AbbVie’s Humira—a drug that treats inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease—has earned the title of best-selling drug of all time, amassing more than $200 billion over the course of two decades.

And despite losing patent exclusivity in 2023 and facing competition from 10 biosimilars, Humira has held onto roughly 85% of the market share (though US sales have fallen about 32% in the past year), according to Divya Iyer, SVP of pharma manufacturer solutions at GoodRx.

Now, however, GoodRx is hoping to change that.

In July, the company announced a partnership with German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim to offer a 92% discount on adalimumab-adbm, the pharma giant’s Humira biosimilar. Using GoodRx’s cash discount, patients can get a two-pack of it for $550, which Iyer said translates to roughly a month’s worth of medication. Humira’s list price is around $7,000 for the same amount.

This lower-cost version from GoodRx and Boehringer Ingelheim could drive the uptake of the biosimilar, according to Iyer.

Keep reading here.—MA

From HAL to Skynet, AI gets a bad rap. With its fast rise, buzzy headlines, and seemingly limitless potential, it’s hard to know if AI will help us or upend us. A pressing question on many employees’ minds: Will AI take my job?

MIT researchers offer a picture of the future of AI in the workplace. Read Tech Brew’s explanation of what artificial intelligence is capable of, what its probable use cases are, and the implications for your job. Hint: Predictions might be more complex and hopeful than you might expect. Read or listen here.

When hackers set their sights on a blood bank, the stakes aren’t just high, they’re life or death.

The nation saw that firsthand after a ransomware attack on July 29 against Florida-based blood bank OneBlood disrupted patient care, delayed elective procedures, and prompted the bank to tell more than 250 southeast hospitals to temporarily activate critical blood shortage protocols.

The hack knocked some of OneBlood’s systems offline, forcing staff to manually perform normally automated steps like blood labeling, according to a press release, which significantly slowed down deliveries to hospitals. In response, blood banks nationwide scrambled to send supplemental blood and platelets, an effort that the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies (AABB) coordinated.As of August 8, business was back to normal and those supplemental shipments were no longer needed, the press release said. But the industry isn’t out of the woods yet.

Rewinding. The hack is one of three recent major worldwide attacks on life-sustaining supply chains, like blood banks, a joint threat bulletin by the American Hospital Association and the nonprofit Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center stated.

Keep reading here.—CC

Private equity (PE) firms might make it rain cash for investors, but hospitals under their ownership are facing an asset drought, according to a research letter published in JAMA on July 30.

While fans of PE argue it can bring much-needed financial resources to struggling hospitals, the data disagrees.

“Private equity acquisitions appear to have depleted, rather than augmented, hospital assets,” the authors, a group of physicians from medical institutions across the US, wrote.

The analysis, which dug into the data of 156 hospitals snapped up by PE firms between 2010 and 2019, found that assets at these hospitals shrank from an average of nearly $88 million to just under $70 million in the two years before and after acquisition—a 24% drop.

Each hospital was matched to 10 controls—1,560 total—based on year, region, bed size category, and capital assets such as land, buildings, equipment, and health information technology.

In contrast, hospitals not under private equity’s thumb saw their assets climb from an average of $95 million to $102 million in that same time.

Keep reading here.—CC

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