MPO’s Most-Read Stories This Week—July 23

It was a week of new beginnings.

Top traffic drivers on the MPO website this past week included a new leader for Roche and new starts for GE, Medidata, and Veeva Systems.

Roche’s new start won’t begin for some time—eight months, actually. Next March, Roche Diagnostics CEO Thomas Schinecker is set to become CEO of Roche. Schinecker assumes his new role on March 15, 2023, and succeeds Severin Schwan, who will be Roche’s new board chairman. Schwan may replace Christoph Franz, who has decided not to seek re-election to Roche’s board of directors.

GE is making a fresh start through its planned separation into three public companies focused on healthcare, energy, and aviation. The healthcare business, expected to be spun off early next year, will be named GE HealthCare. Following completion of its spinoff, shares will be listed on The Nasdaq Global Select Market as “GHEC.” The company has changed the logo color to “compassion purple” to reflect humanity and warmth as well as achieving greater distinction. GE’s chief marketing officer Linda Boff said, “Based on data and analysis drawn from thousands of conversations, it became clear that the GE name and our century-plus old Monogram represent a legacy of innovation, symbol of trust by global customers, pride for our team, and a talent magnet for future leaders. We’re proud these future businesses will be able to build on GE’s DNA of innovation.”

Both Medidata and Veeva are embarking on new beginnings, courtesy of a federal judge’s decision to dismiss the former’s trade secret misappropriation lawsuit agains the latter. The U.S. District Court judge in the Southern District of New York ended proceedings midway through the jury trial and rejected the suit, finding Medidata wasn’t able to substantiate claims against Veeva. According to Veeva, the ruling is important for protection of employee and customer rights because the case represented an attempt to stifle competition and free flow of talent with “unfounded trade secret claims.” Medidata had filed the trade secret suit in 2017 against Veeva and five previous Medidata employees. Veeva claims the attempt was to block them from innovating in the clinical data management market and intimidate Medidata employees to prevent them from joining Veeva.

Other items of interest to website visitors this past week included a strategy for enhancing postmarket surveillance efficiency, and study results for MediPines’ AGM100, which has been used to help triage COVID-19 patients.

1. Roche Diagnostics CEO Thomas Schinecker to Become Roche CEO

2. GE Reveals Planned GE Healthcare Public Company

3. Enhancing Postmarket Surveillance Efficiency in Medtech

4. MediPines’ AGM100 Effectively Triages COVID-19 Patients

5. Court Throws Out Medidata’s Lawsuit Against Veeva