Adobe Kimberly Zieselman was born intersex. You may not have heard of intersex traits — variations in someone’s sex anatomy that don’t align with binary categories of female or male — but they’re as common as red hair, green eyes, and more common than identical twins. “We have always been here,” Zieselman writes in a new First Opinion essay.For decades, people with intersex traits have been subjected to medically unnecessary and often nonconsensual surgeries, so they might better fit inside the category of male or female. Zieselman writes that she’s never been able to find competent intersex-affirming health care. And she fears that the Trump administration’s policies around sex and gender will make health care even worse for people like her. Read more about her personal experience and how new policies might affect her.

gene therapy

Novartis finally shows gene therapy data in older SMA patients

Nearly six years ago, the FDA approved Novartis’ Zolgensma, a gene therapy for the fatal neuron-wasting disease spinal muscular atrophy, but only for children under age 2. The pivotal trial had only studied babies and the thinking was that older children likely have lost too many neurons to benefit from the therapy.

Researchers yesterday finally showed that the therapy does work in older children 2 to 17 years old. Over one year, those who received the new Zolgensma administration improved a median of 2.38 points on a standard 66-point scale of muscle function, compared with 0.56 points among those given a sham treatment. 

The challenge is it’s unclear where Zolgensma would fit now in the treatment paradigm for older kids. Much has changed since Zolgensma was first approved for babies.

Read more from STAT’s Jason Mast.

Artificial Intelligence

Nvidia announces platform for AI-powered robots in health care and more

This week Nvidia held its GTC event, and consequently, a few big names in health care got to briefly bask in the electronic chip maker’s limelight. As the main supplier of chips used to train large language models and other AI technologies, Nvidia props up, in one way or another, a lot of the AI tech we talk about.

Announcements were lofty and occasionally inscrutable:

• Buried in Microsoft‘s press release was a quote from Epic Systems VP of cloud and analytics Drew McCombs who said the company plans to run open source generative AI models on an offering from Nvidia and Microsoft. He also noted that the company is working with UW Health and UC San Diego Health on “researching methods to evaluate clinical summaries with these advanced models.” Collaboration between the medical centers, Microsoft and Epic goes back to 2023.
• Elsewhere, GE HealthCare announced it’s working with Nvidia to “reimagine diagnostic imaging with autonomous X-ray and ultrasound solutions.” The company said it hopes that Nvidia’s new platform for AI-powered health care robots and synthetic data will “help to automate repetitive tasks performed by a technologist in the patient exam room.” The company cites this effort as way to address radiology staff shortages.
• While we’re on Nvidia, earlier this month, at the TD Cowen Healthcare Conference, the chip giant’s VP of healthcare Kimberly Powell pitched a vision for how life science research companies — such as its partners Genentech and Relation Therapeutics — can use NVIDIA’s BioNeMo platform “in the loop” to squeeze the most value out of data and their scientists’ knowledge: “Every single experiment that you do, every idea your scientist has, can now be captured and codified to build upon an institutional knowledge that otherwise is maybe sitting in an electronic lab notebook somewhere. But how could you represent even those decades of electronic lab notebooks in a model, and then every single experiment you make, put it back in? And so, we’ve invented a platform called BioNeMo to serve just that.” (Brittany Trang contributed to this item.)

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telehealth

Medicare advisors suggest telehealth isn’t fading

As expected, the stop-gap funding bill passed by Congress last week included an extension of Medicare coverage for telehealth. Brace yourself, we’ll be talking about this again in September.

The day before that bill passed, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission released its March report to Congress. It noted that while some changes to the pandemic care landscape have reverted, others, like telehealth, may prove longer lasting. They note that in their 2024 survey of beneficiaries, 33% reported using telehealth, adding that as more claims from outside the pandemic become available they’ll continue to monitor the impact.

Survey responses don’t necessarily reflect reality or even Medicare cost impact. As an interesting counterpoint, the most recent data published by Medicare says that in 2023, 24% of beneficiaries used telehealth at least once.

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