Proud of this contribution to today's Morning Rounds — and not just because I managed to get "squeezed from the teat of a beet" into the newsletter. #chemistry #food #fda

The danger of adopting a Danish-style vax schedule: "When we remove a vaccine like the meningococcal shot from the routine schedule, we aren’t just changing a line on a chart. We are inviting previously well-controlled diseases back into our high schools & colleges." www.statnews.com/2026/02/06/d...

Ever wanted to hear what didn't make it into a story? I talked to @mariojoze.bsky.social about what he left out of his story exploring the unanswered questions behind Doctronic's AI prescription pilot in Utah, and what he learned. 🩺🖥️ www.statnews.com/2026/02/04/u...

"Doctors nationally are describing harrowing consequences for patients who delayed seeking care or skipped it altogether..." @danielpayne.bsky.social reports on the ICE crackdown's chilling effect on immigrants seeking necessary health care. www.statnews.com/2026/02/03/i...

You're tired of reading takes about Doctronic's Utah AI prescription pilot. But did you know that the company hasn't spoken to the FDA about it? Nine policy and legal experts STAT spoke to disputed Doctronic's argument that its AI is not a medical device: 🩺🖥️

How HHS is implementing Trump AI mandates, in numbers I take a look at the AI tools the nation's health agency is using for everything from controversial audits to helping the agency cope with layoffs & executive orders. Full charts in the story @statnews.com: www.statnews.com/2026/02/03/n...

Do pediatricians make large profits from vaccines? We followed the money. www.statnews.com/2026/01/29/p...

This is a targeted attack on science media. Bhattacharya has slammed science media for what he calls biased coverage, but how are our readers — the global scientific community — supposed to understand his new agency priorities if we can't even get in the door?

ICE used facial recognition software on a MN resident who was trailing agents in her car. Three days later she received an email from DHS saying her Global Entry and TSA travel privileges had been revoked. No explanation was provided. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/t...

Even when I started grad school, armed with a #NSF GRFP like the student in the beginning of this story, finding an advisor felt like being on the Bachelor, or maybe Survivor. I can't imagine what it's like now. From @jonathanwosen.bsky.social, who also knows this scramble firsthand: #phdchat #stem

Putting out a periodic call: I really want to publish pieces about the veterinary pharmaceutical biz on STAT's opinion section. If you have ideas, reach out: [email protected]

If anyone else's personal Gmail suddenly started giving AI summaries of your emails with no option to turn them off: I already took the elevated blood pressure hit for you and figure out how to get rid of it WITHOUT getting rid of the multiple inboxes (which I personally need in order to function)

Please reshare! Here's the first in a series of science writing resources I'm posting to my website: A list of science writing/communication internships & fellowships. brittanytrang.com/science-jour... #sciencejournalism #scicomm #scicommjobs #journojobs #sciencewriting #sciwri #stem

SCOOP: I got the pitch deck for a mysterious AI company co-founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Hologen, which aims to use "large medicine models" to de-noise data in late-stage clinical trials, is raising a $150 M Series A and has some eye-popping financial projections. Read more at STAT: 🩺🖥️

“Beneath ski goggles, tears streamed.” @mmolteni.bsky.social reports from a #Minneapolis vigil for VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti, fatally shot by #ICE agents last week. “Anyone who knew him for 10 seconds would know he’s a standup guy,” Johnston told STAT during the vigil. Read all the way to the end:

UPDATED: Epic confirmed to me that it helped coordinate the letter that 60+ health systems (all Epic customers) wrote to the leaders of TEFCA and Carequality asking for better security measures on health record exchange networks. www.statnews.com/2026/01/23/h...

"Health insurance executives agree that the U.S. health care system is overpriced, wasteful, and confusing. And they also agree that those problems are someone else’s fault." Health insurance CEOs testified before the Senate and the House today. A clear-eyed analysis:

OpenEvidence, health AI's biggest startup, is now valued at $12 billion. Is that because of OE's new quest for "medical superintelligence," or because it's an advertising platform and is gathering valuable data on its customers? More from @mariojoze.bsky.social at @statnews.com:

Bold for a former health insurance CEO to say "I'm sure I'll be shot [for saying this]" when a health insurance CEO was literally shot just a year ago. (We talk about that too.) Check out my conversation with longtime Humana CEO Bruce Broussard, only in @statnews.com's AI Prognosis newsletter:

FDA clears Aidoc's tool that can detect 14 different conditions from a CT scan www.statnews.com/2026/01/21/f... via @statnews.com

Today’s show, with @brittanytrang.com. OpenAI and Anthropic want you to upload your medical records. Is that, uh, a good idea? slate.com/podcasts/wha...

Do you, like me, feel like the news is trying its best to kill you? Fear not, I am standing in front of the firehose of #healthAI 🩺🖥️ news for you. I present you with some tidy buckets of important health and biotech AI news you may have missed over the last month: www.statnews.com/2026/01/14/b...

This piece by @katiepalmer.bsky.social is so 🤗 🎉 😆 If you're looking for some fun news: www.statnews.com/2026/01/14/e... 🖥️🩺 #health #healthcare #medicine #ehr #healthtech #healthit

This is getting the microplastics that may or may not be in my blood pumping bc I'm mad. These studies aren't running blanks?! They're not spiking samples?! As someone who's done a lot of low-conc analytical chem...this is basic and just sloppy. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Watch: At #JPM26, former drug regulator Richard Pazdur rings the alarm about politics at FDA Full session: www.statnews.com/2026/01/13/j...

