be used to provide unprecedented clinical information and analytical technological advancements to the healthcare field. Partnering with Nuance Communications, the companies have signed a research and technology agreement to combine Watson’s technology with Nuance’s speech recognition and clinical language understanding solutions. The goal is to leverage Watson’s ability to analyze the meaning and context of human language and quickly process information to find correct answers, and assist physicians and nurses in finding information often buried within huge volumes of information and offer answers they may not have considered. Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine are working with the companies on this collaborative effort to study diagnostic evidence. The first commercial offering is expected to be available in 18-24 months.