STAT+: In the battle of sepsis algorithms, performance alone doesn’t predict victory

Five years ago, the bottom fell out of sepsis prediction software. Hundreds of hospitals had adopted an algorithm from electronic health record company Epic that promised to alert physicians to predicted cases of sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to infection that kills more than 350,000 people in the United States every year. 

The AI was a technical flop. Despite its results on paper, the technology failed to perform in the real world, and sent so many alerts that doctors tuned them out or hospitals turned them off. 

Half a decade on, new sepsis models are hitting the scene. Epic released a retooled version of its own algorithm. Startups are testing their models in health systems. A team uses large language models to mine clinical notes for signs of sepsis. And on Tuesday, a sepsis flagging device from Bayesian Health, with origins at Johns Hopkins, announced it has received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration.

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Opinion: STAT+: Pharma and biotech leaders are destroying their own industry

In early 2025, biotech experienced a “DeepSeek moment” when biotech and pharma leaders alike realized how quickly China was gaining ground with innovation, speed of drug development, and share of licensing deals. In 2020, global pharmaceutical companies spent about $9 billion on licensed drug assets from China. In 2025, that number shot to more than $137 billion. The first two months of 2026 alone accounted for nearly $50 billion in deals. As a December 2025 report from the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology put it, “in just three years, China’s biopharmaceutical industry rose from near irrelevance to dominance.”

China’s rise is happening with the blessing of U.S. pharmaceutical executives, who are allowing their own industry to be destroyed.

I am a co-chair of a working group at the Council on Foreign Relations investigating the U.S.’s generic pharmaceutical dependence on China. An estimated 60% of our generic medications have an active ingredient that originates in China; some estimates have this figure as high as 80-90%. (The exact percentage is unknown because the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t formally track this information, and because a significant percentage of our drugs are imported from India, which in turn imports chemical precursors from China.)

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STAT+: Patients jockey for exemptions from Medicaid’s new work requirements

WASHINGTON — Patient groups are jockeying for exemptions from Medicaid work requirements, but the unusually fast implementation timeline for states is causing headaches.

Federal officials have until June 1 to tell states how to implement a provision of President Trump’s tax cut bill that requires certain Medicaid beneficiaries to show that they’re working, in school, or volunteering in order to keep their coverage. Once that regulation is out, states will have to put their systems in place by Jan. 1.

Advocates for people with certain diseases have been meeting with federal officials to urge that those patients be automatically exempt from the work requirements. For example, Patients with sickle cell disease recently met with White House budget officials to request an exemption. Advocacy groups for people with HIV are making a similar push.

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