Dr. Oz told health care executives at a fancy yacht club that they don't need to worry about the impending Medicaid cuts. Plus, he said the people who are about to lose Medicaid coverage are couch potatoes anyway. @tarabannow.bsky.social reports from #JPM26: www.statnews.com/2026/01/13/j...

Read @elaineywchen.bsky.social's write-up of former top FDA drug regulator Rick Pazdur's explosive panel at STAT's event at #JPM2026 last night, moderated by @matthewherper.bsky.social. Drug makers should be more concerned by what's happening at FDA, Pazdur said. www.statnews.com/2026/01/13/r...

BREAKING: EHR company Epic sues a health information network over 300,000 patient records accessed illegally by what Epic calls "organized syndicates" of bad actors who are allegedly profiting off of selling medical records More at @statnews.com: 🖥️🩺

Why should you trust #ChatGPT Health's advice? Well, it's a feeling, OpenAI health lead Karan Singhal told me. "We kind of now feel like we have the ability to kind of understand how to train model behavior and the models so that they represent clinician judgment," he said. 🖥️🩺

Nearly half of Trump-appointed experts involved in shaping the new dietary guidelines have financial ties to meat and dairy industries. Exclusive with @sarah-todd.bsky.social and @elizabethcooney.bsky.social --> www.statnews.com/2026/01/07/n...

Someday soon, a company is going to claim to have put the "first AI-designed antibody" into the clinic. But experts are divided on what that even means, much less how close we are to that happening. Read more from me in STAT: 🖥️🩺🧪🧬

This is how fast health AI is moving: Between when I drafted this post on Monday and when it sent this morning, two of these 2026 #health #AI predictions basically became outdated. (click in the below post to find out which ones they were!) 🖥️🩺

NEW: For better or worse, get ready for a new wave of wearables and AI-enabled devices promising better health. Via @lizzylawrence.bsky.social, @katiepalmer.bsky.social @brittanytrang.com, Mario Aguilar. www.statnews.com/2026/01/06/f...

If you like a mini crossword, try STAT's, which is free and now daily! (The clues are not exclusively health or science related, in case you're worried about that!) www.statnews.com/stat-mini-cr...

bob went offfff today in the newsletter:

I don’t have the energy to do a year-end thread right now, but this series is our attempt at analyzing the impacts of this year on biomedical research … and what could come next The series tackles everything from diversity grants, a brain drain, lack of comms, and plenty more

Explore American Science, Shattered A multipart series on how the Trump administration has disrupted labs, upended lives, and delayed discoveries Part 1: Scientists lost a reliable partner, with ‘nothing to replace it’ www.statnews.com/2025/12/04/a... By @mmolteni.bsky.social @aniloza.bsky.social

As we end 2025: Some health tech/AI stories I'm proud of and think you should read — Friends-style (I only watched like the first 5 episodes of Friends before I gave up) 🩺🖥️ 🤑 The one that people on Reddit pirated the most: www.statnews.com/2025/02/10/a...

My 10 favorite records from 2025, though I'm not wedded to this ordering. Instead of championing an album of the year, I'm trying a new thing: my 5 favorite music moments of the year 👇🧵

If you're a first-year biomedical Ph.D. student, I'd like to hear how your first few months of grad school have been going. I'm a science journalist at @statnews.com and got my Ph.D. in immunology before going into journalism. You can reach me at [email protected]. #journorequest

As we close out the year, wanted to share this running list of FDA leadership departures one last time. Some new names on there include digital health director Jessica Paulsen, and director of clinical policy in the chief medical office Shari Targum. www.statnews.com/2025/04/03/f...

Science is like "glimpsing God's mind": On the last episode of this season of the First Opinion Podcast, I talked to former NIH Director Francis Collins and Fox News' Marc Siegel, author of the new book The Miracles Among Us, about faith, medicine, and science: www.statnews.com/2025/12/17/f...

Earlier this year, I asked more than 90 health AI experts what's on their bingo card for the rest of 2025. Who gets to say "I told you so" now? Our look back at what did and didn't happen in 2025: www.statnews.com/2025/12/17/2... 🖥️🩺

What's the health care impact of the new Trump executive order targeting state AI laws? According to health system chief AI officers, it may actually create more confusion than if state laws stayed intact. More, plus a summary of the health AI laws that have been passed this year, @statnews.com 🖥️🩺

“I’ll evade, if that’s alright.” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill, RFK Jr's #2, dodged a question about Trump's "one rule" AI executive order at an event Wednesday. He also opined on CHAI, HHS' AI efforts, and how the "Genesis Mission" confuses him. More from @mariojoze.bsky.social: 🖥️🩺

Overworked radiologists already struggle to adjudicate abnormalities flagged by the current generation of AI models. That stands to get worse as AI’s capabilities grow. @katiepalmer.bsky.social looks at how radiologists are thinking about that: www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/c... via @statnews.com

KSJ fellowships are an opportunity for science journalists to step away from chasing deadlines and connect with their curiosity. Applications are open now! Apply by Jan 9 https://ksj.mit.edu/news/2025/11/14/apply-for-2026-2027/

There are five great stories up for this series so far, all recounting the experiences of real people whose work and lives have been impacted by the Trump administration's interference. As one scientist told Anil: "I think everyone has their own horror story." Take a look.

"Trump has ‘shaken the hell’ out of the 80-year research pact between the government and universities. What now?" The first in a remarkable series looking at what the Trump Administration has done to American science and health over 11 months www.statnews.com/2025/12/04/a...

I know there's a lot of news but if you can tear yourself away from the CDC vaccine committee today — you should really read this series on how the Trump administration has upended science in just 10 months, from my incredibly talented colleagues: www.statnews.com/american-sci...