Magnificent News: The Health 202: Google’s health arm lures another Washington figure

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Your health policy appointment.

By Dan Diamond
with Alexandra Ellerbeck

The siren song of Silicon Valley has hooked another Washington policymaker — and her hiring offers new clues about Google's health care ambitions.

Amy Abernethy is the latest official to trade government acronyms for employment at Alphabet, the umbrella company for Google's ventures, as the tech giant tries to break through in the $3 trillion health sector. Abernethy – who recently stepped down as the Food and Drug Administration's second-in-command – will be announced today as president of clinical research platforms at Verily, the Google spinoff focused on health care innovation, the Health 202 scoops.

It's the company's latest move to muscle up in health care.

The hire was pitched as an effort to improve the speed and value of clinical trials by drawing on Abernethy's FDA expertise. Verily currently runs Project Baseline, a data-collection initiative to map human health and boost clinical studies.

Abernethy told me that as an FDA leader, she felt the nation's clinical research infrastructure needed to be "more efficient, more patient-centric, and able to accommodate a larger number of medical products."

"That's actually one of the main reasons I left FDA, to work on that problem," she added.

It's also a notable get: the Biden administration vetted Abernethy to fill its still-open FDA commissioner job, and she ran many aspects of the agency's day-to-day operations and also oversaw its IT efforts before stepping down on April 23.

"Amy coming on board is really a testament to how seriously we think that we can contribute to the evolution of clinical research," said Jessica Mega, Verily's co-founder and its chief medical and scientific officer.

(AP Photo/Jens Meyer, File)

Google-world's interest in health care is no secret.

Alphabet founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have long told allies that the sector is a potential business opportunity, ripe for reform — a persistent belief that's launched some intriguing ventures but has yet to pay significant dividends. (More on that below.)

And to better navigate the heavily regulated sector, they've scooped up former officials like Robert Califf, who led FDA under Obama and now serves as a Google Health and Verily adviser; Karen DeSalvo, who served as the Obama administration's top health IT official and is now chief health officer at Google Health; and Vindell Washington, who was DeSalvo's successor and now runs Onduo, a virtual care company in Verily's portfolio.

Andy Slavitt, the former Medicare chief and current senior adviser for the Biden administration's coronavirus response, also served on Verily's advisory board.

Andy Slavitt, former acting administrator of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, speaks at a news conference at the Treasury Department in 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, file)

The Google-affiliated companies have undertaken multiple approaches to health care, leaning on their data-driven initiatives and deep pockets. For instance, Google's cloud computing division struck a deal last month with national hospital chain HCA Healthcare Inc. to develop algorithms intended to boost care and efficiency, the Wall Street Journal's Melanie Evans reported. Google Health last month also announced an artificial intelligence-powered tool intended to help diagnose dermatological conditions.

And the company's broader health efforts gained new momentum during the pandemic, as Google tracked coronavirus spread, built alliances with public health organizations and even released a memorable commercial about why people should get vaccinated.

But much of Alphabet's health care work is now centered on Verily.

Verily grew out of the moonshot factory then-known as "Google X," became a standalone company in 2015 and has pursued industry partnerships with companies like Johnson & Johnson and developed devices like a miniaturized glucose monitor.

In a detailed profile for the San Francisco Business Times last week, reporter Ron Leuty described Verily as a "virtual hydra of health care," cataloguing the company's efforts to treat diverse conditions like opioid addiction and sleep apnea, launch insurance subsidiary Coefficient and even serve as a landlord for emerging businesses, backed by billions of dollars in funding.

Coronavirus also teed up Verily for yet another investment: It's helping fund a startup led by Charity Dean, a former California public health official who was lionized by author Michael Lewis in his new book on the pandemic.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at the Google I/O conference in Mountain View, Calif. in 2019. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Verily's sprawling approach has raised eyebrows across health care.

Outside executives and investors have grumbled that the high-profile company lacks focus and has a skimpy track record of producing hits. But few want to go on record criticizing Verily, given their own entanglements or the fear of crossing Google-world.

Google's health efforts also were thrust into the national spotlight in March 2020 when then-President Trump announced in the Rose Garden that the company was developing a coronavirus website that would "determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location." But the episode turned into a public relations mess. Google distanced itself from Trump's pledge, with CEO Sundar Pichai vowing support but clarifying that the company's efforts were significantly more limited and centered on Verily. Trump dismissively dropped Google's statement on the floor during a press briefing.

Still, the attention contributed to Verily winning contracts with California to perform coronavirus testing, a former official said.

Meanwhile, would-be Silicon Valley reformers invite necessary scrutiny; health care is littered with a veritable graveyard of tech giants that promised to transform the industry only to peter out. (To say nothing of the spectre of a certain company known for its bad blood.)

Verily isn't Theranos — far from it — but its executives on Wednesday side-stepped repeated questions about specific revenue targets and product goals, opting instead to focus on more far-reaching aspirations.

"Health care and life science is complicated, and we're creating a movement," said Mega, Verily's co-founder.

"To really succeed, we're going to have to improve the generation of evidence, which is what [Project] Baseline is all about. And we're going to have to develop better systems to apply the evidence so that people get better outcomes at a lower cost," Califf told The Post. "Ultimately, five years from now, you can judge us as to whether these have come together, and it's something that changes the way health care is delivered and also improves the health of people."

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Ahh, oof and ouch

AHH: Biden is announcing a month of action to ramp up vaccinations.

Pharmacies will extend their hours this month, barbershops will host vaccine clinics and vaccine promoters will phone bank and go door to door. Anheuser-Busch has even promised to give Americans over the age of 21 a round of beers once Biden's goal of vaccinating 70 percent of adults is met. Other companies such as DoorDash and CVS are also offering incentives for people who get vaccinated.

