News Briefs
✦ Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. will spend $970 million to acquire a 71% stake in Shields Health Solutions, a specialty pharmacy company. Shields contracts with health systems and hospitals to build and operate on-site specialty pharmacies. The transaction builds on a minority investment that Walgreens made in July 2019. According to a Sept. 21 press release, Shields “represent[s] more than 1 million specialty patients across more than 30 disease states, with more than 70 health system partners nationwide.”
✦ Inovalon Holdings Inc. struck a deal with CorEvitas LLC to gain access to CorEvitas’ analytics on rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. Inovalon will combine the data from the CorEvitas platform with its larger chronic condition database. According to a Sept. 21 press release on the deal, “insights made possible through these analytics can advance clinical development, inform trial design and recruitment, substantiate value narratives, and inform patient-specific intervention plans.”