"Declaring June a 'national month of action,' the administration wants to incentivize Americans who are hesitant about getting vaccinated with a range of perks, including free food delivery, baseball tickets, Xboxes and chances to win cruise tickets, groceries for a year and free airline flights," The Post's Tyler Pager, Lena H. Sun and John Wagner report.

The president set July 4 as the deadline for getting 70 percent of adults vaccinated with at least one dose. Nearly 63 percent of American adults have gotten their first shot, but the number of people who are eager for shots and still unvaccinated has rapidly dwindled.

The administration has also announced that it is partnering with 1,000 Black-owned beauty salons and barbershops across the country to promote vaccine clinics. The initiative builds on the success of several vaccine clinics around the country that have been successfully held at barbershops.

OOF: But globally, the pandemic is getting worse, not better.

"In the United States, life is returning to normal. Restaurants and bars are filling up again, vacations are being booked and flights are selling out," The Post's Ishaan Tharoor reports. "But the pandemic is hardly in retreat elsewhere. The emergence of more virulent variants of the virus in countries like Brazil and India and the slowness of vaccination efforts in many places outside the West have contributed to deadly new waves."

The number of coronavirus cases reported in the first five months of 2021 is already higher than the total number of cases reported in 2020. And while The Post's coronavirus tracker shows global cases decreasing over the last month, more than 10,000 covid-19 deaths are still recorded each day — a number that is probably a stark undercount of the actual toll.

Southeast Asia, which had until recently managed to control the spread of the virus, is seeing a harrowing spike in infections. In Africa, concerns are growing about a new wave driven by more transmissible variants of the virus.

"Public health advocates and international organizations recognize the main problem: the global gap in vaccinations. In the United States, there's already discussion of booster shots for the general public, while front-line medical workers in some developing countries have yet to even receive a first dose of a vaccine," Ishaan writes.

OUCH: Leaders at an Arkansas VA hospital failed to protect patients from an impaired pathologist.

"Oversight failures, a fearful workplace culture and lax quality standards for years at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Arkansas allowed a pathologist who was routinely drunk on the job to misdiagnose thousands of veterans — sometimes with dire or deadly consequences, a new investigation has found," The Post's Lisa Rein reports.

While some colleagues of the pathologist, Robert Morris Levy, knew his behavior was putting patients at risk, staff members feared to come forward out of concern that they would face retaliation from their bosses, according to the report released by VA's Office of Inspector General. Hospital leaders also ignored red flags that could have prevented tragic mistakes.

Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Levy rose from a temporary contract pathologist to chief of pathology during his 13-year tenure at the Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks in Fayetteville, before he was fired in 2018. In January, he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for involuntary manslaughter and mail fraud. He pleaded guilty last year to diagnosing lymphoma in an Air Force veteran who actually had a small-cell carcinoma and falsifying the patient's medical records.

When a team of outside pathologists reviewed almost 34,000 cases Levy had diagnosed since his hiring, they found that more than 3,000 had errors, 589 of them major mistakes that caused medical harm to veterans. At least 15 died, Lisa writes.

From the new CMS administrator

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure says broadening insurance coverage is her top goal.

In an interview with Kaiser Health News, the newly-appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said her focus will be on "making sure regulations and policies are going to be focused on improving coverage."

"We've seen through the pandemic what happens when people don't have health insurance and how important it is," Brooks-LaSure, who was confirmed by the Senate to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on May 25 and sworn in on May 27, told KHN's Julie Rovner.

Brooks-LaSure suggested the administration would support congressional efforts to get coverage to the millions of Americans who should be eligible for Medicaid but live in states that didn't expand it.
She hopes states use additional incentive funding provided in the recent American Rescue Plan toward expanding their Medicaid programs.
She also said Medicare trust fund insolvency is on her radar.

More in coronavirus news

Robust vaccine protection may mean yearly boosters are unnecessary.

"[E]vidence is mounting that immunity from the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna does not depend exclusively on antibodies that dwindle over time. The body has overlapping layers of protection that offer backup," the Associated Press's Lauran Neergaard reports.

Scientists caution more research is needed and that virus mutations could still change the equation, but some leading experts say they would be surprised if people needed yearly boosters. Long-lived plasma cells, memory B cells and memory T cells are all part of the body's backup systems and could provide some protection even after antibodies wane.

The National Institutes of Health has also began testing whether giving patients booster shots that come from a different vaccine brand than their original shot is effective.

The Biden administration is working to ensure shots made at the Emergent factory are safe.

The Food and Drug Administration cannot rule out low-level cross-contamination in the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses manufactured by contractor Emergent BioSolutions. Production at Emergent's Baltimore facility was halted in April after the manufacturer accidentally contaminated 15 million Johnson & Johnson doses with the active ingredient of AstraZeneca's vaccine, Politico's Erin Banco reports.

Employees work in a lab at Emergent BioSolutions. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

"To clear the doses manufactured at Emergent as safe, the FDA has asked AstraZeneca and J&J to assess any risks from possible trace contamination — a process that has taken several weeks. The agency is expected to make an announcement in the coming days about whether the shots made by Emergent are fit for use," Erin writes.

A public health warning

The FDA is warning people not to eat cicadas if they have a seafood allergy.

"Weeks after the arrival of Brood X, the buzzy swarm of cicadas that emerge from the ground every 17 years to cover trees and sidewalks across a swath of the country, federal health officials have a new warning: People with seafood allergies shouldn't eat the insects," The Post's Emily Heil reports. "Many chefs and home cooks have been experimenting with recipes incorporating the plentiful cicadas since their arrival in mid-May, wrapping them in rice like sushi, filling tacos with them or using them to garnish chocolate cookies."